CANON.

The authenticity of all the poems ascribed to Donne in the old editions is a question which has never been systematically and fully considered by his editors and critics. A number of poems not included in these editions have been attributed to him by Simeon (1856), Grosart (1873), and others on very insufficient grounds, whether of external evidence or internal probability. Of the poems published in 1633, one, Basse's An Epitaph upon Shakespeare, was withdrawn at once; another, the metrical Psalme 137, has been discredited and Chambers drops it.[1] Of those which were added in 1635, one To Ben Ionson. 6 Ian. 1603, has been dropped by Grosart, the Grolier Club edition, and Chambers on the strength of a statement made to Drummond by Ben Jonson.[2] But the editors have accepted Jonson's statement without apparently giving any thought to the question whether, if this particular poem is by Roe, the same must not be true of its companion pieces, To Ben. Ionson. 9 Novembris, 1603. and To Sir Tho. Roe. 1603. They are inserted together in 1635, and are strikingly similar in heading, in style, and in verse. Nor has any critic, so far as I know, taken up the larger question raised by rejecting one of the poems ascribed to Donne in 1635, namely, are not all the poems then added made thereby to some extent suspect, and if so can we distinguish those which are from those which are not genuine? I propose then to discuss, in the light afforded by a wider and more connected survey of the seventeenth-century manuscript collections, the authenticity of the poems ascribed to Donne in the old editions, and to ask what, if any, poems may be added to those there published.

For this discussion an invaluable starting-point is afforded by the edition of 1633, the manuscript group D, H49, Lec, and the manuscript group A18, N, TCC, TCD. Taken together, and used to check one another, these three collections provide us with a corpus of indubitable poems which may be used as a test by which to try other claimants. Of course, it must be clearly understood that the only proof which can be offered that Donne is the author of many poems is, that they are ascribed to him in edition after edition and manuscript after manuscript, and that they bear a strong family resemblance. There is no edition issued by himself or in his lifetime.[3]

Bearing this in mind we find that in the edition of 1633 there are only two poems—Basse's Epitaph on Shakespeare and the Psalme 137, both already mentioned—for the genuineness of which there is not strong evidence, internal and external. But these two poems are the only ones not contained in D, H49, Lec or in A18, N, TC. In D, H49, Lec, on the other hand, there are no poems which are not, on the same evidence, genuine. There are, however, some which are not in 1633, seven in all. But of these, five are the Elegies which, we have seen above, the editor of 1633 was prohibited from printing. The others are the Lecture upon the Shadow (why omitted in 1633 I cannot say) and the lines 'My fortune and my choice'. There are poems in 1633 which are not in D, H49, Lec. These, with the exception of poems previously printed, as the Anniversaries and the Elegie on Prince Henry, are all in A18, N, TC. This last collection does contain some twelve poems not by Donne, but of these the majority are found only in N and TCD, and they make no pretence to be Donne's. Three are initialled 'J. R.' (in TCD), and two of these, with some poems by Overbury and Beaumont, are not part of the Donne collection but are added at the end. Another poem is initialled 'R. Cor.' The only poems which are included among Donne's poems as though by him are The Paradox ('Whoso terms Love a fire') and the Letter or Elegy, 'Madam soe may my verses pleasing be.' Of these, the first is in all four manuscripts, the second only in N and TCD. Neither is in D, H49, Lec, or 1633. The last is by Beaumont, and follows immediately a letter by Donne to the same lady, the Countess of Bedford. Doubtless the two poems have come from some collection in which they were transcribed together, ultimately from a commonplace-book of the Countess herself. The former may be by Donne, but has probably adhered for a like reason to his paradox, 'No lover saith' (p. 302), which immediately precedes it.

We have thus three collections, each of which has kept its canon pure or very nearly so, and in which any mistake by one is checked by the absence of the poem in the other two. It cannot be by accident that these collections are so free from the unauthentic poems which other manuscripts associate with Donne's. Those who prepared them must have known what they were about. Marriot must have had some help in securing a text on the whole so accurate as that of 1633, and in avoiding spurious poems on the whole so well. When that guidance was withdrawn he was only too willing to go a-gathering what would swell the compass of his volume. If then a poem does not occur in any of these collections it is not necessarily unauthentic, but as no such poem has anything like the wide support of the manuscripts that these have, it should present its credentials, and approve its authenticity on internal grounds if external are not available.

