Donne seems to have been recommended to Lady Bedford by Sir Henry Goodyere, who was attached to her household. He mentions the death of her son in a letter to Goodyere as early as 1602, but his intimacy with the Countess probably began in 1608, and most of his verse letters were written between that date and 1614. Donne praises her beauty and it may be that in some of his lyrics he plays the part of the courtly lover, but what his poems chiefly emphasize is the religious side of her character. If my conjecture be right that she herself wrote 'Death be not proud', her religion was probably of a simpler, more pietistic cast than Donne's own was in its earlier phase. In 1612 the Countess had a serious illness which began on November 22-3 (II. p. 10). She recovered in time to take part in the ceremonies attending the wedding of the Princess Elizabeth (Feb. 14, 1612/3), but Chamberlain in his letters to Carleton notes a change in her behaviour. After mentioning an accident to the Earl of Bedford he continues: 'His lady who should have gone to the Spa but for lack of money, shows herself again in court, though in her sickness she in a manner vowed never to come there; but she verifies the proverb, _Nemo ex morbo melior_. Marry, she is somewhat reformed in her attire, and forbears painting, which, they say, makes her look somewhat strangely among so many vizards, which together with their frizzled, powdered hair, makes them look all alike, so that you can scant know one from another at the first view.' Birch, _The Court and Times of James the First_, i. 262. Donne makes no mention of this illness, but it seems to me probable that the first two of these letters, with the emphasis which they lay on beauty, were written before, the other more serious and pious verses after this crisis. See notes on _Twicknam Garden_ and the _Nocturnall on St. Lucies Day_.