Chapter IV: Part 4

_N._ The Norton MS. in Harvard College Library, Boston, of which an account is given by Professor Norton in a note appended to the Grolier Club edition.

_TCC._ A manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge.

_TCD._ A large manuscript in the Library of Trinity College, Dublin, containing two apparently quite independent collections of poems--the first a collection of Donne's poems with one or two additional poems by Sir John Roe, Francis Beaumont, Sir Thomas Overbury, and Corbet; the second a quite miscellaneous collection, put together some time in the thirties of the seventeenth century, and including some of Donne's poems. It is only the first of these which belongs to the group in question.

These four manuscripts are closely connected with one another, but a still more intimate relation exists between _A18_ and _TCC_ on the one hand, _N_ and _TCD_ on the other. _N_ and _TCD_ are the larger collections; _A18_ and _TCC_ contain each a smaller selection from the same body of poems. Indeed it would seem that _N_ is a copy of _TCD, A18_ of _TCC_.

_TCD_, to start with it, is a beautifully written collection of Donne's poems beginning with the _Satyres_, passing on to an irregularly arranged series of elegies, letters, lyrics and epicedes, and closing with the _Metempsychosis_ or _Progresse of the Soule_ and the _Divine Poems_, which include the hymns written in the last years of the poet's life. _N_ has the same poems, arranged in the same order, and its readings are nearly always identical with those of _TCD_, so far as I can judge from the collation made for me. The handwriting, unlike that of _TCD_, is in what is known as secretary hand and is somewhat difficult to read. What points to the one manuscript being a copy of the other is that in 'Sweetest Love, I do not go' the scribe has accidentally dropped stanza 4, by giving its last line to stanza 3, and passing at once to the fifth stanza. Both manuscripts make this mistake, whereas _A18_ and _TCC_ contain the complete poem. In other places _N_ and _TCD_ agree in their readings where _A18_ and _TCC_ diverge. If the one is a copy of the other, _TCD_ is probably the more authoritative, as it contains some marginal indications of authorship which _N_ omits.

_TCC_ is a smaller manuscript than _TCD_, but seems to be written in the same clear, fine hand. It does not contain the _Satyres_, the Elegy (XI. in this edition) _The Bracelet_, and the epistles _The Storme_ and _The Calme_, with which _N_ and _TCD_ open. It looks, however, as though the sheets containing these poems had been torn out. Besides these, however, _TCC_ omits, without any indication of their being lost, an _Elegie to the Lady Bedford_ ('You that are she'), the Palatine Epithalamion, a long series of letters[21] which in _N_, _TCD_ follow that _To M.M.H._ and precede _Sapho to Philaenis_, the elegies on Prince Henry and on Lord Harington, and _The Lamentations of Jeremy_. There are occasional differences in the grouping of the poems; and _TCC_ does not contain some poems by Beaumont, Corbet, Sir John Roe, and Sir Thomas Overbury which are found in _N_ and _TCD_. In _TCD_ these, with the exception of that by Beaumont, are carefully initialled, and therefore not ascribed to Donne. In _N_ these initials are in some cases omitted; and some of the poems have found their way into editions of Donne's poems.

Presumably _TCC_ is the earlier collection, and when _TCD_ was made, the copyist was able to add fresh poems. It is clear, however, that in the case of even those poems which the two have in common, the one manuscript is not simply a copy of the others. There are several divergences, and the mistake referred to above, in 'Sweetest Love, I do not go', is not made in _TCC_. Strangely enough, a similar mistake is made by _TCC_ in transcribing _Loves Deitie_ and is reproduced in _A18_.

_A18_, indeed, would seem to be a copy of _TCC_. It is not in the same handwriting, but in secretary hand. It omits the opening _Satyres_, &c., as does _TCC_, but there is no sign of excision. Presumably, then, the copy was made after these poems were, if they ever were, torn out of _TCC_. Wherever _TCC_ diverges from _TCD_, _A18_ follows _TCC_.[22]

Whoever was responsible for this collection of Donne's poems, it was evidently made with care, at least as regards the canon. Very few poems that are not certainly by Donne are included, and they are correctly initialled. The only uninitialled doubtful poems are _A Paradox_, 'Whoso terms Love a fire,' which in all the four manuscripts follows 'No Lover saith, I love', and Beaumont's letter to the Countess of Bedford, which begins, 'Soe may my verses pleasing be.' In _N_, _TCD_ this follows Donne's letter to the same lady, 'You that are she and you.' It is regrettable that the text of the poems is not so good as the canon is pure. The punctuation is careless. There are numerous stupid blunders, and there are evidences of editing in the interest of more regular metre or a more obvious meaning. At times, however, it would seem that the copyist is following a different version of a poem or poems (e.g. the _Satyres_) from that given in _D_, _H49_, and other manuscripts, and is embodying corrections perhaps made by the author himself. It is quite credible that Donne, in sending copies of his poems at different times to different people, may have revised and amended them. It is quite clear, as my notes will show, that of certain poems more than one version (each correct in itself) was in circulation.

