I venture to suggest, then, that the Holy Sonnets sent to Mrs. Herbert and to the E. of D. were one and the same group, viz. the La Corona sequence. Probably they were sent to Mrs. Herbert first, and later to the E. of D. Donne admits their imperfection in his letter to Mrs. Herbert. One of them seems to have been criticized, and in sending the sequence to the E. of D. he held it back for correction. If the E. of D. be the Earl of Dorset they may have been sent to him before he assumed that title. Any later transcript would adopt the title to which he succeeded in 1609. We need not, however, take too literally Donne's statement that the E. of D.'s poetical letter was 'the only-begetter' of his sonnets.
My argument is conjectural, but the assumptions that they were written about 1617 and sent to Lord Doncaster are equally so. The last is untenable; the former does not harmonize so well as that of an earlier date with the obvious fact, which I have emphasized in the essay on Donne's poetry, that these sonnets are more in the intellectual, tormented, wire-drawn style of his earlier religious verse (excellent as that is in many ways) than the passionate and plangent sonnets and hymns of the years which followed the death of his wife.
[1] This letter was written in November or December, 1608, and seems to be the first in which Donne speaks of Lord Hay as a friend and patron. The kindness he has shown in forwarding a suit seems to have come somewhat as a surprise to Donne.
[2] Lord Dorset is thus described by his wife: 'He was in his own nature of a just mind, of a sweet disposition, and very valiant in his own person: He had a great advantage in his breeding by the wisdom and discretion of his grandfather, Thomas, Earl of Dorset, Lord High Treasurer of England, who was then held one of the wisest men of that time; by which means he was so good a scholar in all manner of learning, that in his youth when he lived in the University of Oxford, there was none of the young nobility then students there, that excelled him. He was also a good patriot to his country ... and so great a lover of scholars and soldiers, as that with an excessive bounty towards them, or indeed any of worth that were in distress, he did much diminish his estate; As also, with excessive prodigality in house-keeping and other noble ways at Court, as tilting, masking, and the like; Prince Henry being then alive, who was much addicted to these noble exercises, and of whom he was much beloved.' Collins's Peerage, ii. 194-5. quoted in Zouch's edition of Walton's Lives, 1817.
Page 317. To E. of D.
ll. 3-4. Ryme ... their ... have wrought. The concord here seems to require the plural, the rhyme the singular. Donne, I fear, does occasionally rhyme a word in the plural with one in the singular, ignoring the 's'. But possibly Donne intended 'Ryme' to be taken collectively for 'verses, poetry'. Even so the plural is the normal use.
To the Lady Magdalen Herbert, &c.
ll. 1-2.
whose faire inheritance
Bethina was, and jointure Magdalo.