There are more of Hoskins' poems extant, but the manuscript volume of poems which he left behind ('bigger than those of Dr. Donne') was lost in 1653.
Four poems were first printed as Donne's by Mr. Chambers (op. cit., Appendix B). They are all found in Addl. MS. 25707 (A25), and, so far as I know, there only. I have placed them first in Appendix C, as the only pieces in that Appendix which are at all likely to be by Donne. A25 is a manuscript written in a number of different hands, some six within the portion that includes poems by Donne. The relative age of these it would be impossible to assign with any confidence. What looks the oldest (I may call it A) is used only for three poems, viz. Donne's Elegye: 'What [sic] that in Color it was like thy haire,' his Obsequies Upon the Lord Harrington yt last died, and the Elegie of Loves progresse. It is in Elizabethan secretary's hand, and seems to me identical with the writing in which the same poems are copied in C, the Cambridge University Library MS. A second hand, B, inserts the larger number of the poems unquestionably by Donne in close succession, but a third hand, C, transcribes several by Donne along with poems by other wits, as Francis Beaumont. A fourth hand, D, seems to be the latest because it is the handwriting in which the Index was made out, and the poems inserted in this hand are inserted in odd spaces left by the other writers. Now of the poems in question, one, A letter written by Sr H: G: and J. D. alternis vicibus, is copied by D, and the same hand adds immediately An Elegie on the Death of my never enough Lamented master King Charles the First, by Henry Skipwith. The poem attributed to Donne was therefore not entered here till after 1649. But of course it may have come from an older source, and it has quite the appearance of being genuine. Whoever made the collection would seem to have had access to some of Goodyere's work, for this poem is almost immediately preceded by an Epithalamion of the Princess Mariage, by Sr H. G., and a little earlier the Good Friday poem by Donne is headed Mr J. Dun goeing from Sir H. G. on good friday sent him back this Meditacon on the waye. That reads like a note by Goodyere himself. If this be what happened, the copyist may have ascribed to Donne some of Goodyere's own verses. Certainly there is nothing in the other three poems, 'O Fruitful garden,' 'Fie, fie, you sons of Pallas,' 'Why chose she black' (all in the handwriting C) which would warrant our ascribing them to Donne. Later in the collection a coarse poem, 'Why should not Pilgrims to thy body come,' in a fifth hand, is signed J. D., but P assigns it to F. B., and it is more in Beaumont's style. Poems by and on Beaumont occupy a considerable space in A25. He is a quite possible candidate for the authorship of some of the poems assigned to Donne in the hand C.
Mr. Hazlitt attributes to Donne (General Index to Hazlitt's Handbook, &c., p. 228) a Funeral Elegie on the death of Philip Stanhope, who died at Christ Church in 1625. I have not been able to find the volume in which it appears; but, as it is said to be by John Donne Alumnus, the author must be the younger Donne.
[1] Mr. Chambers has reprinted a good many of these, but only in an Appendix and under the title of Doubtful Poems. He has added a few more from A25, from Coryats Crudities, and from some manuscripts in the Bodleian Library. If printed at all it is a pity that these poems were not reproduced more correctly. Textually the appendices are much the worst part of Mr. Chambers' edition. In most cases he has, I presume, taken the poems over as they stand from Simeon and Grosart.
[2] All three editors have also dropped the song 'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', David Laing having pointed out (Archaeologia Scotica, iv. 73-6) that this poem occurs in the Hawthornden MSS. with the signature 'J. R.' Chambers also rejects the sonnet On the Blessed Virgin Mary, probably by Henry Constable, and all three editors exclude the lines On the Sacrament.
[3] I have given with each poem a list of the editions and manuscripts (known to me) in which it is contained. A glance at these will show the weight of the external evidence. Of internal evidence every man must be judge for himself.
[4] To these must of course be added poems already published in Donne's name. See II. lvi.
[5] In F. G. Waldron's A Collection of Miscellaneous Poetry. 1802.
[6] Chambers includes it in his Appendix A, Doubtful Poems, but seems to lean to the view that it is by Roe. The second is printed as Donne's by Grosart and as presumably Donne's by Chambers.
[7] In O'F and S, where they also occur, they are more dispersed; but these manuscripts have, like 1635, adopted a classification of the poems they contain which involves their distribution as songs, elegies, letters and satires. A10 is the most significant witness. This manuscript contains very few poems by Donne. Why should it select just this suspicious group?