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.