was settled in
Cambridge; where we will leave him in his study, till I have paid my
promised account of his excellent mother; and I will endeavour to make
it short.

[Sidenote: Lady Magdalen Herbert]

I have told her birth, her marriage, and the number of her children,
and have given some short account of them. I shall next tell the
Reader, that her husband died when our George was about the age of
four years: I am next to tell, that she continued twelve years a
widow; that she then married happily to a noble gentleman, the brother
and heir of the Lord Danvers,[6] Earl of Danby, who did highly value
both her person and the most excellent endowments of her mind.

[Sidenote: Her character]

[Sidenote: Dr. Donne]

In this time of her widowhood, she being desirous to give Edward, her
eldest son, such advantages of learning, and other education, as might
suit his birth and fortune, and thereby make him the more fit for the
service of his country, did, at his being of a fit age, remove from
Montgomery Castle with him, and some of her younger sons, to Oxford;
and having entered Edward into Queen's College, and provided him a
fit tutor, she commended him to his care, yet she continued there
with him, and still kept him in a moderate awe of herself, and so
much under her own eye, as to see and converse with him daily: but she
managed this power over him without any such rigid sourness as might
make her company a torment to her child; but with such a sweetness and
compliance with the recreations and pleasures of youth, as did incline
him willingly to spend much of his time in the company of his dear and
careful mother; which was to her great content: for she would often
say, "That as our bodies take a nourishment suitable to the meat
on which we feed; so our souls do as insensibly take in vice by the
example or conversation with wicked company:" and would therefore
as often say, "That ignorance of vice was the best preservation of
virtue; and that the very knowledge of wickedness was as tinder to
inflame and kindle sin and keep it burning." For these reasons she
endeared him to her own company, and continued with him in Oxford four
years; in which time her great and harmless wit, her cheerful gravity,
and her obliging behaviour, gained her an acquaintance and friendship
with most of any eminent worth or learning, that were at that time
in or near that University; and particularly with Mr. John Donne, who
then came accident