Epigram 84.
To Iohn Dunne.
The Storme describ'd hath set thy name afloate,
Thy Calme a gale of famous winde hath got:
Thy Satyres short, too soone we them o'relooke,
I prethee Persius write a bigger booke.
In 1616 Ben Jonson's Epigrammes were published in the first (folio) edition of his works, and they contain the Epigram, printed in this edition, To Lucy, Countesse of Bedford, with Mr. Donnes Satyres. In these and similar cases the 'bookes' referred to are not printed but manuscript works. Mr. Chambers has pointed out (Poems of John Donne, i, pp. xxxviii-ix) an interesting reference in Drayton's Epistle to Reynolds to poems circulating thus 'by transcription'; and Anthony Wood speaks of Hoskins having left a 'book of poems neatly written'. In Donne's own letters we find references to his poems, his paradoxes and problems, and even a long treatise like the ΒΙΑΘΑΝΑΤΟΣ, being sent to his friends with injunctions of secrecy, and in the case of the last with an express statement that it had not been, and was not to be, printed. Sometimes the manuscript collection seems to have been made by Donne himself, or on his instruction, for a special friend and patron like Lord Ancrum; but after he had become a distinguished Churchman who, as Jonson told Drummond, 'repenteth highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems,' it was his friends and admirers who collected and copied them. An instructive reference to the interest awakened in Donne's early poems by his fame as a preacher comes to us from Holland. Constantine Huyghens, the Dutch poet, and father of the more famous scientist, Christian, was a member of the Dutch embassy in 1618, 1621-23, and again in 1624. He moved in the best circles, and made the acquaintance of Donne ('great preacher and great conversationalist', he calls him) at the house probably of Sir Robert Killigrew. Writing to his friend and fellow-poet Hooft, in 1630, he says:[13]
'I think I have often entertained you with reminiscences of Dr. Donne, now Dean of St. Pauls in London, and on account of this remunerative post (such is the custom of the English) held in high esteem, in still higher for the wealth of his unequalled wit, and yet more incomparable eloquence in the pulpit. Educated early at Court in the service of the great; experienced in the ways of the world; sharpened by study; in poetry, he is more famous than anyone. Many rich fruits from the green branches of his wit[14] have lain mellowing among the lovers of art, which now, when nearly rotten with age, they are distributing. Into my hands have fallen, by the help of my special friends among the gentlemen of that nation, some five and twenty of the best sort of medlars. Among our people, I cannot select anyone to whom they ought to be communicated sooner than to you,[15] as this poets manner of conceit and expression are exactly yours, Sir.'
This is a very interesting piece of evidence as to the manner in which Donne's poems had been preserved by his friends, and the form in which they were being distributed. There is no reference to publication. It is doubtless due to this activity in collecting and transcribing the poems of the now famous preacher that we owe the number of manuscript collections dating from the years before and immediately after 1630.
Had Donne undertaken the publication of his own poems, such of these manuscript collections as have been preserved—none of which are autograph, and few or none of which have a now traceable history—would have little importance for a modern editor. The most that they could do would be to show us occasionally what changes a poem had undergone between its earliest and its latest appearance. But Donne's poems were not published in this way, and the manuscripts cannot be ignored. They must have for his editor at least the same interest and importance as the Quartos have for the editor of Shakespeare. Whatever opinion he may hold, on a priori or a posteriori grounds, regarding the superior authority of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays, no editor, not 'thirled to' a theory, will deny that a right reading has been preserved for us often by the Quartos and the Quartos only. No wise man will neglect the assistance even of the more imperfect of them. Before therefore discussing the relative value of the different editions, and the use that may be made of the manuscripts, it will be well to give a short description of the manuscripts which the present editor has consulted and used, of their relation to one another, their comparative value, and the relation of some of them to the editions. It is, of course, possible that there are manuscripts of Donne's poems which have not yet come to light; and among them may be some more correctly transcribed than any which has come into the present editor's hands. He has, however, examined between twenty and thirty, and with the feeling recently of moving in a circle—that new manuscripts were in part or whole duplicates of those which had been already examined, and confirmed readings already noted but did not suggest anything fresh.
I will divide the manuscripts into four classes, of which the first two, it will be seen at a glance, are likely to be the most important for the textual critic.
(1) Manuscript collections of portions of Donne's poems, e.g. the Satyres. The 'booke' to which Freeman refers in the epigram quoted above was probably a small collection of this kind, and we have seen that Jonson sent the Satyres to Lady Bedford, and Francis Davison lent them to his brother. Of such collections I have examined the following:
Q. This is a small quarto manuscript, bound up with a number of other manuscripts, in a volume (MS. 216) in the library of Queen's College, Oxford. It is headed Mr. John Dunnes Satires, and contains the five Satires (which alone I have accepted as Donne's own) followed by A Storme, A Calme, and one song, The Curse (see p. [41]), here headed Dirae. As Mr. Chambers says (Poems of John Donne, i, p. xxxvi), this is probably just the kind of 'booke' which Freeman read. The poems it contains are probably those of Donne's poems which were first known outside the circle of his intimate friends.
What seems to be a duplicate of Q is preserved among the Dyce MSS. in the South Kensington Museum. This contains the five Satyres, and the Storme and Calme. The MSS. are evidently transcribed from the same source, but one is not a copy of the other. They agree in such exceptional readings as e.g. Satyres, I. 58 'Infanta of London'; 94 'goes in the way' &c.; II. 86 'In wringing each acre'; 88 'Assurances as bigge as glossie civill lawes'. The last suggests that the one is a copy of the other, but again they diverge in such cases as III. 49 'Crants' Dyce MS.; 'Crates' Q; and IV. 215-16 'a Topclief would have ravisht him quite away' Q, where the Dyce MS. preserves the normal 'a Pursevant would have ravisht him quite away'.
If manuscripts like Q and the Dyce MS. carry us back, as they seem to do, to the form in which the Satyres circulated before any of the later collections of Donne's poems were made (between 1620 and 1630), they are clearly of great importance for the editor. The text of the Satyres in 1633 and the later editions, which closely resembles that of one of the later MS. collections, presents many variants from the older tradition. It is a difficult matter to decide how far these may be the corrections of the author himself, or of the collector and editor.
W. This, the Westmoreland MS., belonging to Mr. Edmund Gosse, is one of the most interesting and valuable manuscripts of Donne's poems which have come down to us. It is bound in its original vellum, and was written, Mr. Warner, late Egerton Librarian, British Museum, conjectured from the handwriting, 'a little later than 1625'. This date agrees with what one would gather from the contents, for the manuscript contains sonnets which must have been written after 1617, but does not contain any of the hymns written just at the close of Donne's life.
W is a much larger 'book' than Q. It begins with the five Satyres, as that does. Leaving one page blank, it then continues with a collection of the Elegies numbered, thirteen in all, of which twelve are Love Elegies, and one, the last, a Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow who to this house.'[16] These are followed by an Epithalamion (that generally called 'made at Lincolns Inn') and a number of verse letters to different friends, some of which are not contained in any of the old editions. So many of them are addressed to Rowland Woodward, or members of his family, that Mr. Gosse conjectures that the manuscript was prepared for him, but this cannot be proved.[17] The letters are followed by the Holy Sonnets, these by La Corona, and the book closes (as many collections of the poems do) with a bundle of prose Paradoxes, followed in this case by the Epigrams. Both the Holy Sonnets and the Epigrams contain poems not printed in any of the old editions.
It should be noted that though W as a whole may have been transcribed as late as 1625, it clearly goes back in portions to an earlier date. The letters are headed e.g. To Mr. H. W., To Mr. C. B., &c. Now the custom in manuscripts and editions is to bring these headings up to date, changing 'To Mr. H. W.' into 'To Sr Henry Wotton'. That they bear headings which were correct at the date when the poems were written points to their fairly direct descent from the original copies.
If Q probably represents the kind of manuscript which circulated pretty widely, W is a good representative of the kind which circulated only among Donne's friends. Some of the poems escaped being transcribed into larger collections and were not published till our own day. The value of W for the text of Donne's poems must stand high. For some of the letters and religious poems it is our sole authority. Though a unique manuscript now, it was probably not so always, for Addl. MS. 23229 in the British Museum contains a single folio which must have been torn from a manuscript identical with W. The handwriting is slightly different, but the order of the poems and their text prove the identity.
A23. This same manuscript (Addl. MS. 23229), which is a very miscellaneous collection of fragments, presented to the Museum by John Wilson Croker, contains two other portions of what seem to have been similar small 'books' of Donne's poems. The one is a fragment of what seems to have been a carefully written copy of the Epithalamion, with introductory Eclogue, written for the marriage of the Earl of Somerset. Probably it was one of those prepared and circulated at the time. The other consists of some leaves from a collection of the Satyres finely written on large quarto sheets.
G. This is a manuscript containing only the Metempsychosis, or Progresse of the Soule, now in the possession of Mr. Gosse, who (Life &c. of John Donne, i. 141) states that it 'belonged to a certain Bradon, and passed into the Phillipps Collection'. It is not without errors, but its text is, on the whole, more correct than that of the manuscript source from which the version of 1633 was set up in the first instance.
(2) In the second class I place manuscripts which are, or aim at being, complete collections of Donne's poems. Most of these belong to the years between 1620 and 1633. They vary considerably in accuracy of text, and in the care which has been taken to include only poems that are authentic. They were made probably by professional copyists, and some of those whose calligraphy is most attractive show that the scribe must have paid the smallest attention to the meaning of what he was writing.
Of those which I have examined, two groups of manuscripts seem to me especially noteworthy, because both show that their collectors had a clear idea of what were, and what were not, Donne's poems, and because of the general accuracy with which the poems in one of them are transcribed. Taken with the edition of 1633 they form an invaluable starting-point for the determination of the canon of Donne's poems.
The first of these is represented by three manuscripts which I have examined, D (Dowden), H49 (Harleian MS. 4955), and Lec (Leconfield).
D is a small quarto manuscript, neatly written in a thin, clear hand and in ordinary script. It was formerly in the Haslewood collection, and is now in the possession of Professor Edward Dowden, Trinity College, Dublin, by whose kindness I have had it by me almost all the time that I have been at work on my edition.
H49 is a collection of Donne's poems, in the British Museum, bound up with some by Ben Jonson and others. It is a large folio written throughout apparently in the same hand. It opens with some poems and masques by Jonson. A certain Doctor Andrewes' poems occupy folios 57-87. They are signed Franc: Andrilla. London August 14. 1629. Donne's poems follow, filling folios 88 to 144b. Thereafter follow more poems by Andrewes, Jonson, and others, with some prose letters by Jonson.
Lec. This is a large quarto manuscript, beautifully transcribed, belonging to Lord Leconfield and preserved at Petworth House. Many of the manuscripts in this collection were the property of Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564-1632), the friend who communicated the news of Donne's marriage to his father-in-law.
These three manuscripts are obviously derived from one common source. They contain the same poems, except that D has one more than H49, and both of these have some which are not in Lec. The order of the poems is the same, except that D and Lec show more signs of an attempt to group the poems than H49. The text, with some divergences, especially on the part of Lec, is identical. One instance seems to point to one of them being the source of the others. In the long Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington, Brother to the Countess of Bedford, the original copyist, after beginning l. 159 'Vertue whose flood', had inadvertently finished with the second half of l. 161, 'were [sic] blowne in, by thy first breath.' This error is found in all the three manuscripts. It may, however, have come from the common source of this poem, and there are divergences in order and text which make me think that they are thus derived from one common source.
A special interest attaches to this collection, apart from the relative excellence of its text and soundness of its canon, from the probability that a manuscript of this kind was used for a large, and that textually the best, part of the edition of 1633. This becomes manifest on a close examination of the order of the poems and of their text. Mr. Gosse has said, in speaking of the edition of 1633: 'The poems are thrown together without any attempt at intelligent order; neither date, nor subject, nor relation is in the least regarded.' This is not entirely the case. Satires, Elegies, Epigrams, Songs are grouped to some extent. The disorder which prevails is due to two causes: (1) to the fact that the printer set up from a variety of sources. There was no previous collected edition to guide him. Different friends supplied collections, and of a few poems there were earlier editions. He seems to have passed from one of these to another as was most convenient at the moment. Perhaps some were lent him only for a time. The differences between copies of 1633 show that it was prepared carefully, but emended from time to time while the printing was actually going on. (2) The second source of the order of the poems is their order in the manuscripts from which they were copied. Now a comparison of the order in 1633 with that in D, H49, Lec reveals a close connexion between them, and throws light on the composition of 1633.
