[32] The other poems here ascribed to J. D. are To my Lo: of Denbrook (sic., i.e. Pembroke), 'Fye, Fye, you sonnes of Pallas', A letter written by Sr H. G. and J. D. alternis vicibus ('Since every tree'), 'Why shuld not Pillgryms to thy bodie come', 'O frutefull Garden and yet never till'd', Of a Lady in the Black Masque. See Appendix C, pp. [433-7].
[33] 'The Heavens rejoice in motion', 'Tell her if she to hired servants show', 'True love finds wit', 'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', 'Shall I goe force an Elegie?', 'Men write that Love and Reason disagree', 'Come Fates: I feare you not', 'If her disdaine'. The authorship of these is discussed later.
A note on the first page in a modern hand says, 'The pieces which I have extracted for the "Specimens" are, Page 91, 211, 265.' What 'Specimens' are referred to I do not know: the pieces are 'You nimble dreams', signed H. (i.e. John Hoskins); 'Upon his mistresses inconstancy' ('Thou art prettie but inconstant'); and Cupid and the Clowne. The manuscript was purchased at Bishop Heber's sale in 1836.
[34] I refer to it occasionally as TCD (II), and (once it has been made plain that this is the collection referred to throughout) as simply TCD.
[35] Since Mr. Pearsall-Smith transcribed these poems, which I subsequently collated, the house at Burley-on-the-Hill has been burned down and the manuscript volume has perished.
[36] The Complete Poems of John Donne, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's. For the First Time Fully Collected and Collated With The Original and Early Editions And MSS. And Enlarged With Hitherto Unprinted And Inedited Poems From MSS. &c.... By The Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, &c. The Fuller Worthies' Library, 1872-3. Dr. Grosart's favourite manuscript was the Stephens (S). When that failed him he used Addl. MS. 18643 (A18), whose relation to the manuscripts in Trinity College, Dublin and Cambridge (TCD, TCC) he did not suspect, though he collated these. Some poems he printed from the Hazlewood-Kingsburgh MS. or the Farmer-Chetham MS. The first two are not good texts of Donne's poems, the last two are miscellaneous collections. The three first Satyres Dr. Grosart printed from Harleian MS. 5110 (H51); and he used other sources for the poems he ascribed to Donne. It cannot be said that he always recorded accurately the readings of the manuscript from which he printed. I have made no effort to record all the differences between Grosart's text and my own.
The description of the editions which Grosart gives at ii, p. liii is amazingly inaccurate, considering that he claimed to have collated 'all the early and later printed editions'. He describes 1639, 1649, 1650, and 1654 as identical with one another, and declares that the younger Donne is responsible only for 1669, which appeared after his death.
[37] The Poems of John Donne From The Text of The Edition of 1633 Revised By James Russell Lowell With The Various Readings of The Other Editions Of The Seventeenth Century, And With A Preface, An Introduction, And Notes By Charles Eliot Norton. New York. 1895. In preparing the text from Lowell's copy of 1633, emended in pencil by him, Professor Norton was assisted by Mrs. Burnett, the daughter of Mr. Lowell. As I could not apportion the responsibility for the text I have spoken throughout my textual notes and remarks of 'the Grolier Club editor' (Grolier for short). I have accepted Professor Norton as the sole author of the commentary. For instances where the punctuation has been altered, and the meaning, in my opinion, obscured, I may refer to the textual notes on The Legacie (p. [20]), The Dreame (p. [37]), A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day (p. [44]). But I have cited and discussed most of the cases in which I disagree with the Grolier Club editors. It is for readers to judge whether at times they may not be right, and I have gone astray. The Grolier Club edition only came into my hands when I had completed my first collation of the printed texts. Had I known it sooner, or had the edition been more accessible, I should probably not have ventured on the arduous task of editing Donne. It is based on the best text, and the editors have been happier than most in their interpretation and punctuation of the more difficult passages.
Professor Norton made no use of the manuscripts in preparing the text, but he added in an appendix an account of the manuscript which, following him, I have called N, and he gave a list of variants which seemed to him possible emendations. Later, in the Child Memorial Volume of Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature (1896), he gave a somewhat fuller description of N and descriptions of S (the Stephens MS.) and Cy (the Carnaby MS.). Of the readings which Professor Norton noted, several have passed into my edition on the authority of a wider collation of the manuscripts.
[38] Poems of John Donne Edited By E. K. Chambers. With An Introduction By George Saintsbury. London and New York. 1896. Of the editions Mr. Chambers says: 'Nor can it be said that any one edition always gives the best text; even for a single poem, sometimes one, sometimes another is to be preferred, though, as a rule, the edition of 1633 is the most reliable, and the readings of 1669 are in many cases a return to it' (vol. i, p. xliv). A considerable portion of Mr. Chambers' edition would seem to have been 'set up' from a copy of the 1639 edition, the earlier and later readings being then either incorporated or recorded. The result is that the 1633 or 1633-35 readings have been more than once overlooked. This applies especially to the Epicedes and the Divine Poems.