We start then with a strong presumption, coming as close to demonstration as the circumstances of the case will permit, in favour of the absolute genuineness of all the poems in 1633 (a glance down the list headed 'Source' in the 'Contents' will show what these are) except the two mentioned, and of all the poems added in 1635, or later editions, which are also in D, H49, Lec and A18, N, TC.[4] These last (to which I prefix the date of first publication) are—

(These are the five Elegies suppressed in 1633—at such long intervals did they find their way into print.)

We may add to these, without lengthy investigation, the four Holy Sonnets added in 1635:—

For these (though in none of the three collections) we have, besides internal probability, the evidence of W, clearly an unexceptionable manuscript witness. Walton, too, vouches for the authenticity of the Hymne to God my God, in my sicknesse, which indeed no one but Donne could have written.

This leaves for investigation, of poems inserted in 1635, 1649, 1650, or 1669, the following:—

Of these twenty-three poems there is none which does not seem to me fairly open to question, though of some I think Donne is certainly the author.

Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have gathered together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe force' and 'True love finds witt', the first of which[6] was printed in Le Prince d'Amour, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, 1856, and Grosart, 1872), as the work not of Donne but of Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led me to do so are not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they form a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The argument starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond of Hawthornden regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): 'That Sir John Roe loved him; and that when they two were ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a Mask, Roe writt a moral Epistle to him, which began. That next to playes the Court and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings, Kings Lords [as] Lords do us.' (Drummond's Conversations with Jonson), ed. Laing.

Now this statement of Jonson's is confirmed by some at any rate of the manuscripts which contain the poem (see textual notes) since these append the initials 'J. R.' But all the manuscripts which contain the one poem contain also the next, 'If great men wrong me,' and though none have added the initials 'J. R.', B, in which it has been separated from 'The state and mens affairs' by two other poems, appends 'doubtfull author' (the whole collection being professedly one of Donne's poems). The third poem, To Sr Tho. Roe, 1603 (p. 410), is in the same way found in all the manuscripts (except two, which are one, H40 and RP31) which contain the epistles to Jonson, generally in their immediate proximity, and in B initialled 'J. R.' In the others the poem is unsigned, and in L74 a much later hand has added 'J. D.'

Of the other poems, the first—the poem which was in 1669 printed as Donne's seventh Satyre, was dropped in 1719 but restored by Chalmers, Grosart, and Chambers—is said in B to be 'By Sir John Roe', and it is initialled 'J. R.' in TCD. Even an undiscriminating manuscript like O'F adds the note 'Quere, if Donnes or Sr Th: Rowes', the more famous Sir Thomas Roe being substituted for his (in 1632) forgotten relative. Of the remaining five poems only two, 'Dear Love, continue nice and chaste' (p. [412]) and 'Shall I goe force an Elegie?' (p. [410]) are actually initialled in any of the manuscripts in which I have found them.

But the presence or absence of a name or initials is not a conclusive argument. It depends on the character of the manuscript. That 'Sleep next Society' is initialled 'J. R.' in so carefully prepared a collection of Donne's poems as TCD is valuable evidence, and the initials in a collection so well vouched for as HN, Drummond's copy of a collection of poems in the possession of Donne, can only be set aside by a scepticism which makes all historical questions insoluble. But no reliance can be placed upon the unsupported statement of any other of the manuscripts in which some or all of these poems occur, any more than on that of the 1635 and later editions. The best of them (H40, RP31) are often silent, and the others are too often mistaken to be implicitly trusted. If we are to get the truth from them it must be by cross-examination.

For the second proof on which my ascription of the poems to Roe is based is the singular regularity with which they adhere to one another. If a manuscript has one it generally has the rest in close proximity. Thus B, after giving thirty-six poems by Donne, of which only one is wrongly ascribed, continues with a number that are clearly by other authors as well as Donne, and of ten sequent poems five are 'Sleep next Society,' 'The State and mens affairs,' 'True love finds witt,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Dear Thom: Tell her if she.' A fragment of 'Men say that love and reason disagree' comes rather later. H40 and RP31 give in immediate sequence 'The State and mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong me,' 'True Love finds witt,' 'Shall I goe force an elegie,' 'Come Fates; I fear you not.' L74, a collection not only of poems by Donne but of the work of other wits of the day, transcribes in immediate sequence 'Deare Love continue,' 'The State and mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Shall I goe force an elegie,' 'Tell her if shee,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Come Fates, I fear you not.' Lastly A10, a quite miscellaneous collection, gives in immediate or very close sequence '[Dear Thom:] Tell her if she,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Dear Love continue nice and chaste,' 'Shall I goe force an elegie,' 'Men write that love and reason disagree.' 'Come Fates; I fear you not' follows after a considerable interval.