It is necessary, before instituting this comparison with 1633, to say a word on the order of the poems in D, H49, Lec themselves, as it is not quite the same in all three. H49 is the most irregular, perhaps therefore the earliest, each of the others showing efforts to obtain a better grouping of the poems. All three begin with the Satyres, of which D and Lec have five, H49 only four; but the text of Lec differs from that of the other two, agreeing more closely with the version of 1633 and of another group of manuscripts. They have all, then, thirteen Elegies in the same order. After these H49 continues with a number of letters (The Storme, The Calme, To Sr Henry Wotton, To Sr Henry Goodyere, To the Countesse of Bedford, To Sr Edward Herbert, and others) intermingled with Funeral Elegies (Lady Markham, Mris Boulstred) and religious poems (The Crosse, The Annuntiation, Good Friday). Then follows a long series of lyrical pieces, broken after The Funerall by A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mrs. Essex Rich, the Epithalamion on the Palatine marriage, and an Old Letter ('At once from hence', p. [206]). The lyrical pieces are then resumed, and the collection ends with the Somerset Eclogue and Epithalamion, the Letanye, both sets of Holy Sonnets, a letter (To the Countesse of Salisbury), and the long Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington.
D makes an effort to arrange the poems following the Elegies in groups. The Funeral Elegies come first, and two blank pages are headed An Elegye on Prince Henry. The letters are then brought together, and are followed by the religious poems dispersed in H49. The lyrical poems follow piece by piece as in H49, and the whole closes with the two epithalamia and the Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington.
The order in Lec resembles that of H49 more closely than that of D. The mixed letters, funeral elegies, and religious poems follow the Elegies as in H49, but Lec adds to them the two letters (Lady Carey and The Countess of Salisbury) and the Letanie which in H49 are dispersed through the lyrical pieces. Lec does not contain any of the Holy Sonnets, but after The Letanie ten pages are left blank, evidently intended to receive them. Thereafter, the lyrical poems follow piece by piece as in D, H49, except that The Prohibition ('Take heed of loving mee') is omitted—a fact of some interest when we come to consider 1633. Lec closes, like D, with the epithalamia and the Obsequies to the Lo: Harrington.
Turning now to 1633, we shall see that, whatever other sources the editor of that edition used, one was a collection identical with, or closely resembling, D, H49, Lec, especially Lec. That edition begins with the Progresse of the Soule, which was not derived from this manuscript. Thereafter follow the two sets of Holy Sonnets, the second set containing exactly the same number of sonnets, and in the same order, as in D, H49, whereas other manuscripts, e.g. B, O'F, S, S96, which will be described later, have more sonnets and in a different order; and W, which agrees otherwise with B, O'F, S, S96, adds three that are found nowhere else. The sonnets are followed in 1633 by the Epigrams, which are not in D, H49, Lec, but after that the resemblance of 1633 to D, H49, Lec becomes quite striking. These manuscripts, we have seen, begin with the Satyres. The edition, however, passes on at once to the Elegies. Of the thirteen given in D, H49, Lec, 1633 prints eight, omitting the first (The Bracelet), the second (Going to Bed), the tenth (Loves Warr), the eleventh (On his Mistris), and the thirteenth (Loves Progresse). That the editor, however, had before him, and intended to print, the Satyres and the thirteen Elegies as he found them in his copy0 of D, H49, Lec, is proved by the following extract which Mr. Chambers quotes from the Stationers' Register:
13o September, 1632
John Marriot. Entered for his copy under the hands of Sir
Henry Herbert and both the Wardens, a book
of verse and poems (the five Satires, the first,
second, tenth, eleventh and thirteenth Elegies
being excepted) and these before excepted to
be his, when he brings lawful authority.
vid.
written by Doctor John Dunn
This note is intelligible only when compared with this particular group of manuscripts. In others the order is quite different.
This bar—which was probably dictated by reasons of propriety, though it is difficult to see why the first and the eleventh Elegies should have been singled out—was got over later as far as the Satyres were concerned. They are printed after all the other poems, just before the prose letters. But by this time the copy of D, H49, Lec had perhaps passed out of Marriot's hands, for the text of the Satyres seems to show that they were printed, not from this manuscript, but from one represented by another group, which I shall describe later. This is, however, not quite certain, for in Lec the version of the Satyres given is not the same as in D, H49, but is that of this second group of manuscripts. Several little details show that of the three manuscripts D, H49, and Lec the last most closely resembles 1633.
Following the Elegies in 1633 come a group of letters, epicedes, and religious poems, just as in H49, Lec (D re-groups them)—The Storme, The Calme, To Sir Henry Wotton, ('Sir, more than kisses'), The Crosse, Elegie on the Lady Marckham, Elegie on Mris Boulstred ('Death I recant'), To Sr Henry Goodyere, To Mr. Rowland Woodward, To Sr Henry Wootton ('Here's no more newes'), To the Countesse of Bedford ('Reason is our Soules left hand'), To the Countesse of Bedford ('Madam, you have refin'd'), To Sr Edward Herbert, at Julyers. Here 1633 diverges. Having got into letters to noble and other people the editor was anxious to continue them, and accordingly from another source (which I shall discuss later) he prints a long series of letters to the Countess of Bedford, the Countess of Huntingdon, Mr. T. W., and other more intimate friends (they are 'thou', the Countesses 'you'), and Mrs. Herbert. He perhaps returns to D, H49, Lec in those to The Lady Carey and Mrs. Essex Riche, from Amyens, and To the Countesse of Salisbury; and, as in that manuscript, the Palatine and Essex epithalamia (to which, however, 1633 adds that written at Lincoln's Inn) are followed immediately by the long Obsequies to Lord Harrington. Three odd Elegies follow, two of which (The Autumnall and The Picture, 'Image of her') occur in D, H49, Lec in the same detached fashion. Other manuscripts include them among the numbered Elegies. The Elegie on Prince Henry, Psalme 137 (probably not by Donne), Resurrection, imperfect, An hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamilton, An Epitaph upon Shakespeare (certainly not by Donne), Sapho to Philaenis, follow in 1633—a queerly consorted lot. The Elegie on Prince Henry is taken from the Lachrymae Lachrymarum of Joshua Sylvester (1612); the rest were possibly taken from some small commonplace-book. This would account for the doubtful poems, the only doubtful poems in 1633. These past, the close connexion with our manuscript is resumed. The Annuntiation is followed, as in H49, Lec, by The Litanie. Thereafter the lyrical pieces begin, as in these manuscripts, with the song, 'Send home my long strayd eyes to me.' This is followed by two pieces which are not in D, H49, Lec,—the impressive, difficult, and in manuscripts comparatively rare Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, and the much commoner Witchcraft by a picture. Thereafter the poems follow piece by piece the order in D, H49, Lec[18] until The Curse is reached.[19] Then, in what seems to have been the editor's or printer's regular method of proceeding in this edition, he laid aside the manuscript from which he was printing the Songs and Sonets to take up another piece of work that had come to hand, viz. An Anatomie of the World with A Funerall Elegie and Of the Progresse of the Soule, which he prints from the edition of 1625. Without apparent rhyme or reason these long poems are packed in between The Curse and The Extasie. With the latter poem 1633 resumes the songs and (with the exception of The Undertaking) follows the order in Lec to The Dampe, with which the series in the manuscripts closes. It has been noted that in Lec, The Prohibition (which in D, H49 follows Breake of day and precedes The Anniversarie) is omitted. This must have been the case in the manuscript used for 1633, for it is omitted at this place and though printed later was probably not derived from this source.
With The Dampe the manuscript which I am supposing the editor to have followed in the main probably came to an end. The poems which follow in 1633 are of a miscellaneous character and strangely conjoined. The Dissolution (p. [64]), A Ieat Ring sent (p. [65]), Negative Love (p. [66]), The Prohibition (p. [67]), The Expiration (p. [68]), The Computation (p. [69]), complete the tale of lyrics. A few odd elegies follow ('Language thou art,' 'You that are she,' 'To make the doubt clear') with The Paradox. A Hymne to Christ, at the Authors last going into Germany is given a page to itself, and is followed by The Lamentations of Jeremy, The Satyres, and A Hymne to God the Father. Thereafter come the prose letters and the Elegies upon the Author.
What this comparison of the order of the poems points to is borne out by an examination of the text. The critical notes afford the materials for a further verification, and I need not tabulate the resemblances at length. In Elegie IV, for example, ll. 7, 8, which occur in all the other manuscripts and editions, are omitted by 1633 and by D, H49, Lec. Again, when a song has no title in 1633 it has frequently none in the manuscript. When there are evidently two versions of a poem, as e.g. in The Good-morrow and The Flea, the version given in 1633 is generally that of D, H49, Lec. Later editions often contaminate this with another version of the poem. At the same time there are ever and again divergences between the edition and the manuscript which are not to be ignored, and cannot always be explained. Some are due to error in one or the other, but some point either to divergence between the text of the editor's manuscript and ours, or to the use by the editor of other sources as well as this. In the fifth elegy (The Picture), for example, 1633 twice seems to follow, not D, H49, Lec, but another source, another group of manuscripts which has been preserved; and in The Aniversarie ll. 23, 24, the version of 1633 is not that of D, H49, Lec but of the same second group, which will be described later. On the whole, however, it is clear that a manuscript closely resembling that now represented by these three manuscripts supplied the editor of 1633 with the bulk of the shorter poems, especially the older and more privately circulated poems, the Songs and Sonets and Elegies. When he is not following this manuscript he draws from miscellaneous and occasionally inferior sources.
It would be interesting if we could tell whence this manuscript was obtained, and whether it was a priori likely to be a good one. On this point we can only conjecture, but it seems to me a fairly tenable conjecture (though not to be built on in any way) that the nucleus of the collection, at any rate, may have been a commonplace-book which had belonged to Sir Henry Goodyere. The ground for this conjecture is the inclusion in the edition of some prose letters addressed to this friend, one in Latin and seven in English. There is indeed also one addressed to the Countess of Bedford; but in the preceding letter to Goodyere Donne says, 'I send you, with this, a letter which I sent to the Countesse. It is not my use nor duty to do so. But for your having it, there were but two consents, and I am sure you have mine, and you are sure you have hers.' He goes on to refer to some verses which are the subject of the letter to the Countesse. There can be no doubt that the letter printed is the letter sent to Goodyere. The Burley MS. (see Pearsall-Smith's Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, Oxford, 1907) gives us a good example of how a gentleman in the seventeenth century dealt with his correspondence. That contains, besides various letters, as of Sidney to Queen Elizabeth on the Anjou marriage, and other matter which recurs in commonplace-books, a number of poems and letters, sent to Wotton by his friends, including Donne, and transcribed by one or other of Wotton's secretaries. The letters have no signatures appended, which is the case with the letters in the 1633 edition of Donne's poems. Wotton and Goodyere did not need to be reminded of the authors, and perhaps did not wish others to know. The reason then for the rather odd inclusion of nine prose letters in a collection of poems is probably, that the principal manuscript used by the printer was an 'old book'[20] which had belonged to Sir Henry Goodyere and in which his secretaries had transcribed poems and letters by Donne. Goodyere's collection of Donne's poems would not necessarily be exhaustive, but it would be full; it would not like the collections of others include poems that were none of Donne's; and its text would be accurate, allowing for the carelessness, indifference, and misunderstandings of secretaries and copyists.
After D, H49, Lec, the most carefully made collection of Donne's poems is one represented now by four distinct manuscripts:
A18. Additional MS. 18646, in the British Museum.
N. The Norton MS. in Harvard College Library, Boston, of which an account is given by Professor Norton in a note appended to the Grolier Club edition.
TCC. A manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.
TCD. A large manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, containing two apparently quite independent collections of poems—the first a collection of Donne's poems with one or two additional poems by Sir John Roe, Francis Beaumont, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Corbet; the second a quite miscellaneous collection, put together some time in the thirties of the seventeenth century, and including some of Donne's poems. It is only the first of these which belongs to the group in question.
These four manuscripts are closely connected with one another, but a still more intimate relation exists between A18 and TCC on the one hand, N and TCD on the other. N and TCD are the larger collections; A18 and TCC contain each a smaller selection from the same body of poems. Indeed it would seem that N is a copy of TCD, A18 of TCC.
TCD, to start with it, is a beautifully written collection of Donne's poems beginning with the Satyres, passing on to an irregularly arranged series of elegies, letters, lyrics and epicedes, and closing with the Metempsychosis or Progresse of the Soule and the Divine Poems, which include the hymns written in the last years of the poet's life. N has the same poems, arranged in the same order, and its readings are nearly always identical with those of TCD, so far as I can judge from the collation made for me. The handwriting, unlike that of TCD, is in what is known as secretary hand and is somewhat difficult to read. What points to the one manuscript being a copy of the other is that in 'Sweetest Love, I do not go' the scribe has accidentally dropped stanza 4, by giving its last line to stanza 3, and passing at once to the fifth stanza. Both manuscripts make this mistake, whereas A18 and TCC contain the complete poem. In other places N and TCD agree in their readings where A18 and TCC diverge. If the one is a copy of the other, TCD is probably the more authoritative, as it contains some marginal indications of authorship which N omits.
