John Donne - Letters to Severall Persons of Honour

The Letters to Severall Persons of Honour, now for the first time reprinted in their original form, were collected and published by John Donne, Jr., in 1651, twenty years after the death of the author. Apparently the sales were not large, for three years later the original sheets were rebound with a new title page and put on the market as a second edition. Not many copies of the earlier, and still fewer of the later date, have come down to us.

In the present volume changes from and additions to the original text are indicated by brackets, with a single exception: errors in punctuation have been corrected without comment when, and only when, they seem seriously to impair the intelligibility of the text. In the case of a few letters the reading followed is that of the original manuscripts, for which I am indebted to the great kindness of Mr. Edmund Gosse.

Readers of Mr. Gosse’s brilliant study , The Life and Letters of John Donne ( London: Heinemann, 1899 ) will not need to be reminded of the obligations under which he has placed all later students of Donne’s life and work. I have, in addition, to thank him for generous encouragement and for many helpful suggestions, specific and general.

Huntington, Long Island

October 14, 1910.

Madam,

It is an argument of the Immortality of the Soul, that it can apprehend, and imbrace such a Conception; and it may be some kinde of Prophecy of the continuance and lasting of these Letters, that having been scattered, more then Sibyls leaves, I cannot say into parts, but corners of the World, they have recollected and united themselves, meeting at once, as it were, at the same spring, from whence they flowed, but by Succession.

But the piety of Æneas to Anchises, with the heat and fervour of his zeale, had been dazelled and extinguished by the fire of Troy, and his Father become his Tombe, had not a brighter flame appeared in his Protection, and Venus herself descended with her embraces, to protect her Martiall Champion; so that there is no safer way to give a perpetuity to this remnant of the dead Authour, but by dedicating it to the Altar of Beauty and perfection; and if you, Madam, be but pleased to shed on it one beame of your Grace and Favour, that very Adumbration will quicken it with a new Spirit, and defend it from all fire ( the fate of most Letters) but the last; which, turning these into ashes, shall revive the Authour from his Urne, and put him into a capacity of celebrating you, his Guardian Angell, who has protected that part of his Soul, that he left behinde him, his Fame and Reputation.

The courtesies that you conferre upon the living may admit of some allay, by a possibility of a Retaliation; but what you bestow upon the Dead is a Sacrifice to pure Virtue; an ungifted Deity, ’tis true, without Oblation, Altar, or Temple, if she were not enshrined in your noble brest, but I must forever become her votary, if it be but for giving me this Inclination, and desire of being

Madam

Your most humble servant

Jo. Donne .

Madame,

I Could make some guesse whether souls that go to heaven, retain any memory of us that stay behinde, if I knew whether you ever thought of us, since you enjoyed your heaven, which is your self, at home. Your going away hath made London a dead carkasse. A Tearm and a Court do a little spice and embalme it, and keep it from putrefaction, but the soul went away in you: and I think the onely reason why the plague is somewhat slackned is because the place is dead already, and no body left worth the killing. Wheresoever you are, there is London enough: and it is a diminishing of you to say so, since you are more then the rest of the world. When you have a desire to work a miracle, you will return hither, and raise the place from the dead, and the dead that are in it; of which I am one, but that a hope that I have a room in your favour keeps me alive, which you shall abundantly confirme to me, if by one letter you tell me that you have received my six; for now my letters are grown to that bulk, that I may divide them like Amadis the Gaules book, and tell you that this is the first letter of the second part of the first book.

Your humblest, and affectionate

servant J. D.

Strand, S. Peters

day at nine.

Madame,

I Think the letters which I send to you single lose themselves by the way for want of a guide, or faint for want of company. Now, that on your part there be no excuse, after three single letters, I send three together, that every one of them may have two witnesses of their delivery. They come also to waite upon another letter from Sr E. Herbert , of whose recovery from a Fever, you may apprehend a perfecter contentment then we, because you had none of the former sorrow. I am an Heretique if it be sound Doctrine, that pleasure tasts best after sorrow. For my part, I can love health well enough, though I be never sick; and I never needed my Mistris frowns and disfavours, to make her favours acceptable to me. In States, it is a weakness to stand upon a defensive war, and safer not to be invaded, then to have overcome: so in our souls health, an innocence is better then the heartiest repentance. And in the pleasures of this life, it is better that the variety of the pleasures give us the taste and appetite to it, then a sowre and sad interruption quicken our stomack; for then we live by Physick. I wish therefore all your happinesses such as this intire, and without flaw, or spot of discontentment; and such is the love and service of

Your humblest and affectionatest

servant J. D.

Strand S. Peters day at 4.

Madame,

This letter which I send enclosed hath been yours many moneths, and hath languished upon my table for a passage so long, that as others send news in their letters, I send an antiquity in mine. I durst not tear it, after it was yours: there is some sacriledge in defacing any thing consecrated to you, and some impiety to despaire that any thing devoted to you should not be reserved to a good issue. I remember I should have sent it by a servant, of whose diligence I see I was too confident. I know not what it says: but I dare make this letter no longer, because being very sure that I always think the same thoughts of you, I am afraid I should fall upon the same words, and so send one letter twice together.

Your very affectionate

servant J. D.

Novemb. 8.

Madame,

I Have but small comfort in this letter; the messenger comes too easily to me, and I am too sure that the letter shall be delivered. All adventures towards you should be of more difficulty and hazard. But perchance I need not lament this; it may be so many of my letters are lost already that it is time that one should come, like Jobs servant, to bring word that the rest were lost. If you have had more before, this comes to aske how they were received; and if you have had none, it comes to try how they should have been received. It comes to you like a bashfull servant, who, though he have an extreme desire to put himself in your presence, yet hath not much to say when he is come: yet hath it as much to say as you can think; because what degrees soever of honour, respect, and devotion you can imagine or beleeve to be in any, this letter tells you that all those are in me towards you. So that for this letter you are my Secretary; for your worthiness, and your opinion that I have a just estimation of them [?it], write it: so that it is as long, and as good, as you think it; and nothing is left to me, but, as a witness, to subscribe the name of