Was _A18_, _N_, _TC_, or a manuscript resembling it one of the sources of the edition of _1633_? In part, I think, it was. The most probable case at first sight is that of the _Satyres_. These, we have seen, Marriot was at first prohibited from printing. Otherwise they would have followed the _Epigrams_, and immediately preceded the _Elegies_. As it is, they come after all the other poems; they are edited with some cautious dashes; and their text is almost identical with that of _N_, _TCD_. In the first satire the only difference between _1633_ and _N_, _TCD_ occurs in l. 70, where _N_, _TCD_, with all the other manuscripts read--

Sells for a little state his libertie;

_1633_,

Sells for a little state high libertie;

'high' is either a slip or an editorial emendation. There are other cases of similar editing, not all of which it is possible to correct with confidence; but a study of the textual notes will show that in general _1633_ follows the version preserved in _N_, _TCD_, and also in _L74_ (of which later), when the rest of the manuscripts present an interestingly different text. But strangely enough this version of the _Satyres_ is also in _Lec_. This is the feature in which that manuscript diverges most strikingly from _D_ and _H49_. Moreover in some details in which _1633_ differs from _A18_, _N_, _TC_ it agrees with _Lec_. It is possible therefore that the _Satyres_ were printed from the same manuscript as the majority of the poems.

Again in the _Letters_ not found in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ there is a close but not invariable agreement between the text of _1633_ and that of this group of manuscripts. Those letters, which follow that _To Sir Edward Herbert_, are printed in _1633_ in the same order as in this edition (pp. 195-226), except that the group of short letters beginning at p. 203 ('All haile sweete Poet') is here amplified and rearranged from _W_. Now in _A18_, _N_, _TC_ these letters are also brought together (_N_, _TCD_ adding some which are not in _A18_, _TCC_), and the special group referred to, of letters to intimate friends, are arranged in exactly the same order as in _1633_; have the same headings, the same omissions, and the same accidental linking of two poems. In the other letters, to the Countesses of Bedford, Huntingdon, Salisbury, &c., the textual notes will show some striking resemblances between the edition and the manuscripts. In the difficult letter, 'T'have written then' (p. 195), _1633_ follows _N_, _TCD_ where _O'F_ gives a different and in some details more correct text. In 'This twilight of two yeares' (p. 198) the strange reading of l. 35, 'a prayer prayes,' is obviously due to _N_, _TCD_, where 'a praiser prayes' has accidentally but explicably been written 'a prayer praise'. In the letter _To the Countesse of Huntingdon_ (p. 201) the _1633_ version of ll. 25, 26 is a correct rendering of what _N_, _TCD_ give wrongly:

Shee guilded us, But you are Gold; and shee
Vs inform'd, but transubstantiates you.

On the other hand there are some differences, as e.g. in the placing of ll. 40-2 in 'Honour is so sublime' (p. 218), which make it impossible to affirm that these poems were taken direct from this group of manuscripts as we know them, without alteration or emendation. The _Progresse of the Soule_ or _Metempsychosis_, as printed in _1633_, must have been taken in the first instance from this manuscript. In both the manuscripts and the edition, at l. 83 of the poem a blank space is left after 'did'; in both, l. 137 reads, 'To see the Prince, and soe fill'd the waye'; in both, 'kinde' is substituted for 'kindle' at l. 150; in l. 180 the 'uncloth'd child' of 1633 is explicable as an emendation of the 'encloth'd' of _A18_, _N_, _TC_; and similarly the 'leagues o'rpast', l. 296 of _1633_, is probably due to the omission of 'many' before 'leagues' in _A18_, _N_, _TC_--'o'rpast' supplies the lost foot. It is clear, however, from a comparison of different copies that as _1633_ passed through the press this poem underwent considerable correction and alteration; and in its final printed form there are errors which I have been enabled to correct from _G_.

The paraphrase of _Lamentations_, and the _Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inn_ (which is not in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_) are other poems which show, in passages where there are divergent readings, a tendency to follow the readings of _A18_, _N_, _TC_, though in neither of these poems is the identity complete. It is further noteworthy that to several poems unnamed in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ the editor of _1633_ has given the title which these bear in _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, and _TCD_, as though he had access to both the collections at the same time.

These two groups of manuscripts, which have come down to us, thus seem to represent the two principal sources of the edition of _1633_. What other poems that edition contains were derived either from previously printed editions (The _Anniversaries_ and the _Elegy on Prince Henry_) or were got from more miscellaneous and less trustworthy sources.

A third manuscript collection of Donne's poems is of interest because it seems very probable that it or a similar collection came into the hands of the printer before the second edition of 1635 was issued. A considerable number of the errors, or inferior readings, of the later editions seem to be traceable to its influence. At least it is remarkable how often when _1635_ and the subsequent editions depart from _1633_ and the general tradition of the manuscripts they have the support of this manuscript and this manuscript alone. This is the manuscript which I have called

_O'F_, because it was at one time in the possession of the Rev. T. R. O'Flaherty, of Capel, near Dorking, a great student of Donne, and a collector. He contributed several notes on Donne to _Notes and Queries_. I do not know of any more extensive work by him on the subject.

This manuscript has been already described by Mr. R. Warwick Bond in the Catalogue of Ellis and Elvey, 1903. It is a large but somewhat indiscriminate collection, made apparently with a view to publication. The title-page states that it contains 'The Poems of D. J. Donne (not yet imprinted) consisting of

Divine Poems, beginning Pag. 1
Satyres 57
Elegies 113
Epicedes and Obsequies 161
Letters to severall personages 189
Songs and Sonnets 245
Epithalamions 317
Epigrams 337
With his paradoxes and problems 421
finished this 12 of October 1632.'

The reader will notice how far this arrangement agrees with, how far it differs from, that adopted in 1635.