TCC is a smaller manuscript than TCD, but seems to be written in the same clear, fine hand. It does not contain the Satyres, the Elegy (XI. in this edition) The Bracelet, and the epistles The Storme and The Calme, with which N and TCD open. It looks, however, as though the sheets containing these poems had been torn out. Besides these, however, TCC omits, without any indication of their being lost, an Elegie to the Lady Bedford ('You that are she'), the Palatine Epithalamion, a long series of letters[21] which in N, TCD follow that To M.M.H. and precede Sapho to Philaenis, the elegies on Prince Henry and on Lord Harington, and The Lamentations of Jeremy. There are occasional differences in the grouping of the poems; and TCC does not contain some poems by Beaumont, Corbet, Sir John Roe, and Sir Thomas Overbury which are found in N and TCD. In TCD these, with the exception of that by Beaumont, are carefully initialled, and therefore not ascribed to Donne. In N these initials are in some cases omitted; and some of the poems have found their way into editions of Donne's poems.
Presumably TCC is the earlier collection, and when TCD was made, the copyist was able to add fresh poems. It is clear, however, that in the case of even those poems which the two have in common, the one manuscript is not simply a copy of the others. There are several divergences, and the mistake referred to above, in 'Sweetest Love, I do not go', is not made in TCC. Strangely enough, a similar mistake is made by TCC in transcribing Loves Deitie and is reproduced in A18.
A18, indeed, would seem to be a copy of TCC. It is not in the same handwriting, but in secretary hand. It omits the opening Satyres, &c., as does TCC, but there is no sign of excision. Presumably, then, the copy was made after these poems were, if they ever were, torn out of TCC. Wherever TCC diverges from TCD, A18 follows TCC.[22]
Whoever was responsible for this collection of Donne's poems, it was evidently made with care, at least as regards the canon. Very few poems that are not certainly by Donne are included, and they are correctly initialled. The only uninitialled doubtful poems are A Paradox, 'Whoso terms Love a fire,' which in all the four manuscripts follows 'No Lover saith, I love', and Beaumont's letter to the Countess of Bedford, which begins, 'Soe may my verses pleasing be.' In N, TCD this follows Donne's letter to the same lady, 'You that are she and you.' It is regrettable that the text of the poems is not so good as the canon is pure. The punctuation is careless. There are numerous stupid blunders, and there are evidences of editing in the interest of more regular metre or a more obvious meaning. At times, however, it would seem that the copyist is following a different version of a poem or poems (e.g. the Satyres) from that given in D, H49, and other manuscripts, and is embodying corrections perhaps made by the author himself. It is quite credible that Donne, in sending copies of his poems at different times to different people, may have revised and amended them. It is quite clear, as my notes will show, that of certain poems more than one version (each correct in itself) was in circulation.
Was A18, N, TC, or a manuscript resembling it one of the sources of the edition of 1633? In part, I think, it was. The most probable case at first sight is that of the Satyres. These, we have seen, Marriot was at first prohibited from printing. Otherwise they would have followed the Epigrams, and immediately preceded the Elegies. As it is, they come after all the other poems; they are edited with some cautious dashes; and their text is almost identical with that of N, TCD. In the first satire the only difference between 1633 and N, TCD occurs in l. 70, where N, TCD, with all the other manuscripts read—
Sells for a little state his libertie;
1633,
Sells for a little state high libertie;
'high' is either a slip or an editorial emendation. There are other cases of similar editing, not all of which it is possible to correct with confidence; but a study of the textual notes will show that in general 1633 follows the version preserved in N, TCD, and also in L74 (of which later), when the rest of the manuscripts present an interestingly different text. But strangely enough this version of the Satyres is also in Lec. This is the feature in which that manuscript diverges most strikingly from D and H49. Moreover in some details in which 1633 differs from A18, N, TC it agrees with Lec. It is possible therefore that the Satyres were printed from the same manuscript as the majority of the poems.
Again in the Letters not found in D, H49, Lec there is a close but not invariable agreement between the text of 1633 and that of this group of manuscripts. Those letters, which follow that To Sir Edward Herbert, are printed in 1633 in the same order as in this edition (pp. 195-226), except that the group of short letters beginning at p. 203 ('All haile sweete Poet') is here amplified and rearranged from W. Now in A18, N, TC these letters are also brought together (N, TCD adding some which are not in A18, TCC), and the special group referred to, of letters to intimate friends, are arranged in exactly the same order as in 1633; have the same headings, the same omissions, and the same accidental linking of two poems. In the other letters, to the Countesses of Bedford, Huntingdon, Salisbury, &c., the textual notes will show some striking resemblances between the edition and the manuscripts. In the difficult letter, 'T'have written then' (p. [195]), 1633 follows N, TCD where O'F gives a different and in some details more correct text. In 'This twilight of two yeares' (p. [198]) the strange reading of l. 35, 'a prayer prayes,' is obviously due to N, TCD, where 'a praiser prayes' has accidentally but explicably been written 'a prayer praise'. In the letter To the Countesse of Huntingdon (p. [201]) the 1633 version of ll. 25, 26 is a correct rendering of what N, TCD give wrongly:
Shee guilded us, But you are Gold; and shee
Vs inform'd, but transubstantiates you.
On the other hand there are some differences, as e.g. in the placing of ll. 40-2 in 'Honour is so sublime' (p. [218]), which make it impossible to affirm that these poems were taken direct from this group of manuscripts as we know them, without alteration or emendation. The Progresse of the Soule or Metempsychosis, as printed in 1633, must have been taken in the first instance from this manuscript. In both the manuscripts and the edition, at l. 83 of the poem a blank space is left after 'did'; in both, l. 137 reads, 'To see the Prince, and soe fill'd the waye'; in both, 'kinde' is substituted for 'kindle' at l. 150; in l. 180 the 'uncloth'd child' of 1633 is explicable as an emendation of the 'encloth'd' of A18, N, TC; and similarly the 'leagues o'rpast', l. 296 of 1633, is probably due to the omission of 'many' before 'leagues' in A18, N, TC—'o'rpast' supplies the lost foot. It is clear, however, from a comparison of different copies that as 1633 passed through the press this poem underwent considerable correction and alteration; and in its final printed form there are errors which I have been enabled to correct from G.
The paraphrase of Lamentations, and the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inn (which is not in D, H49, Lec) are other poems which show, in passages where there are divergent readings, a tendency to follow the readings of A18, N, TC, though in neither of these poems is the identity complete. It is further noteworthy that to several poems unnamed in D, H49, Lec the editor of 1633 has given the title which these bear in A18, N, TCC, and TCD, as though he had access to both the collections at the same time.
These two groups of manuscripts, which have come down to us, thus seem to represent the two principal sources of the edition of 1633. What other poems that edition contains were derived either from previously printed editions (The Anniversaries and the Elegy on Prince Henry) or were got from more miscellaneous and less trustworthy sources.
A third manuscript collection of Donne's poems is of interest because it seems very probable that it or a similar collection came into the hands of the printer before the second edition of 1635 was issued. A considerable number of the errors, or inferior readings, of the later editions seem to be traceable to its influence. At least it is remarkable how often when 1635 and the subsequent editions depart from 1633 and the general tradition of the manuscripts they have the support of this manuscript and this manuscript alone. This is the manuscript which I have called
O'F, because it was at one time in the possession of the Rev. T. R. O'Flaherty, of Capel, near Dorking, a great student of Donne, and a collector. He contributed several notes on Donne to Notes and Queries. I do not know of any more extensive work by him on the subject.
This manuscript has been already described by Mr. R. Warwick Bond in the Catalogue of Ellis and Elvey, 1903. It is a large but somewhat indiscriminate collection, made apparently with a view to publication. The title-page states that it contains 'The Poems of D. J. Donne (not yet imprinted) consisting of
The reader will notice how far this arrangement agrees with, how far it differs from, that adopted in 1635.
Of the twenty-eight new poems, genuine, doubtful, and spurious, added in 1635, this manuscript contains twenty, a larger number than I have found in any other single manuscript. An examination of the text of these does not, however, make it certain that all of them were derived from this source or from this source only. The text, for example, of the Elegie XI. The Bracelet, in 1635, is evidently taken from a manuscript differing in important respects from O'F and resembling closely Cy and P. Elegie XII, also, His parting from her, can hardly have been derived from O'F, as 1635 gives an incomplete, O'F has an entire, version of the poem. In others, however, e.g. Elegie XIII. Julia; Elegie XVI. On his Mistris; Satyre, 'Men write that love and reason disagree,' it will be seen that the text of 1635 agrees more closely with O'F than with any of the other manuscripts cited. The second of these, On his Mistris, is a notable case, and so are the four Divine Sonnets added in 1635. Most striking of all is the case of the Song, probably not by Donne, 'Soules joy now I am gone,' where the absurd readings 'Words' for 'Wounds' and 'hopes joyning' for 'lipp-joyning' (or perhaps 'lipps-joyning') must have come from this source. One can hardly believe that two independent manuscripts would perpetrate two such blunders. Taken with the many changes from the text of 1633 in which 1635 has the support of O'F, one can hardly doubt that among the fresh manuscript collections which came into the hands of the printer of 1635 (often only to mislead him) O'F was one.
Besides the twenty poems which passed into 1635, O'F attributes some eighteen other poems to Donne, of which few are probably genuine.[23] Of the other manuscript collections I must speak more shortly. There is no evidence that any of them was used by the seventeenth-century editors.
B is a handsome, vellum-bound manuscript belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere's library at Bridgewater House. I am, I think, the first editor who has examined it. The volume bears on the fly-leaf the autograph signature ('J. Bridgewater') of the first Earl of Bridgewater, the son of Donne's early patron, Elizabeth's Lord Keeper and later Lord Chancellor. On the title-page 'Dr Donne' is written in the same hand. John Egerton, it will be remembered, was, like Donne, a volunteer in Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. In 1599 he and his elder brother Thomas were in Ireland, where the latter was killed, leaving John to be his father's heir. The book-number, inscribed on the second leaf, is in the handwriting of the second Earl of Bridgewater, the Elder Brother of Milton's Comus. The manuscript has thus interesting associations, and links with Donne's earliest patron. I had hoped that it might prove, being made for those who had known Donne all his life, an exceptionally good manuscript, but can hardly say that my expectations were fulfilled. It was probably put together in the twenties, because though it contains the Holy Sonnets it does not contain the hymns written at the close of the poet's life. It resembles O'F, S, S96, and P, rather than either of the first two collections which I have described, D, H49, Lec and A18, N, TC, in that it includes with Donne's poems a number of poems not by Donne,[24] but most of them apparently by his contemporaries, Sir John Roe, Francis Beaumont, Jonson, and other of the wits of the first decade of the seventeenth century, the men who collaborated in writing witty poems on Coryat, or Characters in the style of Sir Thomas Overbury. In the case of some of these initials are added, and a later, but not modern, hand has gone over the manuscript and denied or queried Donne's authorship of others. Textually also B tends to range itself, especially in certain groups of poems, as the Satyres and Holy Sonnets, with O'F, S96, W when these differ from D, H49, Lec and A18, N, TC. In such cases the tradition which it represents is most correctly preserved in W. In a few poems the text of B is identical with that of S96. On the whole B cannot be accepted in any degree as an independent authority for the text. It is important only for its agreements with other manuscripts, as helping to establish what I may call the manuscript tradition, in various passages, as against the text of the editions.
Still less valuable as an independent textual authority is
P. This manuscript is a striking example of the kind of collections of poems, circulating in manuscript, which gentlemen in the seventeenth century caused to be prepared, and one cannot help wondering how they managed to understand the poems, so full is the text of gross and palpable errors. P is a small octavo manuscript, once in the Phillipps collection, now in the possession of Captain C. Shirley Harris, Oxford. On the cover of brown leather is stamped the royal arms of James I. On p. 1 is written, '1623 me possidet Hen. Champernowne de Dartington in Devonia, generosus.' Two other members of this old, and still extant, Devonshire family have owned the volume, as also Sir Edward Seymour (Knight Baronett) and Bridgett Brookbrige. The poems are written in a small, clear hand, and in Elizabethan character. Captain Harris has had a careful transcript of the poems made, and he allowed me after collating the original with the transcript to keep the latter by me for a long time.
The collection is in the nature of a commonplace-book, and includes a prose letter to Raleigh, and a good many poems by other poets than Donne, but the bulk of the volume is occupied with his poems,[25] and most of the poems are signed 'J. D. Finis.' The date of the collection is between 1619, when the poem When he went with the Lo Doncaster was written, and 1623, the date on the title-page. Neither for text nor for canon is P an authority, but the very carelessness with which it is written makes its testimony to certain readings indisputable. It makes no suggestion of conscious editing. In certain poems its text is identical with that of Cy, even to absurd errors. It sometimes, however, supports readings which are otherwise confined to O'F and the later editions of the poem, showing that these may be older than 1632-5.
Cy. The Carnaby MS. consists of one hundred folio pages bound in flexible vellum, and is now in the Harvard College Library, Boston. It is by no means an exhaustive collection; the poems are chaotically arranged; the text seems to be careless, and the spelling unusually erratic; but most of the poems it contains are genuine.[26] This manuscript is not as a whole identical with P, but some of the poems it contains must have come from that or from a common source.
JC. The John Cave MS. is a small collection of Donne's poems now in the possession of Mr. Elkin Matthews, who has kindly allowed me to collate it. It was formerly in Mr. O'Flaherty's possession. The original possessor had been a certain John Cave, and the volume opens with the following poem, written, it will be seen, while Donne was still alive:
Oh how it joys me that this quick brain'd Age
can nere reach thee (Donn) though it should engage
at once all its whole stock of witt to finde
out of thy well plac'd words thy more pure minde.
Noe, wee are bastard Aeglets all; our eyes
could not endure the splendor that would rise
from hence like rays from out a cloud. That Man
who first found out the Perspective which can
make starrs at midday plainly seen, did more
then could the whole Chaos of Arte〈s〉 before
or since; If I might have my wish 't shuld bee
That Man might be reviv'd againe to see
If hee could such another frame, whereby
the minde might bee made see as farr as th' eye.
Then might we hope to finde thy sense, till then
The Age of Ignorance I'le still condemn.
IO. CA.
Jun. 3. 1620.
The manuscript is divided into three parts, the first containing the five Satyres, the Litany and the Storme and Calme. The second consists of Elegies and Epigrammes and the third of Miscellanea, Poems, Elegies, Sonnets by the same Author. The elegies in the second part are, as in D, H49, Lec, and W, thirteen in number. Their arrangement is that of W, and, like W, JC gives The Comparison, which, D, H49, Lec do not, but drops Loves Progress, which the latter group contains. The text of these poems is generally that of W, but here and throughout JC abounds in errors and emendations. It contains one or two poems which were published in the edition of 1650, and which I have found in no other manuscript except O'F. In these JC supplies some obvious emendations. The poems in the third part are very irregularly arranged. This is the only manuscript, professing to be of Donne's poems, which contains the elegy, 'The heavens rejoice in motion,' which the younger Donne added to the edition of 1650. It is not a very correct, but is an interesting manuscript, with very few spurious poems. At the other end of the manuscript from Donne's, are poems by Corbet.
What seems to be practically a duplicate of JC is preserved in the Dyce Collection at the South Kensington Museum. It belonged originally to a certain 'Johannes Nedlam e Collegio Lincolniense' and is dated 1625. Cave's poem 'Upon Doctor Donne's Satyres' is inscribed and the contents and arrangement of the volume are identical with those of JC except that one poem, The Dampe, is omitted, probably by an oversight, in the Dyce MS. After my experience of JC I did not think it necessary to collate this manuscript. It was from it that Waldron printed some of the unpublished poems of Donne and Corbet in A Collection of Miscellaneous Poetry (1802).
H40 and RP31, i.e. Harleian MS. 4064 in the British Museum, and Rawlinson Poetical MS. 31, in the Bodleian Library, are two manuscripts containing a fairly large number of Donne's poems intermingled with poems by other and contemporary authors. A note on the fly-leaf of RP31 declares that the manuscript contains 'Sir John Harringtons poems written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth', which is certainly not an accurate description.[27] Some of the poems must have been written as late as 1610, and they are by various authors, Wotton, Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir John Roe, Donne, Beaumont, and probably others, but names of authors are only occasionally given. Each manuscript starts with the words 'Prolegomena Quaedam', and the poem, 'Paynter while there thou sit'st.' The poems follow the same order in the two manuscripts, but of poems not by Donne RP31 contains several which are not in H40, and, on the other hand, of poems by Donne H40 inserts at various places quite a number, especially of songs, which are not in RP31. The latter is, in short, a miscellaneous collection of Elizabethan and early Jacobean poems, including several of Donne's; the former, the same collection in which Donne's poems have become by insertion the principal feature. I have cited the readings of H40 throughout; those of RP31 only when they differ from H40, or when I wish to emphasize their agreement. Wherever derived from, the poems are generally carefully and intelligently transcribed. They contain some unpublished poems of Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, and probably Daniel.
L74. The Lansdowne MS. 740, in the British Museum, is an interesting collection of Donne's mainly earlier and secular poems, along with several by contemporaries.[28] The text of the Satyres connects this collection with A18, N, TC, but it is probably older, as it contains none of the Divine Poems and no poem written later than 1610. Its interest, apart from the support which it lends to the readings of other manuscripts, centres in the evidence it affords as to the authorship of some of the unauthentic poems which have been ascribed to Donne.
S. The Stephens MS., now in the Harvard College Library, Boston, is the manuscript on which Dr. Grosart based his edition (though he does not reproduce it either consistently or with invariable accuracy) in 1873—an unhappy choice even were it legitimate to adopt any single manuscript in preference to the edition of 1633. Of all the manuscripts I have examined (I know it only through the collation made for me and from Dr. Grosart's citations) it is, I think, without exception the worst, the fullest of obvious and absurd blunders. There are too in it more evidences of stupid editing than in P, whose blunders are due to careless copying by eye or to dictation, and therefore more easy to correct.
The manuscript is dated, at the end, '19th July 1620,' and contains no poems which are demonstrably later than this date, or indeed than 1610. As, however, it contains several of the Divine Poems, including La Corona, but not the Holy Sonnets, it affords a valuable clue to the date of these poems,—of which more elsewhere. The collection is an ambitious one, and an attempt has been made at classification. Six Satires are followed by twenty-seven Elegies (one is torn out) under which head love and funeral elegies are included, and these by a long series of songs with the Divine Poems interspersed. Some of the songs, as of the elegies, are not by Donne.[29]
S96. Stowe MS. 961 is a small folio volume in the British Museum, containing a collection of Donne's poems very neatly and prettily transcribed. It cannot have been made before 1630 as it contains all the three hymns written during the poet's last illnesses. Indeed it is the only manuscript which I have found containing a copy of the Hymne to God, my God in my Sicknes. It is a very miscellaneous collection. Three satires are followed by the long obsequies to the Lord Harington, and these by a sequence of Letters, Funeral Elegies, Elegies, and Songs intermingled. It is regrettable that so well-written a manuscript is not more reliable, but its text is poor, its titles sometimes erroneous, and its ascriptions inaccurate.[30]
(3) In the third class I place manuscripts which are not primarily collections of Donne's poems but collections of seventeenth-century poems among which Donne's are included. It is not easy to draw a hard and fast line between this class and the last because, as has been seen, most of the manuscripts at the end of the last list contain poems which are not, or probably are not, by Donne. Still, in these collections Donne's work predominates, and the tendency of the collector is to bring the other poems under his aegis. Initials like J. R., F. B., J. H. disappear, or J. D. takes their place. In the case of these last collections this is not so. Poems by Donne are included with poems which the collector assigns to other wits. Obviously this class could be made to include many different kinds of collections, ranging from those in which Donne is a prominent figure to those which include only one or two of his poems. But such manuscripts have comparatively little value and no authority for the textual critic, though they are not without importance for the student of the canon of Donne's poetry. I shall mention only one or two, though I have examined a good many more.
A25. Additional MS. 25707, in the British Museum, is a large and interesting collection, written in several different hands, of early seventeenth-century poems, Jacobean and Caroline. It contains an Elegie by Henry Skipwith on the death of King Charles I, but most of the poems are early Jacobean, and either the bulk of the collection was made before this and some other poems were inserted, or it is derived from older collections. Indeed, most of the poems by Donne were probably got from some older collection or collections not unlike some of those already described. They consist of twelve elegies arranged in the same order as in JC, W, and to some extent O'F, which is not the order of D, H49, Lec and 1633; a number of Songs with some Letters and Obsequies following one another sometimes in batches, at times interspersed with poems by other writers; the five Satyres, separated from the other poems and showing some evidences in the text of deriving from a collection like Q or its duplicate in the Dyce collection.[31] The only one of the Divine Poems which A25 contains is The Crosse. No poem which can be proved to have been written later than 1610 is included.
The poems by Donne in this manuscript are generally, but not always, initialled J. D., and are thus distinguished from others by F. B., H. K., N. H., H. W., Sr H. G., T. P., T. G., G. Lucy., No. B., &c. The care with which this has been done lends interest to those poems which are here ascribed to Donne but are not elsewhere assigned to him. A25 (with its partial duplicate C) is the only manuscript which attributes to 'J. D.' the Psalm, 'By Euphrates flowery side,' that was printed in 1633 and all the subsequent editions.[32]
C. A strange duplicate of certain parts of A25 is a small manuscript in the Cambridge University Library belonging to the Baumgartner collection. It is a thin folio, much damaged by damp, and scribbled over. A long poem, In cladem Rheensen ('Verses upon the slaughter at the Isle of Rhees'), has been used by the cataloguer to date the manuscript, but as this has evidently been inserted when the whole was bound, the rest of the contents may be older or younger. The collection opens with three of the Elegies contained in A25. It then omits eleven poems which are in A25, and continues with twenty Songs and Obsequies, following the order of A25 but omitting the intervening poems. Some nine more poems are given, following the order of A25, but many are omitted in C which are found in A25, and the poems in C are often only fragments of the whole poems in A25. Evidently C is a selection of poems either made directly from A25, or from the collection of Donne's poems (with one or two by Beaumont and others) which A25 itself drew from.
A10. Additional MS. 10309, in the British Museum, is a little octavo volume which was once the property of Margaret Bellasis, probably the eldest daughter of Thomas, first Lord Fauconberg. It is a very miscellaneous collection of prose (Hall's Characterismes of Vice) and verse. Of Donne's undoubted poems there are very few, but there is an interesting group of poems by Roe or others (the authors are not named in the manuscript) which are frequently found with Donne's, and some of which have been printed as his.[33]
M. This is a manuscript bought by Lord Houghton and now in the library of the Marquis of Crewe. It is entitled
A Collection of
Original Poetry
written about the time of
Ben: Jonson
qui ob. 1637
A later hand, probably Sir John Simeon's, has added 'Chiefly in the Autograph of Dr. Donne Dean of St. Pauls', but this is quite erroneous. It is a miscellaneous collection of poems by Donne, Jonson, Pembroke, Shirley, and others, with short extracts from Fletcher and Shakespeare. Donne's are the most numerous, and their text generally good, but such a collection can have no authority. It is important only as supporting readings and ascriptions of other manuscripts. I cite it seldom.
TCD (Second Collection).[34] The large manuscript volume in Trinity College, Dublin, contains two collections of poems (though editors have spoken of them as one) of very different character and value. The first I have already described. It occupies folios 1 to 292. On folio 293 a new hand begins with the song, 'Victorious Beauty though your eyes,' and from that folio to folio 565 (but some folios are torn out) follows a long and miscellaneous series of early seventeenth-century poems. There are numerous references to Buckingham, but none to the Long Parliament or the events which followed, so that the collection was probably put together before 1640. The poems are ascribed to different authors in a very haphazard and untrustworthy fashion. James I is credited with Jonson's epigram on the Union of the Crowns; Donne's The Baite is given to Wotton; and Wotton's 'O Faithless World' to Robert Wisedom. Probably there is more reliance to be put on the ascriptions of later and Caroline poems, but for the student of Donne and early Jacobean poetry the collection has no value. Some of Donne's poems occur, and it is noteworthy that the version given is often a different one from that occurring in the first part of the volume. Probably two distinct collections have been bound up together.
Another collection frequently cited by Grosart, but of little value for the editor of Donne, is the Farmer-Chetham MS., a commonplace-book in the Chetham Library, Manchester, which has been published by Grosart. It contains one or two of Donne's poems, but its most interesting contents are the 'Gulling Sonnets' of Sir John Davies, and some poems by Raleigh, Hoskins, and others. Nothing could be more unsafe than to ascribe poems to Donne, as Grosart did, because they occur here in conjunction with some that are certainly his.
