Digital Donne: the Online Variorum
The 1654 Prose Letters Letter 64, cont. (p.193) |
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men of much leasure may soon exceed, when they write of business, they having but a little. You mention two more letters then I send. The time was not too short for me to have written them, (for I had an whole night) but it was too short to work a beleefe I me, that you could think it fit to go two so divers ways to one end. I see not, (for I see not the reason) how those letters could well have concurred with these, nor how those would well have been drawn from them, in a businesse wholly relating to this house. I was not lazie in disobeying you, but (I thought) only thrifty, and your request of those was not absolute, but conditioned, if I had leasure. So though that condition hinder them not, since ano- ther doth (and you forethought, that one might) I am not stubborn. The good Countesse spake somewhat of your desire of letters; but I am afraid, she is not a pro- per Mediatrix to those persons, but I coun- sail in the dark. And therefore return to that, of which I have clear light, that I am [CW: always] |
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