Of the twenty-eight new poems, genuine, doubtful, and spurious, added in _1635_, this manuscript contains twenty, a larger number than I have found in any other single manuscript. An examination of the text of these does not, however, make it certain that all of them were derived from this source or from this source only. The text, for example, of the _Elegie XI. The Bracelet_, in _1635_, is evidently taken from a manuscript differing in important respects from _O'F_ and resembling closely _Cy_ and _P_. _Elegie XII_, also, _His parting from her_, can hardly have been derived from _O'F_, as _1635_ gives an incomplete, _O'F_ has an entire, version of the poem. In others, however, e.g. _Elegie XIII. Julia_; _Elegie XVI. On his Mistris_; _Satyre_, 'Men write that love and reason disagree,' it will be seen that the text of 1635 agrees more closely with _O'F_ than with any of the other manuscripts cited. The second of these, _On his Mistris_, is a notable case, and so are the four _Divine Sonnets_ added in _1635_. Most striking of all is the case of the _Song_, probably not by Donne, 'Soules joy now I am gone,' where the absurd readings 'Words' for 'Wounds' and 'hopes joyning' for 'lipp-joyning' (or perhaps 'lipps-joyning') must have come from this source. One can hardly believe that two independent manuscripts would perpetrate two such blunders. Taken with the many changes from the text of _1633_ in which _1635_ has the support of _O'F_, one can hardly doubt that among the fresh manuscript collections which came into the hands of the printer of _1635_ (often only to mislead him) _O'F_ was one.

Besides the twenty poems which passed into _1635_, _O'F_ attributes some eighteen other poems to Donne, of which few are probably genuine.[23] Of the other manuscript collections I must speak more shortly. There is no evidence that any of them was used by the seventeenth-century editors.

_B_ is a handsome, vellum-bound manuscript belonging to the Earl of Ellesmere's library at Bridgewater House. I am, I think, the first editor who has examined it. The volume bears on the fly-leaf the autograph signature ('J. Bridgewater') of the first Earl of Bridgewater, the son of Donne's early patron, Elizabeth's Lord Keeper and later Lord Chancellor. On the title-page 'Dr Donne' is written in the same hand. John Egerton, it will be remembered, was, like Donne, a volunteer in Essex's expedition to the Azores in 1597. In 1599 he and his elder brother Thomas were in Ireland, where the latter was killed, leaving John to be his father's heir. The book-number, inscribed on the second leaf, is in the handwriting of the second Earl of Bridgewater, the Elder Brother of Milton's _Comus_. The manuscript has thus interesting associations, and links with Donne's earliest patron. I had hoped that it might prove, being made for those who had known Donne all his life, an exceptionally good manuscript, but can hardly say that my expectations were fulfilled. It was probably put together in the twenties, because though it contains the _Holy Sonnets_ it does not contain the hymns written at the close of the poet's life. It resembles _O'F_, _S_, _S96_, and _P_, rather than either of the first two collections which I have described, _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _A18_, _N_, _TC_, in that it includes with Donne's poems a number of poems not by Donne,[24] but most of them apparently by his contemporaries, Sir John Roe, Francis Beaumont, Jonson, and other of the wits of the first decade of the seventeenth century, the men who collaborated in writing witty poems on Coryat, or _Characters_ in the style of Sir Thomas Overbury. In the case of some of these initials are added, and a later, but not modern, hand has gone over the manuscript and denied or queried Donne's authorship of others. Textually also _B_ tends to range itself, especially in certain groups of poems, as the _Satyres_ and _Holy Sonnets_, with _O'F_, _S96_, _W_ when these differ from _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _A18_, _N_, _TC_. In such cases the tradition which it represents is most correctly preserved in _W_. In a few poems the text of _B_ is identical with that of _S96_. On the whole _B_ cannot be accepted in any degree as an independent authority for the text. It is important only for its agreements with other manuscripts, as helping to establish what I may call the manuscript tradition, in various passages, as against the text of the editions.

Still less valuable as an independent textual authority is

_P_. This manuscript is a striking example of the kind of collections of poems, circulating in manuscript, which gentlemen in the seventeenth century caused to be prepared, and one cannot help wondering how they managed to understand the poems, so full is the text of gross and palpable errors. _P_ is a small octavo manuscript, once in the Phillipps collection, now in the possession of Captain C. Shirley Harris, Oxford. On the cover of brown leather is stamped the royal arms of James I. On p. 1 is written, '1623 me possidet Hen. Champernowne de Dartington in Devonia, generosus.' Two other members of this old, and still extant, Devonshire family have owned the volume, as also Sir Edward Seymour (Knight Baronett) and Bridgett Brookbrige. The poems are written in a small, clear hand, and in Elizabethan character. Captain Harris has had a careful transcript of the poems made, and he allowed me after collating the original with the transcript to keep the latter by me for a long time.

The collection is in the nature of a commonplace-book, and includes a prose letter to Raleigh, and a good many poems by other poets than Donne, but the bulk of the volume is occupied with his poems,[25] and most of the poems are signed 'J. D. Finis.' The date of the collection is between 1619, when the poem _When he went with the Lo Doncaster_ was written, and 1623, the date on the title-page. Neither for text nor for canon is _P_ an authority, but the very carelessness with which it is written makes its testimony to certain readings indisputable. It makes no suggestion of conscious editing. In certain poems its text is identical with that of _Cy_, even to absurd errors. It sometimes, however, supports readings which are otherwise confined to _O'F_ and the later editions of the poem, showing that these may be older than 1632-5.

_Cy._ The Carnaby MS. consists of one hundred folio pages bound in flexible vellum, and is now in the Harvard College Library, Boston. It is by no means an exhaustive collection; the poems are chaotically arranged; the text seems to be careless, and the spelling unusually erratic; but most of the poems it contains are genuine.[26] This manuscript is not as a whole identical with _P_, but some of the poems it contains must have come from that or from a common source.

