This life's a play groaned out by natures Arte
Where every man hath his alloted parte.
This man hath now as many men can tell
Ended his part, and he hath done it well.
The Play now ended, think his grave to bee
The retiring house of his sad Tragedie.
Where to give his fame this, be not afraid:
Here lies the best Tragedian ever plaid.
III. POEMS FROM VARIOUS MSS. Page [443].
Of the miscellaneous poems here collected there is very little to be said. The first eight or nine come from the O'Flaherty MS. (O'F), which professes to be a collection of Donne's poems, and may, Mr. Warwick Bond thinks, have been made by the younger Donne, as it contains a poem by him. It is careless enough to be his work. They illustrate well the kind of poem attributed to Donne in the seventeenth century, some on the ground of their wit, others because of their subject-matter. Donne had written some improper poems as a young man; it was tempting therefore to assign any wandering poem of this kind to the famous Dean of St. Paul's. The first poem, The Annuntiation, has nothing to do with Donne's poem The Annuntiation and Passion, but has been attached to it in a manner which is common enough in the MSS. The poem Love's Exchange is obviously an imitation of Donne's Lovers infinitenesse (p. [17]). A Paradoxe of a Painted Face was attributed to Donne because he had written a prose Paradox entitled That Women ought to paint. The poem was not published till 1660. In Harleian MS. it is said to be 'By my Lo: of Cant. follower Mr. Baker'. The lines on Black Hayre and Eyes (p. [460]) are found in fifteen or more different MSS. in the British Museum alone, and were printed in Parnassus Biceps (1656) and Pembroke and Ruddier's Poems (1660). Two of the MSS. attribute the poem to Ben Jonson, but others assign it to W. P. or Walton Poole. Mr. Chambers points out that a Walton Poole has verses in Annalia Dubrensia (1636), and also cites from Foster's Alumni Oxonienses: 'Walton Poole of Wilts arm. matr. 9.1.1580 at Trinity Coll. aged 15.' These may be the same person. The signature A. P. or W. P. at the foot of several pages suggests that the Stowe MS. 961 of Donne's poems had belonged to some member of this family. The fragment of an Elegy at p. [462] occurs only in P, where it forms part of an Heroicall Epistle with which it has obviously nothing to do. I have thought it worth preserving because of its intense though mannered style. The line, 'Fortune now do thy worst' recalls Elegie XII, l. 67. The closing poem,'Farewell ye guilded follies,' comes from Walton's Complete Angler (1658), where it is thus introduced: 'I will requite you with a very good copy of verses: it is a farewell to the vanities of the world, and some say written by Dr. D. But let they be written by whom they will, he that writ them had a brave soul, and must needs be possest with happy thoughts of their composure.' In the third edition (1661) the words were changed to 'And some say written by Sir Harry Wotton, who I told you was an excellent Angler.' In one MS. they are attributed to Henry King, Donne's friend and literary executor, and in two others they are assigned to Sir Kenelm Digby, as by whom they are printed in Wits Interpreter (1655). Mr. Chambers points out that 'The closing lines of King's The Farewell are curiously similar to those of this poem.' He quotes: