The text of the Anniversaries in 1633 has been on the whole carefully edited. It is probable, judging from several small circumstances (e.g. the omission of the first marginal note even in copies where all the rest are given), that 1633 was printed from 1625, but it is clear that the editor compared this with earlier editions, probably those of 1611-12, and corrected or amended the punctuation throughout. My collation of 1633 with 1611 has throughout vindicated the former as against 1621-5 on the one hand and the later editions on the other.[1] Of mistakes other than of punctuation I have noted only three: l. 181, thoughts 1611-12; thought 1621-33. This was corrected, from the obvious sense, in later editions (1635-69), and Grosart, Chambers, and Grolier make no note of the error in 1621-33. l. 318, proportions 1611-12; proportion 1621 and all subsequent editions without comment. l. 415, Impressions 1611; Impression 1612-25: impression 1633 and all subsequent editions. All three cases are examples of the same error, the dropping of final 's'.
In typographical respects 1611 shows the hand of the author more clearly than the later editions. Donne was fastidious in matters of punctuation and the use of italics and capital letters, witness the LXXX Sermons (1640), printed from MSS. prepared for the press by the author. But the printer had to be reckoned with, and perfection was not obtainable. In a note to one of the separately published sermons Donne says: 'Those Errors which are committed in mispointing, or in changing the form of the Character, will soone be discernd, and corrected by the Eye of any deliberate Reader'. The 1611 text shows a more consistent use in certain passages of emphasizing capitals, and at places its punctuation is better than that of 1633. My text reproduces 1633, corrected where necessary from the earlier editions; and I have occasionally followed the typography of 1611. But every case in which 1633 is modified is recorded.
Of the Second Anniversarie, in like manner, my text is that of 1633, corrected in a few details, and with a few typographical features borrowed, from the edition of 1612. The editor of 1633 had rather definite views of his own on punctuation, notably a predilection for semicolons in place of full stops. The only certain emendations which 1612 supplies are in the marginal note at p. 234 and in l. 421 of the Second Anniversarie 'this' for 'his'. The spelling is less ambiguous in ll. 27 and 326.
[1] 1621-25 abound in misplaced full stops which are not in 1611 and are generally corrected in 1633. The punctuation of the later editions (1635-69) is the work of the printer. Occasionally a comma is dropped or introduced with advantage to the sense, but in general the punctuation grows increasingly careless. Often the correction of one error leads to another.
The subject of the Anniversaries was the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth Drury, who died in 1610. Her father, Sir Robert Drury, of Hawsted in the county of Suffolk, was a man of some note on account of his great wealth. He was knighted by Essex when about seventeen years old, at the siege of Rouen (1591-2). He served in the Low Countries, and at the battle of Nieuport (1600) brought off Sir Francis Vere when his horse was shot under him. He was courtier, traveller, member of Parliament, and in 1613 would have been glad to go as Ambassador to Paris when Sir Thomas Overbury refused the proffered honour and was sent to the Tower. Lady Drury was the daughter of Sir Nicholas Bacon, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth's Lord Keeper. She and her brother, Sir Edmund Bacon, were friends and patrons of Joseph Hall, Donne's rival as an early satirist. From 1600 to 1608 Hall was rector of Hawsted, and though he was not very kindly treated by Sir Robert he dedicated to him his Meditations Morall and Divine. This tie explains the fact, which we learn from Jonson's conversations with Drummond, that Hall is the author of the Harbinger to the Progresse. As he wrote this we may infer that he is also responsible for To the praise of the dead, and the Anatomie.
Readers of Donne's Life by Walton are aware of the munificence with which Sir Robert rewarded Donne for his poems, how he opened his house to him, and took him abroad. Donne's letters, on the other hand, reveal that the poem gave considerable offence to the Countess of Bedford and other older patrons and friends. In his letters to Gerrard he endeavoured to explain away his eulogies. In verse-letters to the Countess of Bedford and others he atoned for his inconstancy by subtle and erudite compliments.
The Funerall Elegie was doubtless written in 1610 and sent to Sir Robert Drury. He and Donne may already have been acquainted through Wotton, who was closely related by friendship and marriage with Sir Edmund Bacon. (See Pearsall Smith, Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton (1907). The Anatomie of the World was composed in 1611, Of the Progresse of the Soule in France in 1612, at some time prior to the 14th of April, when he refers to his Anniversaries in a letter to George Gerrard.
Ben Jonson declared to Drummond 'That Donnes Anniversaries were profane and full of blasphemies: that he told Mr. Done if it had been written of the Virgin Marie it had been something; to which he answered that he described the Idea of a Woman, and not as she was'. This is a better defence of Donne's poems than any which he advances in his letters, but it is not a complete description of his work. Rather, he interwove with a rapt and extravagantly conceited laudation of an ideal woman two topics familiar to his catholic and mediaeval learning, and developed each in a characteristically subtle and ingenious strain, a strain whose occasional sceptical, disintegrating reflections belong as obviously to the seventeenth century as the general content of the thought is mediaeval.
The burden of the whole is an impassioned and exalted meditatio mortis based on two themes common enough in mediaeval devotional literature—a De Contemptu Mundi, and a contemplation of the Glories of Paradise. A very brief analysis of the two poems, omitting the laudatory portions, may help a reader who cannot at once see the wood for the trees, and be better than detailed notes.