vid.
written by Doctor John Dunn
This note is intelligible only when compared with this particular group of manuscripts. In others the order is quite different.
This bar—which was probably dictated by reasons of propriety, though it is difficult to see why the first and the eleventh Elegies should have been singled out—was got over later as far as the Satyres were concerned. They are printed after all the other poems, just before the prose letters. But by this time the copy of D, H49, Lec had perhaps passed out of Marriot's hands, for the text of the Satyres seems to show that they were printed, not from this manuscript, but from one represented by another group, which I shall describe later. This is, however, not quite certain, for in Lec the version of the Satyres given is not the same as in D, H49, but is that of this second group of manuscripts. Several little details show that of the three manuscripts D, H49, and Lec the last most closely resembles 1633.
Following the Elegies in 1633 come a group of letters, epicedes, and religious poems, just as in H49, Lec (D re-groups them)—The Storme, The Calme, To Sir Henry Wotton, ('Sir, more than kisses'), The Crosse, Elegie on the Lady Marckham, Elegie on Mris Boulstred ('Death I recant'), To Sr Henry Goodyere, To Mr. Rowland Woodward, To Sr Henry Wootton ('Here's no more newes'), To the Countesse of Bedford ('Reason is our Soules left hand'), To the Countesse of Bedford ('Madam, you have refin'd'), To Sr Edward Herbert, at Julyers. Here 1633 diverges. Having got into letters to noble and other people the editor was anxious to continue them, and accordingly from another source (which I shall discuss later) he prints a long series of letters to the Countess of Bedford, the Countess of Huntingdon, Mr. T. W., and other more intimate friends (they are 'thou', the Countesses 'you'), and Mrs. Herbert. He perhaps returns to D, H49, Lec in those to The Lady Carey and Mrs. Essex Riche, from Amyens, and To the Countesse of Salisbury; and, as in that manuscript, the Palatine and Essex epithalamia (to which, however, 1633 adds that written at Lincoln's Inn) are followed immediately by the long Obsequies to Lord Harrington. Three odd Elegies follow, two of which (The Autumnall and The Picture, 'Image of her') occur in D, H49, Lec in the same detached fashion. Other manuscripts include them among the numbered Elegies. The Elegie on Prince Henry, Psalme 137 (probably not by Donne), Resurrection, imperfect, An hymne to the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamilton, An Epitaph upon Shakespeare (certainly not by Donne), Sapho to Philaenis, follow in 1633—a queerly consorted lot. The Elegie on Prince Henry is taken from the Lachrymae Lachrymarum of Joshua Sylvester (1612); the rest were possibly taken from some small commonplace-book. This would account for the doubtful poems, the only doubtful poems in 1633. These past, the close connexion with our manuscript is resumed. The Annuntiation is followed, as in H49, Lec, by The Litanie. Thereafter the lyrical pieces begin, as in these manuscripts, with the song, 'Send home my long strayd eyes to me.' This is followed by two pieces which are not in D, H49, Lec,—the impressive, difficult, and in manuscripts comparatively rare Nocturnall upon S. Lucies day, and the much commoner Witchcraft by a picture. Thereafter the poems follow piece by piece the order in D, H49, Lec[18] until The Curse is reached.[19] Then, in what seems to have been the editor's or printer's regular method of proceeding in this edition, he laid aside the manuscript from which he was printing the Songs and Sonets to take up another piece of work that had come to hand, viz. An Anatomie of the World with A Funerall Elegie and Of the Progresse of the Soule, which he prints from the edition of 1625. Without apparent rhyme or reason these long poems are packed in between The Curse and The Extasie. With the latter poem 1633 resumes the songs and (with the exception of The Undertaking) follows the order in Lec to The Dampe, with which the series in the manuscripts closes. It has been noted that in Lec, The Prohibition (which in D, H49 follows Breake of day and precedes The Anniversarie) is omitted. This must have been the case in the manuscript used for 1633, for it is omitted at this place and though printed later was probably not derived from this source.