It cannot be by an entire accident that these poems thus recur in manuscripts which have so far as we can see no common origin.[7] And as one is ascribed to Roe on indisputable (and) three on very strong evidence, it is a fair inference, if borne out by a general resemblance of thought, and style, and verse, that they are all by Roe.

To my mind they have a strong family resemblance, and very little resemblance to Donne's work. They are witty, but not with the subtle, brilliant, metaphysical wit of Donne; they are obscure at times, but not as Donne's poetry is, by too swift and subtle transitions, and ingeniously applied erudition; there are in them none of Donne's peculiar scholastic doctrines of angelic knowledge, of the microcosm, of soul and body, or of his chemical and medical allusions; they are coarse and licentious, but not as Donne's poems are, with a kind of witty depravity, Italian in origin, and reminding one of Ovid and Aretino, but like Jonson's poetry with the coarseness of the tavern and the camp. On both Jonson's and Roe's work rests the trail of what was probably the most licentious and depraving school in Europe, the professional armies serving in the Low Countries.

For a brief account of Roe's life will explain some features of his poetry, especially the vivid picture of life in London in the Satire, 'Sleep next Society,' which is strikingly different in tone, and in the aspects of that life which are presented, from anything in Donne's Satyres. Roe has been hitherto a mere name appearing in the notes to Jonson's and to Donne's poems. No critic has taken the trouble to identify him. Gifford suggested or stated that he was the son of Sir Thomas Roe, who as Mayor of London was knighted in 1569. Mr. Chambers accepts this and when referring to Jonson, Epigram 98, on Roe the ambassador, he adds, 'there are others in the same collection to his uncles Sir John Roe and William Roe.' Who this uncle was they do not tell us, but Hunter in the Chorus Vatum notes that, if Gifford's conjecture be sound, then he must be John Roe of Clapham in Bedfordshire, the eldest son of the Lord Mayor.

It is a quaint picture we thus get of the famous ambassador's uncle (he was older than 'Dear Thom's' father)—a kind of Sir Toby Belch, taking the pleasures of the town with his nephew, and writing a satire which might make a young man blush to read. But in fact John Roe of Clapham was never Sir John, and he was dead twelve years before 1603, when these poems were written.[8] Sir John Roe the poet was the cousin, not the uncle, of the ambassador. He was the eldest son of William Rowe (or Roe) of Higham Hill, near Walthamstow, in the county of Essex.[9] William Roe was the third son of the first Lord Mayor of the name Roe.[10] He had two sons, John and William, the latter of whom is probably the person addressed in Jonson's Epigrammes, cxxviii. John was born, according to a statement in Morant's History of Essex (1768), on the fifth of May, 1581. This harmonizes with the fact that when the elder William Roe died in 1596 John was still a minor and thereby a cause of anxiety to his father, who in his will, proved in 1596, begs his wife and executors to 'be suiters for his wardeshipp, that his utter spoyle (as much as in them is) maie be prevented'. This probably refers to the chance of a courtier being made ward and despoiling the lad. The following year he matriculated at Queen's College, Oxford.[11] How long he stayed there is not known, probably not long. The career he chose was that of a soldier, and his first service was in Ireland. If he went there with Essex in 1599 he is perhaps one of that general's many knights. But he may have gone thither later, for he evidently found a patron in Mountjoy. In 1605 that nobleman, then Earl of Devonshire, wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood, Ambassador to the United Provinces, first to recommend Roe to him as one wishing to follow the wars and therein to serve the States; and then to thank him for his readiness to befriend Sir John Roe. He adds that he will be ever ready to serve the States to requite any favour Roe shall receive.[12] By 1608 he was dead, for a list of captains discharged in Ireland since 1603 gives the following: 'Born in England and dead in 1608—Sir John Roe.'[13]

Such in brief outline is the life of the man who in 1603, possibly between his Irish and Low Country campaigns, appears in London as one, with his more famous cousin Thomas, of the band of wits and poets whose leader was Jonson, whose most brilliant star was Donne. Jonson's epigrams and conversations enable us to fill in some of the colours wanting in the above outline. The most interesting of these shows Roe to have been in Russia as well as Ireland and the Low Countries, and tells us that he was, like 'Natta the new knight' in his Satyre, a duellist: