The Poems of John Donne, Volume 2 (of 2) / Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts

by John Donne

• 1635. On himselfe.

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

• I. 'Thou hast made me.'
• III. 'O might those sighs and tears.'
• V. 'I am a little world.'
• VIII. 'If faithfull soules.'

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

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

• 1. Song. 'Soules joy, now I am gone.'
• 2. Farewell to love.
• 3. Song. 'Deare Love, continue nice and chaste.'
• 4. Sonnet. The Token.
• 5. 'He that cannot chuse but love.'
• 6. Elegie (XIII in 1635). 'Come, Fates; I feare you not.'
• 7. Elegie XII (XIIII in 1635). His parting from her.
  'Since she must goe, and I must mourne.'
• 8. Elegie XIII (XV in 1635). Julia.
  'Harke newes, ô envy.'
• 9. Elegie XIV (XVI in 1635). A Tale of a Citizen and his Wife. 'I sing no harme.'
• 10. Elegie XVII. Variety. 'The heavens rejoice.'
• 11. Satyre (VI in 1635, VII in 1669).
  'Men write that love and reason disagree.'
• 12. Satyre (VI in 1669).
  'Sleep, next society and true friendship.'
• 13. To the Countesse of Huntington.
  'That unripe side of earth, that heavy clime.'
• 14. A Dialogue between Sr Henry Wotton and Mr. Donne.
  'If her disdayne least change in you can move.'
• 15. To Ben Iohnson, 6. Jan. 1603.
  'The state and mens affaires.'
• 16. To Ben Iohnson, 9. Novembris, 1603.
  'If great men wrong me.'
• 17. To Sir Tho. Roe. 1603.
  Deare Thom: 'Tell her, if she to hired servants shew.'
• 18. Elegie on Mistresse Boulstred.
  'Death be not proud.'
• 19. On the blessed Virgin Mary.
  'In that, ô Queene of Queenes.'
• 20. Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister.
  'Eternall God, (for whom who ever dare).'
• 21. Ode.
  'Vengeance will sit.'
• 22. To Mr. Tilman after he had taken Orders.
  'Thou, whose diviner soule hath caus'd thee now.'
• 23. On the Sacrament.
  'He was the Word that spake it.'

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

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

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

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