_JC._ The John Cave MS. is a small collection of Donne's poems now in the possession of Mr. Elkin Matthews, who has kindly allowed me to collate it. It was formerly in Mr. O'Flaherty's possession. The original possessor had been a certain John Cave, and the volume opens with the following poem, written, it will be seen, while Donne was still alive:

Oh how it joys me that this quick brain'd Age
can nere reach thee (Donn) though it should engage
at once all its whole stock of witt to finde
out of thy well plac'd words thy more pure minde.
Noe, wee are bastard Aeglets all; our eyes
could not endure the splendor that would rise
from hence like rays from out a cloud. That Man
who first found out the Perspective which can
make starrs at midday plainly seen, did more
then could the whole Chaos of Arte<s> before
or since; If I might have my wish 't shuld bee
That Man might be reviv'd againe to see
If hee could such another frame, whereby
the minde might bee made see as farr as th' eye.
Then might we hope to finde thy sense, till then
The Age of Ignorance I'le still condemn.

IO. CA.
Jun. 3. 1620.

The manuscript is divided into three parts, the first containing the five _Satyres_, the _Litany_ and the _Storme_ and _Calme_. The second consists of _Elegies_ and _Epigrammes_ and the third of _Miscellanea, Poems, Elegies, Sonnets by the same Author_. The elegies in the second part are, as in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _W_, thirteen in number. Their arrangement is that of _W_, and, like _W_, _JC_ gives _The Comparison_, which, _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ do not, but drops _Loves Progress_, which the latter group contains. The text of these poems is generally that of _W_, but here and throughout _JC_ abounds in errors and emendations. It contains one or two poems which were published in the edition of 1650, and which I have found in no other manuscript except _O'F_. In these _JC_ supplies some obvious emendations. The poems in the third part are very irregularly arranged. This is the only manuscript, professing to be of Donne's poems, which contains the elegy, 'The heavens rejoice in motion,' which the younger Donne added to the edition of 1650. It is not a very correct, but is an interesting manuscript, with very few spurious poems. At the other end of the manuscript from Donne's, are poems by Corbet.

What seems to be practically a duplicate of _JC_ is preserved in the Dyce Collection at the South Kensington Museum. It belonged originally to a certain 'Johannes Nedlam e Collegio Lincolniense' and is dated 1625. Cave's poem 'Upon Doctor Donne's Satyres' is inscribed and the contents and arrangement of the volume are identical with those of _JC_ except that one poem, _The Dampe_, is omitted, probably by an oversight, in the Dyce MS. After my experience of _JC_ I did not think it necessary to collate this manuscript. It was from it that Waldron printed some of the unpublished poems of Donne and Corbet in _A Collection of Miscellaneous Poetry_ (1802).

_H40_ and _RP31_, i.e. Harleian MS. 4064 in the British Museum, and Rawlinson Poetical MS. 31, in the Bodleian Library, are two manuscripts containing a fairly large number of Donne's poems intermingled with poems by other and contemporary authors. A note on the fly-leaf of _RP31_ declares that the manuscript contains 'Sir John Harringtons poems written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth', which is certainly not an accurate description.[27] Some of the poems must have been written as late as 1610, and they are by various authors, Wotton, Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir John Roe, Donne, Beaumont, and probably others, but names of authors are only occasionally given. Each manuscript starts with the words 'Prolegomena Quaedam', and the poem, 'Paynter while there thou sit'st.' The poems follow the same order in the two manuscripts, but of poems not by Donne _RP31_ contains several which are not in _H40_, and, on the other hand, of poems by Donne _H40_ inserts at various places quite a number, especially of songs, which are not in _RP31_. The latter is, in short, a miscellaneous collection of Elizabethan and early Jacobean poems, including several of Donne's; the former, the same collection in which Donne's poems have become by insertion the principal feature. I have cited the readings of _H40_ throughout; those of _RP31_ only when they differ from _H40_, or when I wish to emphasize their agreement. Wherever derived from, the poems are generally carefully and intelligently transcribed. They contain some unpublished poems of Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, and probably Daniel.

_L74._ The Lansdowne MS. 740, in the British Museum, is an interesting collection of Donne's mainly earlier and secular poems, along with several by contemporaries.[28] The text of the _Satyres_ connects this collection with _A18_, _N_, _TC_, but it is probably older, as it contains none of the _Divine Poems_ and no poem written later than 1610. Its interest, apart from the support which it lends to the readings of other manuscripts, centres in the evidence it affords as to the authorship of some of the unauthentic poems which have been ascribed to Donne.

_S._ The Stephens MS., now in the Harvard College Library, Boston, is the manuscript on which Dr. Grosart based his edition (though he does not reproduce it either consistently or with invariable accuracy) in 1873--an unhappy choice even were it legitimate to adopt any single manuscript in preference to the edition of 1633. Of all the manuscripts I have examined (I know it only through the collation made for me and from Dr. Grosart's citations) it is, I think, without exception the worst, the fullest of obvious and absurd blunders. There are too in it more evidences of stupid editing than in _P_, whose blunders are due to careless copying by eye or to dictation, and therefore more easy to correct.

The manuscript is dated, at the end, '19th July 1620,' and contains no poems which are demonstrably later than this date, or indeed than 1610. As, however, it contains several of the _Divine Poems_, including _La Corona_, but _not_ the _Holy Sonnets_, it affords a valuable clue to the date of these poems,--of which more elsewhere. The collection is an ambitious one, and an attempt has been made at classification. Six Satires are followed by twenty-seven Elegies (one is torn out) under which head love and funeral elegies are included, and these by a long series of songs with the _Divine Poems_ interspersed. Some of the songs, as of the elegies, are not by Donne.[29]

_S96._ Stowe MS. 961 is a small folio volume in the British Museum, containing a collection of Donne's poems very neatly and prettily transcribed. It cannot have been made before 1630 as it contains all the three hymns written during the poet's last illnesses. Indeed it is the only manuscript which I have found containing a copy of the _Hymne to God, my God in my Sicknes_. It is a very miscellaneous collection. Three satires are followed by the long obsequies to the Lord Harington, and these by a sequence of Letters, Funeral Elegies, Elegies, and Songs intermingled. It is regrettable that so well-written a manuscript is not more reliable, but its text is poor, its titles sometimes erroneous, and its ascriptions inaccurate.[30]

(3) In the third class I place manuscripts which are not primarily collections of Donne's poems but collections of seventeenth-century poems among which Donne's are included. It is not easy to draw a hard and fast line between this class and the last because, as has been seen, most of the manuscripts at the end of the last list contain poems which are not, or probably are not, by Donne. Still, in these collections Donne's work predominates, and the tendency of the collector is to bring the other poems under his aegis. Initials like J. R., F. B., J. H. disappear, or J. D. takes their place. In the case of these last collections this is not so. Poems by Donne are included with poems which the collector assigns to other wits. Obviously this class could be made to include many different kinds of collections, ranging from those in which Donne is a prominent figure to those which include only one or two of his poems. But such manuscripts have comparatively little value and no authority for the textual critic, though they are not without importance for the student of the canon of Donne's poetry. I shall mention only one or two, though I have examined a good many more.

_A25._ Additional MS. 25707, in the British Museum, is a large and interesting collection, written in several different hands, of early seventeenth-century poems, Jacobean and Caroline. It contains an _Elegie_ by Henry Skipwith on the death of King Charles I, but most of the poems are early Jacobean, and either the bulk of the collection was made before this and some other poems were inserted, or it is derived from older collections. Indeed, most of the poems by Donne were probably got from some older collection or collections not unlike some of those already described. They consist of twelve elegies arranged in the same order as in _JC_, _W_, and to some extent _O'F_, which is not the order of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _1633_; a number of _Songs_ with some _Letters_ and _Obsequies_ following one another sometimes in batches, at times interspersed with poems by other writers; the five _Satyres_, separated from the other poems and showing some evidences in the text of deriving from a collection like _Q_ or its duplicate in the Dyce collection.[31] The only one of the _Divine Poems_ which _A25_ contains is _The Crosse_. No poem which can be proved to have been written later than 1610 is included.

The poems by Donne in this manuscript are generally, but not always, initialled J. D., and are thus distinguished from others by F. B., H. K., N. H., H. W., Sr H. G., T. P., T. G., G. Lucy., No. B., &c. The care with which this has been done lends interest to those poems which are here ascribed to Donne but are not elsewhere assigned to him. _A25_ (with its partial duplicate _C_) is the only manuscript which attributes to 'J. D.' the Psalm, 'By Euphrates flowery side,' that was printed in _1633_ and all the subsequent editions.[32]

_C._ A strange duplicate of certain parts of _A25_ is a small manuscript in the Cambridge University Library belonging to the Baumgartner collection. It is a thin folio, much damaged by damp, and scribbled over. A long poem, _In cladem Rheensen_ ('Verses upon the slaughter at the Isle of Rhees'), has been used by the cataloguer to date the manuscript, but as this has evidently been inserted when the whole was bound, the rest of the contents may be older or younger. The collection opens with three of the _Elegies_ contained in _A25_. It then omits eleven poems which are in _A25_, and continues with twenty _Songs_ and _Obsequies_, following the order of _A25_ but omitting the intervening poems. Some nine more poems are given, following the order of _A25_, but many are omitted in _C_ which are found in _A25_, and the poems in _C_ are often only fragments of the whole poems in _A25_. Evidently _C_ is a selection of poems either made directly from _A25_, or from the collection of Donne's poems (with one or two by Beaumont and others) which _A25_ itself drew from.

_A10._ Additional MS. 10309, in the British Museum, is a little octavo volume which was once the property of Margaret Bellasis, probably the eldest daughter of Thomas, first Lord Fauconberg. It is a very miscellaneous collection of prose (Hall's _Characterismes of Vice_) and verse. Of Donne's undoubted poems there are very few, but there is an interesting group of poems by Roe or others (the authors are not named in the manuscript) which are frequently found with Donne's, and some of which have been printed as his.[33]

_M._ This is a manuscript bought by Lord Houghton and now in the library of the Marquis of Crewe. It is entitled

A Collection of

Original Poetry

written about the time of

Ben: Jonson

qui ob. 1637

A later hand, probably Sir John Simeon's, has added 'Chiefly in the Autograph of Dr. Donne Dean of St. Pauls', but this is quite erroneous. It is a miscellaneous collection of poems by Donne, Jonson, Pembroke, Shirley, and others, with short extracts from Fletcher and Shakespeare. Donne's are the most numerous, and their text generally good, but such a collection can have no authority. It is important only as supporting readings and ascriptions of other manuscripts. I cite it seldom.

