Tribe, and that house where I have lived. If those reasons which moved you to bid me write be not constant in you still, or if you meant not that I should write verses; or if these verses be too bad, or too good, over or under her understanding, and not fit; I pray receive them as a companion and supplement of this Letter to you,' &c. If this was written in 1615 it is incompatible with the fact (supposing the poem under consideration to be by Donne) that he had already written to the Countess of Huntingdon a letter in a very thinly disguised tone of amatory compliment. If, however, it was written, as is probable, earlier, the reference may be to this very poem. Perhaps Goodyere thought it 'over or under' the Countess's understanding and did not present it. (3) Certainly, looking at the poem itself, one has difficulty in declaring it to be, or not to be, Donne's work. Its metaphysical wit and strain of high-flown, rarefied compliment suggest that only he could have written it; in parts, on the other hand, the tone does not seem to me to be his. It is certainly very different from that of the other letters to noble ladies. It carries one back to the date of the _Elegies_. If Donne's, it is a further striking proof how much of the tone of a lover even a married poet could assume in addressing a noble patroness. Would Donne at any time of his life write to the Countess of Huntingdon in the vein of p. 418, ll. 21-36, or the next paragraph, ll. 37-76? One could imagine the Earl of Pembroke, or some one on a level of equality socially with the Countess, writing so; not a dependent addressing a patroness. The only points of style and verse which might serve as clues are (1) the peculiar use of 'young', e.g. l. 84 'youngest flatteries', l. 13 'younger formes'. With which compare in the _Letter_ to Wotton, here added, at p. 188: Ere sicknesses attack, yong death is best. (2) A recurring pattern of line to which Sir Walter Raleigh drew my attention: 35. Who first looked sad, griev'd, pin'd, and shew'd his pain. 61. Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason sway. 88. You are the straight line, thing prais'd, attribute. 113. Such may have eye and hand, may sigh, may speak. I have not found this pattern elsewhere, and indeed the versification throughout seems to me unlike that of Donne. Donne's decasyllabic couplets have two quite distinctive patterns. The one is that of the _Satyres_. In these the logical or rhetorical scheme runs right across the metrical scheme--that is, the sense overflows from line to line, and the pauses come regularly inside the line. A good example is the paragraph beginning at p. 156, l. 65. Graccus loves all as one, &c.