Grosart and Chambers refer this, and 'the Spanish businesse' below, to 1613-14. The more probable reference is to the disappointment of Raleigh's hopes, in 1596 and the years immediately following, that the Government might be persuaded to make a settlement in Guiana, both on account of its wealth and as a strategic point to be used in harassing the King of Spain. Coolly received by Burleigh, Raleigh's scheme excited considerable enthusiasm, and Chapman wrote his _De Guiana: Carmen Epicum_, prefixed to Lawrence Keymis's _A Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana_ (1596), to celebrate Raleigh's achievement and to promote his scheme. The 'Spanish businesse', i.e. businesses, which, Donne complains, as the Earth between the Moone and Sun Eclipse the light which Guiana would give, are probably the efforts in the direction of peace made by the party in the Government opposed to Essex. Guiana is referred to in the _Satyres_ which certainly belong to these years, and in _Elegie XX: Loves War_, which cannot be dated so late as 1613-14. In 1598 Chamberlain writes to Carleton: 'Sir John Gilbert, with six or seven saile, one and other, is gone for Guiana, and I heare that Sir Walter Raleigh should be so deeply discontented because he thrives no better, that he is not far off from making that way himself'. Chamberlain's _Letters_, Camd. Soc. 1861. Compare also: 'The Queene seemede troubled to-daye; Hatton came out from her presence with ill countenance, and pulled me aside by the gyrdle and saide in a secrete waie; If you have any suite to-day praie you put it aside, The sunne doth not shine. Tis _this accursede Spanish businesse_; so will I not adventure her Highnesse choler, lest she should collar me also.' Sir John Harington's _Nugae Antiquae_, i. 176. (Note dated 1598.) All these letters are found in the Westmoreland MS. (_W_), whose order I have adopted, and the titles they bear--'To Mr H. W.', 'To Mr C. B.'--suggest that they belong to a period before either Wotton or Brooke was well known, at least before Wotton had been knighted. The tone throughout points to their belonging to the same time. They are full of allusions now difficult or impossible to explain. They are written to intimate friends. 'Thou' is the pronoun used throughout, whereas 'You' is the formula in the letters to noble ladies. Wotton, Christopher and Samuel Brooke, Rowland and Thomas Woodward are among the names which can be identified, and they are the names of Donne's most intimate friends in his earlier years. Probably there were answers to Donne's letters. He refers to poems which have called forth his poems. One of these has been preserved in the Westmoreland MS., though we cannot tell who wrote it. A Bodleian MS. contains another verse letter written to Donne in the same style as these letters, a little crabbed and enigmatical, and it is addressed to him as Secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. This whole correspondence, then,