_TCD_ (_Second Collection_).[34] The large manuscript volume in Trinity College, Dublin, contains two collections of poems (though editors have spoken of them as one) of very different character and value. The first I have already described. It occupies folios 1 to 292. On folio 293 a new hand begins with the song, 'Victorious Beauty though your eyes,' and from that folio to folio 565 (but some folios are torn out) follows a long and miscellaneous series of early seventeenth-century poems. There are numerous references to Buckingham, but none to the Long Parliament or the events which followed, so that the collection was probably put together before 1640. The poems are ascribed to different authors in a very haphazard and untrustworthy fashion. James I is credited with Jonson's epigram on the Union of the Crowns; Donne's _The Baite_ is given to Wotton; and Wotton's 'O Faithless World' to Robert Wisedom. Probably there is more reliance to be put on the ascriptions of later and Caroline poems, but for the student of Donne and early Jacobean poetry the collection has no value. Some of Donne's poems occur, and it is noteworthy that the version given is often a different one from that occurring in the first part of the volume. Probably two distinct collections have been bound up together.

Another collection frequently cited by Grosart, but of little value for the editor of Donne, is the _Farmer-Chetham MS._, a commonplace-book in the Chetham Library, Manchester, which has been published by Grosart. It contains one or two of Donne's poems, but its most interesting contents are the 'Gulling Sonnets' of Sir John Davies, and some poems by Raleigh, Hoskins, and others. Nothing could be more unsafe than to ascribe poems to Donne, as Grosart did, because they occur here in conjunction with some that are certainly his.

A similar collection, which I have not seen, is the _Hazlewood-Kingsborough MS._, as Dr. Grosart called it. To judge from the analysis in Thorpe's Catalogue, 1831, this too is a miscellaneous anthology of poems written by, or at any rate ascribed to, Shakespeare, Jonson, Bacon, Raleigh, Donne, and others. There is no end to the number of such collections, and it is absurd to base a text upon them.

The _Burley MS._, to which I refer once or twice, and which is a manuscript of great importance for the editor of Donne's letters, is not a collection of poems. It is a commonplace-book of Sir Henry Wotton's in the handwriting of his secretaries. Amid its varied contents are some letters, unsigned but indubitably by Donne; ten of his _Paradoxes_ with a covering letter; and a few poems of Donne's with other poems. Of the last, one is certainly by Donne (_H. W. in Hibernia belligeranti_), and I have incorporated it. The others seem to me exceedingly doubtful. They are probably the work of other wits among Wotton's friends. I have printed a selection from them in Appendix C.[35]

Of the manuscripts of the first two classes, which alone could put forward any claim to be treated as independent sources of the text of an edition of Donne's poems, it would be impossible, I think, to construct a complete genealogy. Different poems, or different groups of poems in the same manuscript, come from different sources, and to trace each stream to its fountain-head would be a difficult task, perhaps impossible without further material, and would in the end hardly repay the trouble, for the difficulties in Donne's text are not of so insoluble a character as to demand such heroic methods. The interval between the composition of the poems and their first publication ranges from about forty years at the most to a year or two. There is no case here of groping one's way back through centuries of transmission. The surprising fact is rather that so many of the common errors of a text preserved and transmitted in manuscript should have appeared so soon, that the text and canon of Donne's poems should present an editor in one form or another with all the chief problems which confront the editor of a classical or a mediaeval author.

The manuscripts fall into three main groups (1) _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. These with a portion of _1633_ come from a common source. (2) _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_. These also come from a single stream and some parts of _1633_ follow them. _L74_ is closely connected with them, at least in parts. (3) _A25_, _B_, _Cy_, _JC_, _O'F_, _P_, _S_, _S96_, _W_. These cannot be traced in their entirety to a single head, but in certain groups of poems they tend to follow a common tradition which may or may not be that of one or other of the first two groups. Of the _Elegies_, for example, _A25_, _JC_, _O'F_ and _W_ transcribe twelve in the same order and with much the same text. Again, _B_, _O'F_, _S96_, and _W_ have taken the _Holy Sonnets_ from a common source, but _O'F_ has corrected or altered its readings by a reference to a manuscript resembling _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, while _W_ has a more correct version than the others of the common tradition, and three sonnets which none of these include. Generally, whenever _B_, _O'F_, _S96_, and _W_ derive from the same source, _W_ is much the most reliable witness.

Indeed, our first two groups and _W_ have the appearance of being derived from some authoritative source, from manuscripts in the possession of members of Donne's circle. All the others suggest, by the headings they give to occasional poems, their misunderstanding of the true character of some poems, their erroneous ascriptions of poems, that they are the work of amateurs to whom Donne was not known, or who belonged to a generation that knew Donne as a divine, only vaguely as a wit.

These being the materials at our command, the question is, how are we to use them to secure as accurate a text as possible of Donne's poems, to get back as close as may be to what the poet wrote himself. The answer is fairly obvious, though it could not be so until some effort had been made to survey the manuscript material as a whole.

Of the three most recent editors--the first to attempt to obtain a true text--of Donne's poems, each has pursued a different plan. The late Dr. Grosart[36] proceeded on a principle which makes it exceedingly difficult to determine accurately what is the source of, or authority for, any particular reading he adopted. He printed now from one manuscript, now from another, but corrected the errors of the manuscript by one or other of the editions, most often by that of 1669. He made no estimate of the relative value of either manuscripts or editions, nor used them in any systematic fashion.

The Grolier Club edition[37] was constructed on a different principle. For all those poems which _1633_ contains, that edition was accepted as the basis; for other poems, the first edition, whichever that might be. The text of _1633_ is reproduced very closely, even when the editor leans to the acceptance of a later reading as correct. Only one or two corrections are actually incorporated in the text. But the punctuation has been freely altered throughout, and no record of these changes is preserved in the textual notes even when they affect the sense. In more than one instance the words of _1633_ are retained in this edition but are made to convey a different meaning from that which they bear in the original.

