a note of enthusiasm in these lines as of one who has just entered on a service of which he is proud, and the occasion of the poem was probably Egerton's endeavour to curtail the fees claim'd by the Clerk of the Star Chamber (see note below). With Essex's return from Ireland in 1599 began a period of trouble and anxiety for Egerton, and probably for Donne too. The more sombre cast of his thought, and the modification in his feelings towards Elizabeth, after the fatal February of 1600-1, are reflected in the satirical fragment _The Progresse of the Soule_. The so-called sixth and seventh _Satyres_ (added in 1635 and 1669) I have relegated to the _Appendix B_, and have given elsewhere my reasons for assigning them to Sir John Roe. That Donne wrote only five regular _Satyres_ is very definitely stated by Drummond of Hawthornden in a note prefixed to the copy of the fourth in _HN_: 'This Satyre (though it heere have the first place because no more was intended to this booke) was indeed the authors fourth in number and order he having written five in all to using which this caution will sufficientlie direct in the rest.' [Footnote 1: Attention was first called to this inscription by J. Payne Collier in his _Poetical Decameron_ (1820). He uses the date to vindicate the claim for Donne's priority as a satirist to Hall. 'Dunne' is of course one of the many ways in which the poet's name is spelt, and 'Jhon' is a spelling of 'John'. The poet's own signature is generally 'Jo. Donne.' 'Jhon Don' is Drummond's spelling on the title-page of _HN_. In _Q_ the first page is headed 'M^r John Dunnes Satires'.] [Footnote 2: Of the forty-five which the MS. contains, some thirty-three were published in the edition referred to above. On the other hand the edition contains some which are not in the MS. Of these, one, 47, 'Meditations of a gull,' alone refers to events which are certainly later than 1594. As this is not in the MS. there is nothing to contradict the assertion that it (and the Epigrams cited above) belong to 1594. Davies' Epigrams are referred to in Sir John Harrington's _Metamorphosis of Ajax_, 1596.] PAGE =145=. SATYRE I.