Four literary fleas & a louse

Robert Hooke's drawing of a flea in his Micrographia - 1655.

MARK but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
Yet this enjoys before it woo,
And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
Though use make you apt to kill me,
Let not to that self-murder added be,
And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.
John Donne, 1633.

Here we are, two literary men (pauses to catch flea on waistcoat: throws it into the fire) with the unbounded influence of our pens. Can't we start a Lachrymose Revival?
...
Bunny, when you feel like writing, will you tell me all you know about that great house at which you were staying when you told me that story about the variorum edition of the Pentateuch (or Septuagint)? It was either Penshurst or the other one beguinning with P - Petworth? (Catches second flea on sleeve.) I am passionately addicted to places like Knole and I deeply regret never having cultivated enough dukes to be a constant guest in such.

T.H. White, Ireland, 1944, letter to David Garnett*

The Morgan Library has a very fine 11th-century Lancelot in perfect condition. I was going over it one day and turned to the rubric of the first known owner dated 1221, the rubric a squiggle of very thick ink. I put a glass on it and there imbedded deep in the ink was the finest crab louse, pfithira pulus, I ever saw. He was perfectly preserved even to his little claws. I knew I would find him sooner or later because people of that period were deeply troubled by lice and other little beasties - hence the plagues. I called the curator over and showed him my find and he let out a cry of sorrow. 'I've looked at that rubric a thousand times,' he said' Why couldn't I have found him?'

John Steinbeck, 1962: from A Life in Letters, 1975**.

*Page 207, T H White A Biography by Silvia Townsend Warner.
**Page 394, The Faber Book of Science Ed John Carey.