The edition of Donne's poems prepared by Mr. E. K. Chambers[38] for the _Muses Library_ was not based, like Dr. Grosart's, on a casual use of individual manuscripts and editions, nor like the Grolier Club edition on a rigid adherence to the first edition, but on an eclectic use of all the seventeenth-century editions, supplemented by an occasional reference to one or other of the manuscript collections, either at first hand or through Dr. Grosart.

Of these three methods, that of the Grolier Club editor is, there can be no doubt, the soundest. The edition of 1633 comes to us, indeed, with no _a priori_ authority. It was not published, or (like the sermons) prepared for the press[39] by the author; nor (as in the case of the first folio edition of Shakespeare's plays) was it issued by the author's executors.

But if we apply to _1633_ the _a posteriori_ tests described by Dr. Moore in his work on the textual criticism of Dante's _Divina Commedia_, if we select a number of test passages, passages where the editions vary, but where one reading can be clearly shown to be intrinsically the more probable, by certain definite tests,[40] we shall find that _1633_ is, taken all over, far and away superior to any other single edition, and, I may add at once, to any _single_ manuscript.

Moreover, any careful examination of the later editions, of their variations from _1633_, and of the text of the poems which they print for the first time, shows clearly that some method more trustworthy than individual preference must be found if we are to distinguish between those of their variations which have, and those which have not, some authority behind them; those which are derived from a fresh reference to manuscript sources, and those which are due to carelessness, to misunderstanding, or to unwarrantable emendation. Apart from some such sifting, an edition of Donne based, like Mr. Chambers', on an eclectic use of the editions is exactly in the same position as would be an edition of Shakespeare based on an eclectic use of the Folios, helped out by a quite occasional and quite eclectic reference to a quarto. A plain reprint of _1633_ like Alford's (of such poems as he publishes) has fewer serious errors than an eclectic text.

It is here that the manuscripts come to our aid. To take, indeed, any single manuscript, as Dr. Grosart did, and select this or that reading from it as seems to you good, is not a justifiable procedure. This is simply to add to the editions one more possible source of error. There is no single manuscript which could with any security be substituted for _1633_. Our analysis of that edition has made it appear probable that a manuscript resembling _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ was the source of a large part of its text. But it would be very rash to prefer _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ as a whole to _1633_.[41] It corrects some errors in that edition; it has others of its own. Even _W_, which has a completer version of some poems than _1633_, in these poems makes some mistakes which _1633_ avoids.

If the manuscripts are to help us it must be by collating them, and establishing what one might call the agreement of the manuscripts whether universal or partial, noting in the latter case the comparative value of the different groups. When we do this we get at once an interesting result. We find that in about nine cases out of ten the agreement of the manuscripts is on the side of those readings of _1633_ which are supported by the tests of intrinsic probability referred to above,[42] and on the other hand we find that sometimes the agreement of the manuscripts is on the side of the later editions, and that in such cases there is a good deal to be said for the later reading.[43]

The first result of a collation of the manuscripts is thus to vindicate _1633_, and to provide us with a means of distinguishing among later variants those which have, from those which have not, authority. But in vindicating _1633_ the agreement of the manuscripts vindicates itself. If _B_'s evidence is found always or most often to support _A_, a good witness, on those points on which _A_'s evidence is in itself most probably correct, not only is _A_'s evidence strengthened but _B_'s own character as a witness is established, and he may be called in when _A_, followed by _C_, an inferior witness, has gone astray. In some cases the manuscripts _alone_ give us what is obviously the correct reading, e.g. p. 25, l. 22, 'But wee no more' for 'But now no more'; p. 72, l. 26, 'his first minute' for 'his short minute'. These are exceptionally clear cases. There are some where, I have no doubt, my preference of the reading of the manuscripts to that of the editions will not be approved by every reader. I have adopted no rigid rule, but considered each case on its merits. All the circumstances already referred to have to be weighed--which reading is most likely to have arisen from the other, what is Donne's usage elsewhere, what Scholastic or other 'metaphysical' dogma underlies the conceit, and what is the source of the text of a particular poem in _1633_.

For my analysis of this edition has thrown light upon what of itself is evident--that of some poems or groups of poems _1633_ provides a more accurate text than of others, viz. of those for which its source was a manuscript resembling _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, but possibly more correct than any one of these, or revised by an editor who knew the poems. But in printing some of the poems, e.g. _The Progresse of the Soule_, a number of the letters to noble ladies and others,[44] the _Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inne_, _The Prohibition_, and a few others, for which _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ was not available, _1633_ seems to have followed an inferior manuscript, _A18_, _N_, _TC_ or one resembling it. In these cases it is possible to correct _1633_ by comparing it with a better single manuscript, as _G_ or _W_, or group of manuscripts, as _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. Sometimes even a generally inferior manuscript like _O'F_ seems to offer a better text of an individual poem, at least in parts, for occasionally the correct reading has been preserved in only one or two manuscripts. Only _W_ among eleven manuscripts which I have recorded (and I have examined others) preserves the reading in the _Epithalamion made at Lincolns Inne_, p. 143, l. 57:

His steeds nill be restrain'd

--which is quite certainly right. Only three manuscripts have the, to my mind, most probably correct reading in _Satyre I_, l. 58, p. 147:

The Infanta of London;

and only two, _Q_ and the _Dyce MS._ which is its duplicate, the tempting and, I think, correct reading in _Satyre IV_, l. 38, p. 160:

He speaks no language.