A similar collection, which I have not seen, is the Hazlewood-Kingsborough MS., as Dr. Grosart called it. To judge from the analysis in Thorpe's Catalogue, 1831, this too is a miscellaneous anthology of poems written by, or at any rate ascribed to, Shakespeare, Jonson, Bacon, Raleigh, Donne, and others. There is no end to the number of such collections, and it is absurd to base a text upon them.
The Burley MS., to which I refer once or twice, and which is a manuscript of great importance for the editor of Donne's letters, is not a collection of poems. It is a commonplace-book of Sir Henry Wotton's in the handwriting of his secretaries. Amid its varied contents are some letters, unsigned but indubitably by Donne; ten of his Paradoxes with a covering letter; and a few poems of Donne's with other poems. Of the last, one is certainly by Donne (H. W. in Hibernia belligeranti), and I have incorporated it. The others seem to me exceedingly doubtful. They are probably the work of other wits among Wotton's friends. I have printed a selection from them in Appendix C.[35]
Of the manuscripts of the first two classes, which alone could put forward any claim to be treated as independent sources of the text of an edition of Donne's poems, it would be impossible, I think, to construct a complete genealogy. Different poems, or different groups of poems in the same manuscript, come from different sources, and to trace each stream to its fountain-head would be a difficult task, perhaps impossible without further material, and would in the end hardly repay the trouble, for the difficulties in Donne's text are not of so insoluble a character as to demand such heroic methods. The interval between the composition of the poems and their first publication ranges from about forty years at the most to a year or two. There is no case here of groping one's way back through centuries of transmission. The surprising fact is rather that so many of the common errors of a text preserved and transmitted in manuscript should have appeared so soon, that the text and canon of Donne's poems should present an editor in one form or another with all the chief problems which confront the editor of a classical or a mediaeval author.
The manuscripts fall into three main groups (1) D, H49, Lec. These with a portion of 1633 come from a common source. (2) A18, N, TCC, TCD. These also come from a single stream and some parts of 1633 follow them. L74 is closely connected with them, at least in parts. (3) A25, B, Cy, JC, O'F, P, S, S96, W. These cannot be traced in their entirety to a single head, but in certain groups of poems they tend to follow a common tradition which may or may not be that of one or other of the first two groups. Of the Elegies, for example, A25, JC, O'F and W transcribe twelve in the same order and with much the same text. Again, B, O'F, S96, and W have taken the Holy Sonnets from a common source, but O'F has corrected or altered its readings by a reference to a manuscript resembling D, H49, Lec, while W has a more correct version than the others of the common tradition, and three sonnets which none of these include. Generally, whenever B, O'F, S96, and W derive from the same source, W is much the most reliable witness.
Indeed, our first two groups and W have the appearance of being derived from some authoritative source, from manuscripts in the possession of members of Donne's circle. All the others suggest, by the headings they give to occasional poems, their misunderstanding of the true character of some poems, their erroneous ascriptions of poems, that they are the work of amateurs to whom Donne was not known, or who belonged to a generation that knew Donne as a divine, only vaguely as a wit.
These being the materials at our command, the question is, how are we to use them to secure as accurate a text as possible of Donne's poems, to get back as close as may be to what the poet wrote himself. The answer is fairly obvious, though it could not be so until some effort had been made to survey the manuscript material as a whole.
Of the three most recent editors—the first to attempt to obtain a true text—of Donne's poems, each has pursued a different plan. The late Dr. Grosart[36] proceeded on a principle which makes it exceedingly difficult to determine accurately what is the source of, or authority for, any particular reading he adopted. He printed now from one manuscript, now from another, but corrected the errors of the manuscript by one or other of the editions, most often by that of 1669. He made no estimate of the relative value of either manuscripts or editions, nor used them in any systematic fashion.
The Grolier Club edition[37] was constructed on a different principle. For all those poems which 1633 contains, that edition was accepted as the basis; for other poems, the first edition, whichever that might be. The text of 1633 is reproduced very closely, even when the editor leans to the acceptance of a later reading as correct. Only one or two corrections are actually incorporated in the text. But the punctuation has been freely altered throughout, and no record of these changes is preserved in the textual notes even when they affect the sense. In more than one instance the words of 1633 are retained in this edition but are made to convey a different meaning from that which they bear in the original.
The edition of Donne's poems prepared by Mr. E. K. Chambers[38] for the Muses Library was not based, like Dr. Grosart's, on a casual use of individual manuscripts and editions, nor like the Grolier Club edition on a rigid adherence to the first edition, but on an eclectic use of all the seventeenth-century editions, supplemented by an occasional reference to one or other of the manuscript collections, either at first hand or through Dr. Grosart.
Of these three methods, that of the Grolier Club editor is, there can be no doubt, the soundest. The edition of 1633 comes to us, indeed, with no a priori authority. It was not published, or (like the sermons) prepared for the press[39] by the author; nor (as in the case of the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays) was it issued by the author's executors.
But if we apply to 1633 the a posteriori tests described by Dr. Moore in his work on the textual criticism of Dante's Divina Commedia, if we select a number of test passages, passages where the editions vary, but where one reading can be clearly shown to be intrinsically the more probable, by certain definite tests,[40] we shall find that 1633 is, taken all over, far and away superior to any other single edition, and, I may add at once, to any single manuscript.
Moreover, any careful examination of the later editions, of their variations from 1633, and of the text of the poems which they print for the first time, shows clearly that some method more trustworthy than individual preference must be found if we are to distinguish between those of their variations which have, and those which have not, some authority behind them; those which are derived from a fresh reference to manuscript sources, and those which are due to carelessness, to misunderstanding, or to unwarrantable emendation. Apart from some such sifting, an edition of Donne based, like Mr. Chambers', on an eclectic use of the editions is exactly in the same position as would be an edition of Shakespeare based on an eclectic use of the Folios, helped out by a quite occasional and quite eclectic reference to a quarto. A plain reprint of 1633 like Alford's (of such poems as he publishes) has fewer serious errors than an eclectic text.
It is here that the manuscripts come to our aid. To take, indeed, any single manuscript, as Dr. Grosart did, and select this or that reading from it as seems to you good, is not a justifiable procedure. This is simply to add to the editions one more possible source of error. There is no single manuscript which could with any security be substituted for 1633. Our analysis of that edition has made it appear probable that a manuscript resembling D, H49, Lec was the source of a large part of its text. But it would be very rash to prefer D, H49, Lec as a whole to 1633.[41] It corrects some errors in that edition; it has others of its own. Even W, which has a completer version of some poems than 1633, in these poems makes some mistakes which 1633 avoids.
If the manuscripts are to help us it must be by collating them, and establishing what one might call the agreement of the manuscripts whether universal or partial, noting in the latter case the comparative value of the different groups. When we do this we get at once an interesting result. We find that in about nine cases out of ten the agreement of the manuscripts is on the side of those readings of 1633 which are supported by the tests of intrinsic probability referred to above,[42] and on the other hand we find that sometimes the agreement of the manuscripts is on the side of the later editions, and that in such cases there is a good deal to be said for the later reading.[43]
The first result of a collation of the manuscripts is thus to vindicate 1633, and to provide us with a means of distinguishing among later variants those which have, from those which have not, authority. But in vindicating 1633 the agreement of the manuscripts vindicates itself. If B's evidence is found always or most often to support A, a good witness, on those points on which A's evidence is in itself most probably correct, not only is A's evidence strengthened but B's own character as a witness is established, and he may be called in when A, followed by C, an inferior witness, has gone astray. In some cases the manuscripts alone give us what is obviously the correct reading, e.g. p. [25], l. 22, 'But wee no more' for 'But now no more'; p. [72], l. 26, 'his first minute' for 'his short minute'. These are exceptionally clear cases. There are some where, I have no doubt, my preference of the reading of the manuscripts to that of the editions will not be approved by every reader. I have adopted no rigid rule, but considered each case on its merits. All the circumstances already referred to have to be weighed—which reading is most likely to have arisen from the other, what is Donne's usage elsewhere, what Scholastic or other 'metaphysical' dogma underlies the conceit, and what is the source of the text of a particular poem in 1633.
For my analysis of this edition has thrown light upon what of itself is evident—that of some poems or groups of poems 1633 provides a more accurate text than of others, viz. of those for which its source was a manuscript resembling D, H49, Lec, but possibly more correct than any one of these, or revised by an editor who knew the poems. But in printing some of the poems, e.g. The Progresse of the Soule, a number of the letters to noble ladies and others,[44] the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inne, The Prohibition, and a few others, for which D, H49, Lec was not available, 1633 seems to have followed an inferior manuscript, A18, N, TC or one resembling it. In these cases it is possible to correct 1633 by comparing it with a better single manuscript, as G or W, or group of manuscripts, as D, H49, Lec. Sometimes even a generally inferior manuscript like O'F seems to offer a better text of an individual poem, at least in parts, for occasionally the correct reading has been preserved in only one or two manuscripts. Only W among eleven manuscripts which I have recorded (and I have examined others) preserves the reading in the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inne, p. [143], l. 57:
His steeds nill be restrain'd
—which is quite certainly right. Only three manuscripts have the, to my mind, most probably correct reading in Satyre I, l. 58, p. [147]:
The Infanta of London;
and only two, Q and the Dyce MS. which is its duplicate, the tempting and, I think, correct reading in Satyre IV, l. 38, p. [160]:
He speaks no language.
Lastly, there are poems for which 1633 is not available. The authenticity of these will be discussed later. Their text is generally very corrupt, especially of those added in 1650 and 1669. Here the manuscripts help us enormously. With their aid I have been able to give an infinitely more readable text of the fine Elegie XII, 'Since she must go'; the brilliant though not very edifying Elegies XVII, XVIII, and XIX; as well as of most of the poems in the Appendixes. The work of correcting some of these had been begun by Dr. Grosart and Mr. Chambers, but much was still left to do by a wider collation. Dr. Grosart was content with one or two generally inferior manuscripts, and Mr. Chambers mentions manuscripts which time or other reasons did not allow him to examine, or he could not have been content to leave the text of these poems as it stands in his edition.
One warning which must be borne in mind when making a comparison of alternative readings has been given by Mr. Chambers, and my examination of the manuscripts bears it out: 'In all probability most of Donne's poems existed in several more or less revised forms, and it was sometimes a matter of chance which form was used for printing a particular edition.' The examination of a large number of manuscripts has shown that it is not probable, but certain, that of some poems (e.g. The Flea, A Lecture upon the Shadow, The Good-Morrow, Elegie XI. The Bracelet) more than one distinct version was in circulation. Of the Satyres, too, many of the variants represent, I can well believe, different versions of the poems circulated by the poet among his friends. And the same may possibly be true of variants in other poems. Our analysis of 1633 has shown us what versions were followed by that edition. What happened in later editions was frequently that the readings of two different versions were combined eclectically. In the present edition, when it is clear that there were two versions, my effort has been to retain one tradition pure, recording the variants in the notes, even when in individual cases the reading of the text adopted seemed to me inferior to its rival, provided it was not demonstrably wrong.
In view of what has been said, the aim of the present edition may be thus briefly stated:
(1) To restore the text of 1633 in all cases where modern editors have abandoned or disguised it, if there is no evidence, internal or external, to prove its error or inferiority; and to show, in the textual notes, how far it has the general support of the manuscripts.
(2) To correct 1633 when the meaning and the evidence of the manuscripts point to its error and suggest an indubitable or highly probable emendation.
(3) To correct throughout, and more drastically, by help of the manuscripts when such exist, the often carelessly and erroneously printed text of those poems which were added in 1635, 1649, 1650, and 1669.
(4) By means of the commentary to vindicate or defend my choice of reading, and to elucidate Donne's thought by reference to his other works and (but this I have been able to do only very partially) to his scholastic and other sources.
As regards punctuation, it was my intention from the outset to preserve the original, altering it only (a) when, judged by its own standards, it was to my mind wrong—stops were displaced or dropped, or the editor had misunderstood the poet; (b) when even though defensible the punctuation was misleading, tested frequently by the fact that it had misled editors. In doing this I frequently made unnecessary changes because it was only by degrees that I came to understand all the subtleties of older punctuation and to appreciate some of its nuances. A good deal of my work in the final revision has consisted in restoring the original punctuation. In doing this I have been much assisted by the study of Mr. Percy Simpson's work on Shakespearian Punctuation. My punctuation will not probably in the end quite satisfy either the Elizabethan purist, or the critic who would have preferred a modernized text. I will state the principles which have guided me.
I do not agree with Mr. Chambers that the punctuation, at any rate of 1633, is 'exceptionally chaotic'. It is sometimes wrong, and in certain poems, as the Satyres, it is careless. But as a rule it is excellent on its own principles. Donne, indeed, was exceptionally fastidious about punctuation and such typographical details as capital letters, italics, brackets, &c. The LXXX Sermons of 1640 are a model of fine rhetorical and rhythmical pointing, pointing which inserted stops to show you where to stop. The sermons were not printed in his lifetime, but we know that he wrote them out for the press, hoping that they might be a source of income to his son.
But Donne did not prepare his poems for the press. Their punctuation is that of the manuscript from which they were taken, revised by the editor or printer. One can often recognize in D the source of a stop in 1633, or can see what the pointing and use of capitals would have been had Donne himself supervised the printing. The printer's man was sometimes careless; the printer or editor had prejudices of his own in certain things; and Donne is a difficult and subtle poet. All these circumstances led to occasional error.
The printer's prejudice was one which Donne shared, but not, I think, to quite the same extent. Compared, for example, with the Anniversaries (printed in Donne's lifetime) 1633 shows a fondness for the semicolon,[45] not only within the sentence, but separating sentences, instead of a full stop, when these are closely related in thought to one another. In an argumentative and rhetorical poet like Donne the result is excellent, once one grows accustomed to it, as is the use of commas, where we should use semicolons, within the sentence, dividing co-ordinate clauses from one another. On the other hand this use of semicolons leads to occasional ambiguity when one which separates two sentences comes into close contact with another within the sentence. For example, in Satyre III, ll. 69-72, how should an editor, modernizing the punctuation, deal with the semicolons in ll. 70 and 71? Should he print thus?—
But unmoved thou
Of force must one, and forc'd but one allow;
And the right. Ask thy father which is shee;
Let him ask his.
With trifling differences that is how Chambers and the Grolier Club editor print them. But the lines might run, to my mind preferably—
But unmoved thou
Of force must one, and forc'd but one allow.
And the right; ask thy father which is shee,
Let him ask his.
'And the right' being taken as equivalent to 'And as to the right'. One might even print—
And the right? Ask, &c.
One of the semicolons is equivalent to a little more than a comma, the other to a little less than a full stop.
Another effect of this finely-shaded punctuation is that the question is constantly forced upon an editor, is it correct? Has the printer understood the subtler connexion of Donne's thought, or has he placed the semicolon where the full stop should be, the comma where the semicolon? My solution of these difficulties has been to face and try to overcome them. I have corrected the punctuation where it seemed to me, on its own principles, definitely wrong; and I have, but more sparingly, amended the pointing where it seemed to me to disguise the subtler connexions of Donne's thought or to disturb the rhetoric and rhythm of his verse paragraphs. In doing so I have occasionally taken a hint from the manuscripts, especially D and W, which, by the kindness of Mr. Gosse and Professor Dowden, I have had by me while revising the text. But if I occasionally quote these manuscripts in support of my punctuation, it is only with a view to showing that I have not departed from the principles of Elizabethan pointing. I do not quote them as authoritative. On questions of punctuation none of the extant manuscripts could be appealed to as authorities. Their punctuation is often erratic and chaotic, when it is not omitted altogether. Finally, I have recorded every change that I have made. A reader should be able to gather from the text and notes combined exactly what was the text of the first edition of each poem, whether it appeared in 1633 or a subsequent edition, in every particular, whether of word, spelling, or punctuation. My treatment of the last will not, as I have said, satisfy every reader. I can only say that I have given to the punctuation of each poem as much time and thought as to any part of the work. In the case of Donne this is justifiable. I am not sure that it would be in the case of a simpler, a less intellectual poet. It would be an easier task either to retain the old punctuation and leave a reader to correct for himself, or to modernize. With all its refinements, Elizabethan punctuation erred by excess. A reader who gives thought and sympathy to a poem does not need all these commands to pause, and they frequently irritate and mislead.
[1] Englands Parnassus; or The Choysest Flowers of our Moderne Poets: with their Poetical Comparisons. Descriptions of Bewties, Personages, Castles, Pallaces, Mountaines, Groves, Seas, Springs, Rivers etc. Whereunto are annexed Other Various Discourses both Pleasaunt and Profitable. Imprinted at London, For N. L. C. B. And T. H. 1600.
[2] A Poetical Rhapsody Containing, Diuerse Sonnets, Odes, Elegies, Madrigalls, and other Poesies, both in Rime and Measured Verse. Never yet published. &c. 1602. The work was republished in 1608, 1611, and 1621. It was reprinted by Sir Samuel Egerton Brydges in 1814, by Sir Harris Nicolas in 1826, and by A. H. Bullen in 1890.
Englands Helicon, printed in 1600, is a collection of songs almost without exception in pastoral guise. The Eclogue introducing the Somerset Epithalamion is Donne's only experiment in this favourite convention. Donne's friend Christopher Brooke contributed an Epithalamion to this collection, but not until 1614. It is remarkable that Donne's poem The Baite did not find its way into Englands Helicon which contains Marlowe's song and two variants on the theme. In 1600 Eleazar Edgar obtained a licence to publish Amours by J. D. with Certen Oyr. (i.e. other) sonnetes by W. S. Were Donne and Shakespeare to have appeared together? The volume does not seem to have been issued.
[3] e.g. Among Drummond of Hawthornden's miscellaneous papers; in Harleian MS. 3991; in a manuscript in Emmanuel College, Cambridge.
[4] So on the first page, and the opening sentences of the letter defend the use of the word 'Understanders'. Nevertheless the second and third pages have the heading, running across from one to the other, 'The Printer to the Reader.'
[5] 'Will: Marshall sculpsit' implies that Marshall executed the plate from which the whole frontispiece is taken, including portrait and poem, not that he is responsible for the portrait itself. To judge from its shape the latter would seem to have been made originally from a medallion. Marshall, the Dictionary of National Biography says, 'floruit c. 1630,' so could have hardly executed a portrait of Donne in 1591. Mr. Laurence Binyon, of the Print Department of the British Museum, thinks that the original may have been by Nicholas Hilyard (see II. p. [134]) whom Donne commends in The Storme. The Spanish motto suggests that Donne had already travelled.
The portrait does not form part of the preliminary matter, which consists of twelve pages exclusive of the portrait. It was an insertion and is not found in all the extant copies. The paper on which it is printed is a trifle smaller than the rest of the book.
[6] One or two copies seem to have got into circulation without the Errata. One such, identical in other respects with the ordinary issue, is preserved in the library of Mr. Beverley Chew, New York. I am indebted for this information to Mr. Geoffrey Keynes, of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, who is preparing a detailed bibliography of Donne's works.
[7] Some such arrangement may have been intended by Donne himself when he contemplated issuing his poems in 1614, for he speaks, in a letter to Sir Henry Goodyere (see II. pp. [144-5]), of including a letter in verse to the Countess of Bedford 'amongst the rest to persons of that rank'. The manuscripts, especially the later and more ambitious, e.g. Stephens and O'Flaherty, show similar groupings; and in 1633, though there is no consistent sequence, the poems fall into irregularly recurring groups. The order of the poems within each of these groups in 1633 is generally retained in 1635. In the 1633 arrangement there were occasional errors in the placing of individual poems, especially Elegies, owing to the use of that name both for love poems and for funeral elegies or epicedes. These were sometimes corrected in later editions.
Modern editors have dealt rather arbitrarily and variously with the old classification. Grosart shifted the poems about according to his own whims in a quite inexplicable fashion. The Grolier Club edition preserves the groups and their original order (except that the Epigrams and Progresse of the Soule follow the Satyres), but corrects some of the errors in placing, and assigns to their relevant groups the poems added in 1650. Chambers makes similar corrections and replacings, but he further rearranges the groups. In his first volume he brings together—possibly because of their special interest—the Songs and Sonets, Epithalamions, Elegies, and Divine Poems, keeping for his second volume the Letters to Severall Personages, Funerall Elegies, Progresse of the Soul, Satyres, and Epigrams. There is this to be said for the old arrangement, that it does, as Walton indicated, correspond generally to the order in which the poems were written, to the succession of mood and experience in Donne's life. In the present edition this original order has been preserved with these modifications: (1) In the Songs and Sonets, The Flea has been restored to the place which it occupied in 1633; (2) the rearrangement of the misplaced Elegies by modern editors has been accepted; (3) their distribution of the few poems added in 1650 (in two sheets bound up with the body of the work) has also been accepted, but I have placed the poem On Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities after the Satyres; (4) two new groups have been inserted, Heroical Epistles and Epitaphs. It was absurd to class Sappho to Philaenis with the Letters to Severall Personages. At the same time it is not exactly an Elegy. There is a slight difference again between the Funerall Elegy and the Epitaph, though the latter term is sometimes loosely used. Ben Jonson speaks of Donne's Epitaph on Prince Henry. (5) The Letter, to E. of D. with six holy Sonnets has been placed before the Divine Poems. (6) The Hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamylton has been transferred to the Epicedes. (7) Some poems have been assigned to an Appendix as doubtful.
[8] The edition of 1633 contained one Latin, and seven English, letters to Sir Henry Goodyere, with one letter to the Countess of Bedford, a copy of which had been sent to Goodyere. To these were added in 1635 a letter in Latin verse, De libro cum mutuaretur (see p. [397]), and four prose letters in English, one To the La. G. written from Amyens in February, 1611-2, and three To my honour'd friend G. G. Esquier, the first dated April 14, 1612, the two last November 2, 1630, and January 7, 1630.
[9] In the copy of the 1633 edition belonging to the Library of Christ Church, Oxford, which has been used for the present edition, and bears the name 'Garrard att his quarters in ϑermyte' (perhaps Donne's friend George Garrard or Gerrard: see Gosse: Life and Letters &c. i. 285), are some lines, signed J. V., which seem to imply that the writer had some hand in the publication of the poems; but the reference may be simply to his gift:
An early offer of him to yor sight
Was the best way to doe the Author right
My thoughts could fall on; wch his soule wch knew
The weight of a iust Prayse will think't a true.
Our commendation is suspected, when
Wee Elegyes compose on sleeping men,
The Manners of the Age prevayling so
That not our conscience wee, but witts doe show.
And 'tis an often gladnes, that men dye
Of unmatch'd names to write more easyly.
Such my religion is of him; I hold
It iniury to have his merrit tould;
Who (like the Sunn) is righted best when wee
Doe not dispute but shew his quality.
Since all the speech of light is less than it.
An eye to that is still the best of witt.
And nothing can express, for truth or haste
So happily, a sweetnes as our taste.
Wch thought at once instructed me in this
Safe way to prayse him, and yor hands to kisse.
Affectionately yrs
J. V.
tu longe sequere et vestigia
semper adora
Vaughani
The name at the foot of the Latin line, scribbled at the bottom of the page, seems to identify J. V. with a Vaughan, probably John Vaughan (1603-74) who was a Christ Church man. In 1630 (D.N.B.) he was a barrister at the Inner Temple, and a friend of Selden. He took an active part in politics later, and in 1668 was created Sir John Vaughan and appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.
[10] I am inclined to believe that Henry King, the poet, and later Bishop of Chichester, assisted the printer. The 1633 edition bears more evidence of competent editing by one who knew and understood Donne's poems than any later edition. See p. 255.
[11] Professor Norton (Grolier Club edition, i, p. xxxviii) states that the Epistle Dedicatory and the Epigram by Jonson are omitted in this edition. This is an error, perhaps due to the two pages having been torn out of or omitted in the copy he consulted. They are in the Christ Church, Oxford, copy which I have used.
[12] In 1779 Donne's poems were included in Bell's Poets of Great Britain. The poems were grouped in an eccentric fashion and the text is a reprint of 1719. In 1793 Donne's poems were reissued in a Complete Edition of the Poets of Great Britain, published by Arthur Arch, London, and Bell and Bradfute, Edinburgh, under the editorship of Robert Anderson. The text and arrangement of the poems show that this is a reprint of Bell's edition. The same is true of the text, so far as I have checked it, in Chalmers's English Poets, vol. v, 1810. But in the arrangement of the poems the editor has recurred to the edition of 1669, and has reprinted some poems from that source. Southey printed selections from Donne's poems in his Select Works of the British Poets from Chaucer to Jonson (1831). The text is that of 1669. In 1839 Dean Alford included some of Donne's poems in his very incomplete edition of the Works of Donne. He printed these from a copy of the 1633 edition.
There were two American editions of the poems before the Grolier Club edition. Donne's poems were included in The Works of the British Poets with Lives of their Authors, by Ezekiel Sanford, Philadelphia, 1819. The text is based on the edition of 1719. A complete and separate edition was published at Boston in 1850. This has an eclectic text, but the editor has relied principally on the editions after 1633. Variants are sparingly and somewhat inaccurately recorded.
In 1802 F. G. Waldron printed in his Shakespeare Miscellany 'Two Elegies of Dr. Donne not in any edition of his Works'. Of these, one, 'Loves War,' is by Donne. The other, 'Is Death so great a gamster,' is by Lord Herbert of Cherbury. In 1856-7 Sir John Simeon printed in the Miscellanies of the Philobiblon Society several 'Unpublished Poems of Donne'. Very few of them are at all probably poems of Donne.
Of Grosart's edition (1873), the Grolier Club edition (1895), and Chambers's edition (1896), a full account will be given later.
[13] Huyghens sent some translations with the letter. He translated into Dutch (retaining the original metres, except that Alexandrines are substituted for decasyllabics) nineteen pieces in all. An examination of these shows that the text he used was a manuscript one, the readings he translates being in more than one instance those of the manuscript, as opposed to the printed, tradition. In a note which he prefixed to the translations when he published them many years later in his Korenbloemen (1672) he states that Charles I, having heard of his intention to translate Dr. Donne, 'declared he did not believe that anyone could acquit himself of that task with credit'—an interesting testimony to the admiration which Charles felt for the poetry of Donne. A copy of the 1633 edition now in the British Museum is said to have belonged to the King, and to bear the marks of his interest in particular passages. Huyghens's comment on Charles's criticism shows what it was in the English language which most struck a foreigner speaking a tongue of a purer Germanic strain: 'I feel sure that he would not have passed so absolute a sentence had he known the richness of our language, a moderate command of which is sufficient to enable one to render the thoughts of peoples of all countries with ease and delight. From these I must, however, except the English; for their language is all languages; and as it pleases them, Greek and Latin become plain English. But since we do not thus admit foreign words it is easy to understand in what difficulty we find ourselves when we have to express in a pure German speech, Ecstasis, Atomi, Influentiae, Legatum, Alloy, and the like. Set these aside and the rest costs us no great effort.'
At the end of his life Huyghens wrote a poem of reminiscences, Sermones de Vita Propria, in which he recalls the impression that Donne had left upon his mind:
Voortreffelyk Donn, o deugdzaam leeraer, duld
Dat ik u bovenal, daar'k u bij voorkeur noeme,
Als godlijk Dichter en welsprekend Reednaer roeme,
Uit uwen gulden mond, 'tzij ge in een vriendenzaal
Of van den kansel spraakt, klonk louter godentaal,
Wier nektar ik zoo vaak met harte wellust proefde.
'Suffer me, all-surpassing Donne, virtuous teacher, to name you first and above all; and sing your fame as god-like poet and eloquent preacher. From your golden mouth, whether in the chamber of a friend, or in the pulpit, fell the speech of Gods, whose nectar I drank again and again with heartfelt joy.'
Vondel did not share the enthusiasm of Huyghens and Hooft.
[14] That is, many poems of his early years.
[15] Tot verschiedene reizen meen ik U. E. onderhouden te hebben met de gedachtenisse van Doctor Donne, tegenwoordigh Deken van St Pauls tot Londen, ende, door dit rijckelick beroep, volgens 't Engelsch gebruyck, in hooghen ansien, in veel hooger door den rijckdom van sijn gadeloos vernuft ende noch onvergelijckerer welsprekentheit op stoel. Eertijts ten dienst van de grooten ten hove gevoedt, in de werelt gewortelt, in de studien geslepen, in de dictkonst vermaerdt, meer als yemand. Van die groene tacken hebben veel weelderige vruchten onder de liefhebbers leggen meucken, diese nu bynaer verrot van ouderdom uytdeylen, my synde voor den besten slag van mispelen ter hand geraeckt by halve vijf en twintig, door toedoen van eenighe mijne besondere Heeren ende vrienden van die natie. Onder de onze hebb ick geene konnen uytkiesen, diese voor U. E. behoorden medegedeelt te werden, slaende deze dichter ganschelijck op U. E. manieren van invall ende uitspraeck.
[16] This is not the only manuscript in which this poem appears among the Elegies following immediately on that entitled The Picture, 'Here take my picture, though I bid farewell.' It is thus placed in 1633. The adhesion of two poems in a number of otherwise distinct manuscripts may mean, I think, that they were written about the same time.
[17] There are, however, grounds for the conjecture besides the contents. The Westmoreland MS. was secured, Mr. Gosse writes me, when the library of the Earls of Westmoreland was disposed of, about the year 1892. 'The interest of this library was that it had not been disturbed since the early part of the seventeenth century. With the Westmoreland MS. of Donne's Poems was attached a very fine copy of Donne's Pseudomartyr, which contained, in what was certainly Donne's handwriting, the words "Ex dono authoris: Row: Woodward" and a motto in Spanish "De juegos el mejor es con la hoja". There can be no doubt, I think, that these two books belonged to Rowland Woodward and were given him by Donne.' But is it likely that after 1617 Donne would give even to a friend a manuscript containing the most reprehensible of his earlier Elegies and the Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inn? It seems to me more probable that the manuscript contains two distinct collections, made at different times. The one is a transcript from an early collection, quite probably Woodward's, containing Satires, Elegies, and one Epithalamion. To this the Divine Poems have been added.
[18] With the grouping of 1635 I have adopted generally its order within the groups, but the reader will see quite easily what is the order of the Songs in 1633 and in D, H49, Lec, if he will turn to the Contents and, beginning at The Message (p. [43]), will follow down to A Valediction: forbidding mourning (p. [49]). He must then turn back to the beginning and follow the list down till he comes to The Curse (p. [41]), and then resume at The Extasie (p. [51]). If the seven poems, The Message to A Valediction: forbidding mourning, were brought to the beginning, the order of the Songs and Sonets in 1635-69 would be the same as in 1633.
The editor of 1633 began a process, which was carried on in 1635, of naming poems unnamed in the manuscripts, and re-naming some that already had titles. The textual notes will give full details regarding the names, and will show that frequently a poem unnamed in D, H49, Lec remains unnamed in 1633.
[19] There is one exception to this which I had overlooked. In D, H49, Lec, The Undertaking (p. 10) comes later, following The Extasie.
[20] When in 1614 Donne contemplated an edition of his poems he wrote to Goodyere: 'By this occasion I am made a Rhapsoder of mine own rags, and that cost me more diligence to seek them, than it did to make them. This made me aske to borrow that old book of you,' &c. Letters (1651), p. 197.
[21] Five are to the Countess of Bedford—'Reason is', 'Honour is', 'You have refin'd', 'To have written then', and 'This Twy-light'. One is to the Countess of Huntingdon, 'Man to Gods image'; one to the Countess of Salisbury, 'Fair, great and good'; and one to Lady Carey, 'Here where by all.'
[22] In citing this collection I use TC for the two groups TCC, TCD.
[23] Additional lines to the Annuntiation and Passion, 'The greatest and the most conceald impostor', 'Now why should Love a footeboys place despise', 'Believe not him whom love hath made so wise', 'Pure link of bodies where no lust controules', 'Whoso terms love a fire', Upon his scornefull Mistresse ('Cruel, since that thou dost not fear the curse'), The Hower Glass ('Doe but consider this small Dust'), 'If I freely may discover', Song ('Now you have kill'd me with your scorn'), 'Absence, heare thou my protestation', Song ('Love bred of glances'), 'Love if a god thou art', 'Greate Lord of Love how busy still thou art', 'To sue for all thy Love and thy whole hart'.
[24] 'Believe not him whom love hath made so wise', On the death of Mris Boulstred ('Stay view this stone'), Against Absence ('Absence, heare thou my protestation'), 'Thou send'st me prose and rhyme', Tempore Hen: 3 ('The state of Fraunce, as now it stands'), A fragment ('Now why shuld love a Footboyes place despise'), To J. D. from Mr. H. W. ('Worthie Sir, Tis not a coate of gray,' see II. p. [141]), 'Love bred of glances twixt amorous eyes', To a Watch restored to its mystres ('Goe and count her better houres'), 'Deare Love continue nyce and chast', 'Cruell, since thou doest not feare the curse', On the blessed virgin Marie ('In that, ô Queene of Queenes').
[25] Of 128 items in the volume 99 are by Donne, and I have excluded some that might be claimed for him. The poems certainly not by Donne are 'Wrong not deare Empresse of my heart', 'Good folkes for gold or hire', 'Love bred of glances twixt amorous eyes', 'Worthy Sir, Tis not a coat of gray' (here marked 'J. D'.), 'Censure not sharply then' (marked 'B. J.'), 'Whosoever seeks my love to know', 'Thou sendst me prose and rimes' (see II. p. [166]), 'An English lad long wooed a lasse of Wales', 'Marcella now grown old hath broke her glasse', 'Pretus of late had office borne in London', To his mistresse ('O love whose power and might'), Her answer ('Your letter I receaved'), The Mar: B. to the Lady Fe. Her. ('Victorious beauty though your eyes')—a poem generally attributed to the Earl of Pembroke, A poem ('Absence heare my protestation'), 'True love findes witt but hee whom witt doth move', Earle of Pembroke 'If her disdain', Ben Ruddier 'Till love breeds love', 'Good madam Fowler doe not truble mee', 'Oh faithlesse world; and the most faithlesse part, A womans hart', 'As unthrifts greeve in straw for their pawn'd beds' (marked 'J. D.'), 'Why shuld not pilgrimes to thy body come' (marked 'F. B.'), On Mrs. Bulstreed, 'Mee thinkes death like one laughing lies', 'When this fly liv'd shee us'd to play' (marked 'Cary'), The Epitaph ('Underneath this sable hearse'), a couple of long heroical epistles (with notes appended) entitled Sir Philip Sidney to the Lady Penelope Rich and The Lady Penelope Rich to Sir Philipe Sidney. The latter epistle after some lines gives way quite abruptly to a different poem, a fragment of an elegy, which I have printed in Appendix C, p. [462].
[26] The exceptions are one poor epigram:
Oh silly John surprised with joy
For Joy hath made thee silly
Joy to enjoy thy sweetest Jone
Jone whiter than the Lillie;
and two elegies, generally assigned to F. Beaumont, 'I may forget to eate' and 'As unthrifts greive in straw'.
[27] The note may point to some connexion of the MS. with the Harington family. The MS. contains an unusually large number of poems addressed to the Countess of Bedford, and ascribes, quite probably, the Elegy 'Death be not proud' to the Countess herself.
[28] The poems not by Donne are A Satire: To Sr Nicholas Smith, 1602 ('Sleep next society'); Sir Thomas Overbury's 'Each woman is a Breefe of Womankind' and his epitaph 'The spann of my daies measurd, here I rest'; a poem headed Bash, beginning 'I know not how it comes to pass'; Verses upon Bishop Fletcher who married a woman of France ('If any aske what Tarquin ment to marrie'); Fletcher Bishop of London ('It was a question in Harroldrie'); 'Mistres Aturney scorning long to brooke'; 'Wonder of Beautie, Goddesse of my sence'; 'Faire eyes doe not thinke scorne to read of Love'; two sonnets apparently by Sir Thomas Roe; six consecutive poems by Sir John Roe (see pp. [401-6], [408-10]); 'Absence heare thou,'; To the Countess of Rutland ('Oh may my verses pleasing be'); To Sicknesse ('Whie disease dost thou molest'); 'A Taylor thought a man of upright dealing'; 'Unto that sparkling wit, that spirit of fier'; 'There hath beene one that strove gainst natures power.'
[29] Satyra Sexta ('Sleepe next Society'), Elegia Undecima ('True Love findes wit'), Elegia Vicesima ('Behold a wonder': see Grosart ii. 249), Elegia Vicesima Secunda ('As unthrifts mourne'), Elegia vicesima septima ('Deare Tom: Tell her'), To Mr. Ben: Jonson 9o Novembris 1603 ('If great men wronge me'), To Mr. Ben: Jonson ('The state and mens affairs'), 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste', 'Wherefore peepst thou envious Daye', 'Great and good, if she deride me', To the Blessed Virgin Marie ('In that ô Queene of Queenes'), 'What if I come to my Mistresse bed', 'Thou sentst to me a heart as sound', 'Believe your glasse', A Paradox of a Painted Face ('Not kisse! By Jove I will').
[30] The poems not by Donne are not numerous, but they are assigned to him without hesitation. They are 'As unthrifts grieve in straw', 'Thou sentst me Prose', 'Dear Love continue', 'Madam that flea', The Houre Glass ('Doe but consider this small dust'), A Paradox of a Painted Face ('Not kiss, by Jove'), 'If I freely may discover', 'Absence heare thou', 'Love bred of glances'.
[31] Note the readings I. 58 'The Infanta of London', IV. 38 'He speaks no language'.
[32] The other poems here ascribed to J. D. are To my Lo: of Denbrook (sic., i.e. Pembroke), 'Fye, Fye, you sonnes of Pallas', A letter written by Sr H. G. and J. D. alternis vicibus ('Since every tree'), 'Why shuld not Pillgryms to thy bodie come', 'O frutefull Garden and yet never till'd', Of a Lady in the Black Masque. See Appendix C, pp. [433-7].
[33] 'The Heavens rejoice in motion', 'Tell her if she to hired servants show', 'True love finds wit', 'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', 'Shall I goe force an Elegie?', 'Men write that Love and Reason disagree', 'Come Fates: I feare you not', 'If her disdaine'. The authorship of these is discussed later.
A note on the first page in a modern hand says, 'The pieces which I have extracted for the "Specimens" are, Page 91, 211, 265.' What 'Specimens' are referred to I do not know: the pieces are 'You nimble dreams', signed H. (i.e. John Hoskins); 'Upon his mistresses inconstancy' ('Thou art prettie but inconstant'); and Cupid and the Clowne. The manuscript was purchased at Bishop Heber's sale in 1836.
[34] I refer to it occasionally as TCD (II), and (once it has been made plain that this is the collection referred to throughout) as simply TCD.
[35] Since Mr. Pearsall-Smith transcribed these poems, which I subsequently collated, the house at Burley-on-the-Hill has been burned down and the manuscript volume has perished.
[36] The Complete Poems of John Donne, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. For the First Time Fully Collected and Collated With The Original and Early Editions And MSS. And Enlarged With Hitherto Unprinted And Inedited Poems From MSS. &c.... By The Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, &c. The Fuller Worthies' Library, 1872-3. Dr. Grosart's favourite manuscript was the Stephens (S). When that failed him he used Addl. MS. 18643 (A18), whose relation to the manuscripts in Trinity College, Dublin and Cambridge (TCD, TCC) he did not suspect, though he collated these. Some poems he printed from the Hazlewood-Kingsburgh MS. or the Farmer-Chetham MS. The first two are not good texts of Donne's poems, the last two are miscellaneous collections. The three first Satyres Dr. Grosart printed from Harleian MS. 5110 (H51); and he used other sources for the poems he ascribed to Donne. It cannot be said that he always recorded accurately the readings of the manuscript from which he printed. I have made no effort to record all the differences between Grosart's text and my own.
The description of the editions which Grosart gives at ii, p. liii is amazingly inaccurate, considering that he claimed to have collated 'all the early and later printed editions'. He describes 1639, 1649, 1650, and 1654 as identical with one another, and declares that the younger Donne is responsible only for 1669, which appeared after his death.
[37] The Poems of John Donne From The Text of The Edition of 1633 Revised By James Russell Lowell With The Various Readings of The Other Editions Of The Seventeenth Century, And With A Preface, An Introduction, And Notes By Charles Eliot Norton. New York. 1895. In preparing the text from Lowell's copy of 1633, emended in pencil by him, Professor Norton was assisted by Mrs. Burnett, the daughter of Mr. Lowell. As I could not apportion the responsibility for the text I have spoken throughout my textual notes and remarks of 'the Grolier Club editor' (Grolier for short). I have accepted Professor Norton as the sole author of the commentary. For instances where the punctuation has been altered, and the meaning, in my opinion, obscured, I may refer to the textual notes on The Legacie (p. [20]), The Dreame (p. [37]), A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day (p. [44]). But I have cited and discussed most of the cases in which I disagree with the Grolier Club editors. It is for readers to judge whether at times they may not be right, and I have gone astray. The Grolier Club edition only came into my hands when I had completed my first collation of the printed texts. Had I known it sooner, or had the edition been more accessible, I should probably not have ventured on the arduous task of editing Donne. It is based on the best text, and the editors have been happier than most in their interpretation and punctuation of the more difficult passages.
Professor Norton made no use of the manuscripts in preparing the text, but he added in an appendix an account of the manuscript which, following him, I have called N, and he gave a list of variants which seemed to him possible emendations. Later, in the Child Memorial Volume of Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature (1896), he gave a somewhat fuller description of N and descriptions of S (the Stephens MS.) and Cy (the Carnaby MS.). Of the readings which Professor Norton noted, several have passed into my edition on the authority of a wider collation of the manuscripts.
[38] Poems of John Donne Edited By E. K. Chambers. With An Introduction By George Saintsbury. London and New York. 1896. Of the editions Mr. Chambers says: 'Nor can it be said that any one edition always gives the best text; even for a single poem, sometimes one, sometimes another is to be preferred, though, as a rule, the edition of 1633 is the most reliable, and the readings of 1669 are in many cases a return to it' (vol. i, p. xliv). A considerable portion of Mr. Chambers' edition would seem to have been 'set up' from a copy of the 1639 edition, the earlier and later readings being then either incorporated or recorded. The result is that the 1633 or 1633-35 readings have been more than once overlooked. This applies especially to the Epicedes and the Divine Poems.
As with the Grolier Club edition, so with Mr. Chambers' edition, I have recorded and discussed the chief differences between my text and his. I have worked with his edition constantly beside me. I used it for my collations on account of its convenient numbering of the lines. To Mr. Chambers' commentary also I owe my first introduction to the wide field of the manuscripts. His knowledge of seventeenth-century literature and history, which even in 1896 was extensive, has directed me in taking up most of the questions of canon and authorship which I have investigated. It is easy to record one's points of disagreement with a predecessor; it is more difficult to estimate accurately how much one owes to his labours.
Mr. Chambers, too, has 'modernized the spelling and corrected the exceptionally chaotic punctuation of the old editions'. Of the latter changes he has, with one or two exceptions, preserved no record, so that when, as is sometimes the case, he has misunderstood the poet, it is impossible to get back to the original text of which the stops as well as the words are a part.]
[39] It is very unlikely that Donne had in his possession when he died manuscript copies of his early poems. (1) Walton makes no mention of them when enumerating the works which Donne left behind in manuscript, including 'six score sermons all written with his own hand; also an exact and laborious treatise concerning self-murder, called Biathanatos', as well as elaborate notes on authors and events. (2) In 1614, when Donne thought of publishing his poems, he found it necessary to beg for copies from his friends: 'By this occasion I am made a Rhapsoder of mine own rags, and that cost me more diligence to seek them, then it did to make them. This made me aske to borrow that old book of you.' To Sir H. G., Vigilia St. Tho. 1614. (3) Jonson and Walton both tell us that Donne, after taking Orders, would have been glad to destroy his early poems. The sincerity of this wish has been doubted because of what he says in a letter regarding Biathanatos: 'I only forbid it the press and the fire.' But Biathanatos is a very different matter from the poems. It is a grave and devout, if daring, treatise in casuistry. No one can enter into Donne's mind from 1617 onwards, as ascetic devotion became a more and more sincere and consuming passion, and believe that he kept copies of the early poems or paradoxes, prepared for the press like his sermons or devotions.
[40] Contributions To The Textual Criticism of The Divina Commedia, &c. By the Rev. Edward Moore, D.D., &c. Cambridge, 1889. The tests which Dr. Moore lays down for the judgement, on internal grounds, of a reading are—I state them shortly in my own words—(1) That is the best reading which best explains the erroneous readings. I have sometimes recorded a quite impossible reading of a manuscript because it clearly came from one rather than another of two rivals, and thus lends support to that reading despite its own aberration. (2) Generally speaking, 'Difficilior lectio potior,' the more difficult reading is the more likely to be the original. This applies forcibly in the case of a subtle and difficult author like Donne. The majority of the changes made in the later editions arise from the tendency to make Donne's thought more commonplace. Even in 1633 errors have crept in. The obsolete words 'lation' (p. [94], l. 47), 'crosse' (p. [43], l. 14) have been altered; the old-fashioned and metaphorically used idiom 'in Nature's gifts' has confused the editor's punctuation; the subtle thought of the epistles has puzzled and misled. (3) 'Three minor considerations may be added which are often very important, when applicable, though they are from the nature of the case less frequently available.' Moore. These are (a) the consistency of the reading with sentiments expressed by the author elsewhere. I have used the Sermons and other prose works to illustrate and check Donne's thought and vocabulary throughout. (b) The relation of the reading to the probable source of the poet's thought. A Scholastic doctrine often lurks behind Donne's wit, ignorance of which has led to corruption of the text. See The Dreame, p. [37], ll. 7, 16; To Sr Henry Wotton, p. [180], ll. 17-18. (c) The relation of a reading to historical fact. In the letter To Sr Henry Wotton, p. [187], the editors, forgetting the facts, have confused Cadiz with Calais, and the Azores with St. Michael's Mount.
[41] It is worth while to compare the kind of mistakes in which a manuscript abounds with those which occur in a printed edition. The tendency of the copyist was to write on without paying much attention to the sense, dropping words and lines, sometimes two consecutive half-lines or whole stanzas, ignoring or confounding punctuation, mistaking words, &c. He was, if a professional copyist or secretary, not very apt to attempt emendation. The kind of errors he made were easily detected when the proof was read over, or when the manuscript was revised with a view to printing. Words or half-lines could be restored, &c. But in such revision a new and dangerous source of error comes into play, the tendency of the editor to emend.
[42] Take a few instances where the latest editor, very naturally and explicably, securing at places a reading more obvious and euphonious, has departed from 1633 and followed 1635 or 1669. I shall take them somewhat at random and include a few that may seem still open to discussion. In The Undertaking (p. [10], l. 18), for 'Vertue attir'd in woman see', 1633, Mr. Chambers reads, with 1635-69, 'Vertue in woman see.' So:
| Loves Vsury, p. [13], l. 5: | |
|---|---|
| let my body raigne 1633 | let my body range 1635-69, Chambers |
| Aire and Angels, p. [22], l. 19: | |
| Ev'ry thy hair 1633 | Thy every hair 1650-69, Chambers |
| The Curse, p. [41], ll. 3, 10: | |
| His only, and only his purse 1633-54 | Him, only for his purse 1669, Chambers |
| who hath made him such 1633 | who hath made them such 1669, Chambers |
| A Valediction, p. [50], l. 16: | |
| Those things which elemented it 1633 | The thing which elemented it 1669, Chambers |
| The Relique, p. [62], l. 13: | |
| mis-devotion 1633-54 | mass-devotion 1669, Chambers |
| Elegie II, p. [80], l. 6: | |
| is rough 1633, 1669 | is tough 1635-54, Chambers |
| Elegie VI, p. [88], ll. 24, 26: | |
| and then chide 1633 | and there chide 1635-69, Chambers |
| her upmost brow 1633 | her utmost brow 1635-69, Chambers (an oversight). |
| Epithalamions, p. [129], l. 60: | |
| store, 1633 | starres, 1635-69, Chambers |
| Ibid., p. [133], l. 55: | |
| I am not then from Court 1633 | And am I then from Court? 1635-69, Chambers |
| Satyres, p. [169], ll. 37-41: | |
| The Iron Age that was, when justice was sold, now Injustice is sold deerer farre; allow All demands, fees, and duties; gamsters, anon The mony which you sweat, and sweare for, is gon Into other hands: 1633 | The iron Age that was, when justice was sold (now Injustice is sold dearer) did allow All claim'd fees and duties. Gamesters, anon The mony which you sweat and swear for is gon Into other hands. 1635-54, Chambers (no italics; 'that' a relativepronoun, I take it) |
| The Calme, p. [179], l. 30: | |
| our brimstone Bath 1633 | a brimstone bath 1635-69, Chambers |
| To Sr Henry Wotton, p. [180], l. 17: | |
| dung, and garlike 1633 | dung, or garlike 1635-69, Chambers |
| Ibid., p. [181], ll. 25, 26: | |
| The Country is a desert, where no good, Gain'd, as habits, not borne, is understood. 1633 | The Country is a desert, where the good, Gain'd inhabits not, borne, is not understood. 1635-54, Chambers. |
In all these passages, and I could cite others, it seems to me (I have stated my reasons fully in the notes) that if the sense of the passage be carefully considered, or Donne's use of words (e.g. 'mis-devotion'), or the tenor of his thought, the reading of 1633 is either clearly correct or has much to be said for it. Now in all these cases the reading has the support of all the manuscripts, or of the most and the best.
[43] e.g. 'their nothing' p. [31], l. 53; 'reclaim'd' p. [56], l. 25; 'sport' p. [56], l. 27.]
[44] The 1633 text of these letters, which is generally that of A18, N, TC, is better than I was at one time disposed to think, though there are some indubitable errors and perhaps some original variants. The crucial reading is at p. [197], l. 58, where 1633 and A18, N, TC read 'not naturally free', while 1635-69 and O'F read 'borne naturally free', at first sight an easier and more natural text, and adopted by both Chambers and Grosart. But consideration of the passage, and of what Donne says elsewhere, shows that the 1633 reading is certainly right.
[45] The 1650 printer delighted in colons, which he generally substituted for semicolons indiscriminately.