With The Dampe the manuscript which I am supposing the editor to have followed in the main probably came to an end. The poems which follow in 1633 are of a miscellaneous character and strangely conjoined. The Dissolution (p. [64]), A Ieat Ring sent (p. [65]), Negative Love (p. [66]), The Prohibition (p. [67]), The Expiration (p. [68]), The Computation (p. [69]), complete the tale of lyrics. A few odd elegies follow ('Language thou art,' 'You that are she,' 'To make the doubt clear') with The Paradox. A Hymne to Christ, at the Authors last going into Germany is given a page to itself, and is followed by The Lamentations of Jeremy, The Satyres, and A Hymne to God the Father. Thereafter come the prose letters and the Elegies upon the Author.
What this comparison of the order of the poems points to is borne out by an examination of the text. The critical notes afford the materials for a further verification, and I need not tabulate the resemblances at length. In Elegie IV, for example, ll. 7, 8, which occur in all the other manuscripts and editions, are omitted by 1633 and by D, H49, Lec. Again, when a song has no title in 1633 it has frequently none in the manuscript. When there are evidently two versions of a poem, as e.g. in The Good-morrow and The Flea, the version given in 1633 is generally that of D, H49, Lec. Later editions often contaminate this with another version of the poem. At the same time there are ever and again divergences between the edition and the manuscript which are not to be ignored, and cannot always be explained. Some are due to error in one or the other, but some point either to divergence between the text of the editor's manuscript and ours, or to the use by the editor of other sources as well as this. In the fifth elegy (The Picture), for example, 1633 twice seems to follow, not D, H49, Lec, but another source, another group of manuscripts which has been preserved; and in The Aniversarie ll. 23, 24, the version of 1633 is not that of D, H49, Lec but of the same second group, which will be described later. On the whole, however, it is clear that a manuscript closely resembling that now represented by these three manuscripts supplied the editor of 1633 with the bulk of the shorter poems, especially the older and more privately circulated poems, the Songs and Sonets and Elegies. When he is not following this manuscript he draws from miscellaneous and occasionally inferior sources.
It would be interesting if we could tell whence this manuscript was obtained, and whether it was a priori likely to be a good one. On this point we can only conjecture, but it seems to me a fairly tenable conjecture (though not to be built on in any way) that the nucleus of the collection, at any rate, may have been a commonplace-book which had belonged to Sir Henry Goodyere. The ground for this conjecture is the inclusion in the edition of some prose letters addressed to this friend, one in Latin and seven in English. There is indeed also one addressed to the Countess of Bedford; but in the preceding letter to Goodyere Donne says, 'I send you, with this, a letter which I sent to the Countesse. It is not my use nor duty to do so. But for your having it, there were but two consents, and I am sure you have mine, and you are sure you have hers.' He goes on to refer to some verses which are the subject of the letter to the Countesse. There can be no doubt that the letter printed is the letter sent to Goodyere. The Burley MS. (see Pearsall-Smith's Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton, Oxford, 1907) gives us a good example of how a gentleman in the seventeenth century dealt with his correspondence. That contains, besides various letters, as of Sidney to Queen Elizabeth on the Anjou marriage, and other matter which recurs in commonplace-books, a number of poems and letters, sent to Wotton by his friends, including Donne, and transcribed by one or other of Wotton's secretaries. The letters have no signatures appended, which is the case with the letters in the 1633 edition of Donne's poems. Wotton and Goodyere did not need to be reminded of the authors, and perhaps did not wish others to know. The reason then for the rather odd inclusion of nine prose letters in a collection of poems is probably, that the principal manuscript used by the printer was an 'old book'[20] which had belonged to Sir Henry Goodyere and in which his secretaries had transcribed poems and letters by Donne. Goodyere's collection of Donne's poems would not necessarily be exhaustive, but it would be full; it would not like the collections of others include poems that were none of Donne's; and its text would be accurate, allowing for the carelessness, indifference, and misunderstandings of secretaries and copyists.