Lastly, there are poems for which _1633_ is not available. The authenticity of these will be discussed later. Their text is generally very corrupt, especially of those added in _1650_ and _1669_. Here the manuscripts help us enormously. With their aid I have been able to give an infinitely more readable text of the fine _Elegie XII_, 'Since she must go'; the brilliant though not very edifying _Elegies XVII_, _XVIII_, and _XIX_; as well as of most of the poems in the Appendixes. The work of correcting some of these had been begun by Dr. Grosart and Mr. Chambers, but much was still left to do by a wider collation. Dr. Grosart was content with one or two generally inferior manuscripts, and Mr. Chambers mentions manuscripts which time or other reasons did not allow him to examine, or he could not have been content to leave the text of these poems as it stands in his edition.

One warning which must be borne in mind when making a comparison of alternative readings has been given by Mr. Chambers, and my examination of the manuscripts bears it out: 'In all probability most of Donne's poems existed in several more or less revised forms, and it was sometimes a matter of chance which form was used for printing a particular edition.' The examination of a large number of manuscripts has shown that it is not probable, but certain, that of some poems (e.g. _The Flea_, _A Lecture upon the Shadow_, _The Good-Morrow_, _Elegie XI. The Bracelet_) more than one distinct version was in circulation. Of the _Satyres_, too, many of the variants represent, I can well believe, different versions of the poems circulated by the poet among his friends. And the same may possibly be true of variants in other poems. Our analysis of _1633_ has shown us what versions were followed by that edition. What happened in later editions was frequently that the readings of two different versions were combined eclectically. In the present edition, when it is clear that there were two versions, my effort has been to retain one tradition pure, recording the variants in the notes, even when in individual cases the reading of the text adopted seemed to me inferior to its rival, provided it was not demonstrably wrong.

In view of what has been said, the aim of the present edition may be thus briefly stated:

(1) To restore the text of _1633_ in all cases where modern editors have abandoned or disguised it, if there is no evidence, internal or external, to prove its error or inferiority; and to show, in the textual notes, how far it has the general support of the manuscripts.

(2) To correct _1633_ when the meaning and the evidence of the manuscripts point to its error and suggest an indubitable or highly probable emendation.

(3) To correct throughout, and more drastically, by help of the manuscripts when such exist, the often carelessly and erroneously printed text of those poems which were added in _1635_, _1649_, _1650_, and _1669_.

(4) By means of the commentary to vindicate or defend my choice of reading, and to elucidate Donne's thought by reference to his other works and (but this I have been able to do only very partially) to his scholastic and other sources.

As regards punctuation, it was my intention from the outset to preserve the original, altering it only (_a_) when, judged by its own standards, it was to my mind wrong--stops were displaced or dropped, or the editor had misunderstood the poet; (_b_) when even though defensible the punctuation was misleading, tested frequently by the fact that it had misled editors. In doing this I frequently made unnecessary changes because it was only by degrees that I came to understand all the subtleties of older punctuation and to appreciate some of its nuances. A good deal of my work in the final revision has consisted in restoring the original punctuation. In doing this I have been much assisted by the study of Mr. Percy Simpson's work on _Shakespearian Punctuation_. My punctuation will not probably in the end quite satisfy either the Elizabethan purist, or the critic who would have preferred a modernized text. I will state the principles which have guided me.

I do not agree with Mr. Chambers that the punctuation, at any rate of _1633_, is 'exceptionally chaotic'. It is sometimes wrong, and in certain poems, as the _Satyres_, it is careless. But as a rule it is excellent on its own principles. Donne, indeed, was exceptionally fastidious about punctuation and such typographical details as capital letters, italics, brackets, &c. The _LXXX Sermons_ of 1640 are a model of fine rhetorical and rhythmical pointing, pointing which inserted stops to show you where to stop. The sermons were not printed in his lifetime, but we know that he wrote them out for the press, hoping that they might be a source of income to his son.

But Donne did not prepare his poems for the press. Their punctuation is that of the manuscript from which they were taken, revised by the editor or printer. One can often recognize in _D_ the source of a stop in _1633_, or can see what the pointing and use of capitals would have been had Donne himself supervised the printing. The printer's man was sometimes careless; the printer or editor had prejudices of his own in certain things; and Donne is a difficult and subtle poet. All these circumstances led to occasional error.

The printer's prejudice was one which Donne shared, but not, I think, to quite the same extent. Compared, for example, with the _Anniversaries_ (printed in Donne's lifetime) _1633_ shows a fondness for the semicolon,[45] not only within the sentence, but separating sentences, instead of a full stop, when these are closely related in thought to one another. In an argumentative and rhetorical poet like Donne the result is excellent, once one grows accustomed to it, as is the use of commas, where we should use semicolons, within the sentence, dividing co-ordinate clauses from one another. On the other hand this use of semicolons leads to occasional ambiguity when one which separates two sentences comes into close contact with another within the sentence. For example, in _Satyre III_, ll. 69-72, how should an editor, modernizing the punctuation, deal with the semicolons in ll. 70 and 71? Should he print thus?--

But unmoved thou
Of force must one, and forc'd but one allow;
And the right. Ask thy father which is shee;
Let him ask his.

With trifling differences that is how Chambers and the Grolier Club editor print them. But the lines might run, to my mind preferably--

But unmoved thou
Of force must one, and forc'd but one allow.
And the right; ask thy father which is shee,
Let him ask his.

'And the right' being taken as equivalent to 'And as to the right'. One might even print--

And the right? Ask, &c.