“Chloe, why wish you that your years,”
a little later. It is not impossible that Cartwright, an Oxonian and an observer, may have drawn upon Donne’s report of this very wedding for his charming and ingenious lyric.
[6] This august personage was one of the Spencers of Althorp. At this time she had been for six years the wife of her second husband, the Lord Keeper Egerton, although retaining the magnificent title of her widowhood. At their estate of Harefield in Middlesex, Milton’s Arcades was afterwards given, and it will be remembered what fine compliments to the then aged countess-dowager figure in its opening verses. Spenser’s Teares of the Muses had been dedicated to her, in her prime, and she was the Amaryllis “highest in degree” of his Colin Clout’s Come Home Again.
[7] Sir James Sandelyn, Sandalo, or Sandilands (who cuts his finest figure as Jacobus Sandilandius in The Muses’ Welcome) was appointed Maistre d’Hostel to the beloved and beautiful Princess Elizabeth on her marriage to Frederic, Count Palatine of the Rhine, afterwards King of Bohemia, in 1612. As Sir James’s name is down on the lists of the Exchequer for a gift in 1615, and as his little son Richard was baptized in Deptford Church two months after the date of Lady Danvers’s letter, we may conclude that he came back to England just when the “ambassatore” expected him.
[8] Edward Herbert served as a volunteer in the campaign of 1614-15 in the Netherlands, under the Prince of Orange. Richard Herbert, here mentioned, was his eldest son, a future Cavalier and captain of a troop of horse in the Civil Wars; Edward was the baby, and “Bettye” the child Beatrice, destined, like her sister, to a short life.
[9] This 1614-15 was an eccentric and un-English year throughout. The winter signalized itself by the Great Snow; “frigus intensum,” as Camden says, “et nix copiosissima.”
[10] Lord Bacon dedicated to Edward Herbert, “the father of English deists,” his very flat translation of the Psalms! George wrote three Latin poems in his honor, one being upon the occasion of his death.
[11] He was, in July of 1626, ordained deacon, and prebendary of Layton Ecclesia in Huntingdonshire. Readers of Walton will remember how his dear mother invited him to commit simony on that occasion.
[12] The standing marble figure in a winding-sheet which Dr. King had modelled upon this strange painting on wood, may yet be seen in the south ambulatory of the choir of St. Paul’s; almost the only relic saved from the old cathedral which perished in the Great Fire of 1666. It is not only of unique interest, but of considerable artistic beauty, and “seems to breathe faintly,” as Sir Henry Wotton said of it.
[13] Dr. Donne’s papers were bequeathed to Dr. Henry King, the poet-Bishop of Chichester, then residentiary of St. Paul’s. The “find” were a precious one, if they yet survive.