Evidently misdated for 1612, and written a few weeks after the date of XXXI. (See note to XVI.)
To Sir Henry Goodyer, and written in 1614, but a few days after XLVIII.
To Sir Henry Goodyer. The references to "the good Countess" of Bedford and to Mitcham fix the date of this letter as later than August, 1608, and earlier than the spring of 1610, when Donne moved his family to Drury House. Sir Henry Goodyer was now in the service of the Earl of Bedford.
To Sir Henry Goodyer, and written two days later than LXIII. Apparently Tobie Matthew had deposited a part of his fortune in Goodyer's keeping to avoid the possibility of confiscation. (See note to XLV, above.) By 1614 Sir Henry's affairs were in hopeless confusion. (See note to XI, above.)
No copy of Donne's Poems in an earlier edition than that of 1633 has been discovered, and it is unlikely that he carried out the intention, here expressed, of printing them during his lifetime.
For "my L. of Canterburies businesse" see note to LI, above. "My little book of Cases" is presumably the _Paradoxes and Problems_.
Donne was presented to the living of Keyston, in Huntingdonshire, by the Benchers of Lincoln's Inn in 1616. Wrest was the home of the Earl of Kent. (See note to LVII, above.) "My Lady Spencer," the daughter of Sir John Spencer of Althorpe, and third wife of Sir Thomas Egerton, is "that noble lady at Ashworth" of LIX.
To Sir Henry Goodyer. This letter appears to belong to the period of Sir Henry's prosperity, and was written, I think, either from Mitcham, or from Donne's lodgings in the Strand; in either case, not earlier than 1605 nor later than 1610. Parson's Green was in the parish of Fulham, Middlesex. Ben Jonson has an _Epigram_ (_LXXXV_) anent Sir Henry Goodyer's hawks:
"Goodyere, I'm glad, and grateful to report, Myself a witness of thy few days sport; Where I both learn'd, why wise men hawking follow, And why that bird was sacred to Apollo: She doth instruct men by her gallant flight, That they to knowledge so should tower upright, And never stoop, but to strike ignorance; Which if they miss, yet they should re-advance To former height, and there in circle tarry, Till they be sure to make the fool their quarry. Now, in whose pleasures I have this discerned, What would his serious actions me have learned?"