ELEGIES on the Author's Death.
To this Edition is added,
Some ACCOUNT of the LIFE
of the AUTHOR.
_LONDON_:
Printed for J. TONSON, and Sold by
W. TAYLOR at the _Ship_ in
_Pater-noster-Row_. 1719.
This edition opens with the Epistle Dedicatory as in _1650-69_,
which is followed by an abridgement of Walton's _Life_ of Donne. An
examination of the text of the poems shows clearly that this
edition was printed from that of 1669, but is by no means a slavish
reproduction. The editor has consulted earlier editions and corrected
mistakes, but I have found no evidence either that he knew the
editions of 1633 and 1635, or had access to manuscript collections. He
very wisely dropped the Satire 'Sleep next Society', inserted for the
first time by the editor of _1669_, and certainly not by Donne. It was
reinserted by Chalmers in 1810.[12]
These, then, are the early editions of Donne's poems. But the printed
editions are not the only form in which the poems, or the great
majority of the poems, have come down to us. None of these editions,
we have seen, was issued before the poet's death. None, so far as
we can discover (I shall discuss this point more fully later), was
printed from sources carefully prepared for the press by the author,
as were for example the _LXXX Sermons_ issued in 1640. But Donne's
poems were well known to many readers before 1633. One of the earliest
published references to them occurs in 1614, in a collection of
Epigrams by Thomas Freeman, called _Runne_ | _And a great Cast_ |
_The_ | _Second Book_.
Epigram 84.
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 [Greek: BIATHANATOS],
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.
(1) Manuscript collections of portions of Donne's poems, e.g. the
_Satyres_. The 'booke' to which Freeman refers in the epigram quoted
above was probably a small collection of this kind, and we have seen
that Jonson sent the _Satyres_ to Lady Bedford, and Francis Davison
lent them to his brother. Of such collections I have examined the
following:
_Q._ This is a small quarto manuscript, bound up with a number of
other manuscripts, in a volume (MS. 216) in the library of Queen's
College, Oxford. It is headed _Mr. John Dunnes Satires_, and contains
the five Satires (which alone I have accepted as Donne's own) followed
by _A Storme_, _A Calme_, and one song, _The Curse_ (see p. 41), here
headed _Dirae_. As Mr. Chambers says (_Poems of John Donne_, i, p.
xxxvi), this is probably just the kind of 'booke' which Freeman read.
The poems it contains are probably those of Donne's poems which were
first known outside the circle of his intimate friends.
What seems to be a duplicate of _Q_ is preserved among the Dyce MSS.
in the South Kensington Museum. This contains the five _Satyres_, and
the _Storme_ and _Calme_. The MSS. are evidently transcribed from the
same source, but one is not a copy of the other. They agree in such
exceptional readings as e.g. _Satyres_, I. 58 'Infanta of London'; 94
'goes in the way' &c.; II. 86 'In wringing each acre'; 88 'Assurances
as bigge as glossie civill lawes'. The last suggests that the one is
a copy of the other, but again they diverge in such cases as III. 49
'Crants' _Dyce MS._; 'Crates' _Q_; and IV. 215-16 'a Topclief would
have ravisht him quite away' _Q_, where the _Dyce MS._ preserves the
normal 'a Pursevant would have ravisht him quite away'.
If manuscripts like _Q_ and the _Dyce MS._ carry us back, as they seem
to do, to the form in which the _Satyres_ circulated before any of the
later collections of Donne's poems were made (between 1620 and 1630),
they are clearly of great importance for the editor. The text of the
_Satyres_ in _1633_ and the later editions, which closely resembles
that of one of the later MS. collections, presents many variants from
the older tradition. It is a difficult matter to decide how far these
may be the corrections of the author himself, or of the collector and
editor.
_W._ This, the Westmoreland MS., belonging to Mr. Edmund Gosse, is
one of the most interesting and valuable manuscripts of Donne's poems
which have come down to us. It is bound in its original vellum, and
was written, Mr. Warner, late Egerton Librarian, British Museum,
conjectured from the handwriting, 'a little later than 1625'. This
date agrees with what one would gather from the contents, for the
manuscript contains sonnets which must have been written after 1617,
but does not contain any of the hymns written just at the close of
Donne's life.
_W_ is a much larger 'book' than _Q_. It begins with the five
_Satyres_, as that does. Leaving one page blank, it then continues
with a collection of the _Elegies_ numbered, thirteen in all, of which
twelve are Love Elegies, and one, the last, a Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow
who to this house.'[16] These are followed by an _Epithalamion_ (that
generally called 'made at Lincolns Inn') and a number of verse letters
to different friends, some of which are not contained in any of the
old editions. So many of them are addressed to Rowland Woodward, or
members of his family, that Mr. Gosse conjectures that the manuscript
was prepared for him, but this cannot be proved.[17] The letters are
followed by the _Holy Sonnets_, these by _La Corona_, and the book
closes (as many collections of the poems do) with a bundle of prose
_Paradoxes_, followed in this case by the _Epigrams_. Both the _Holy
Sonnets_ and the _Epigrams_ contain poems not printed in any of the
old editions.
It should be noted that though _W_ as a whole may have been
transcribed as late as 1625, it clearly goes back in portions to an
earlier date. The letters are headed e.g. To Mr. H. W., To Mr. C.
B., &c. Now the custom in manuscripts and editions is to bring these
headings up to date, changing 'To Mr. H. W.' into 'To S^r Henry
Wotton'. That they bear headings which were correct at the date when
the poems were written points to their fairly direct descent from the
original copies.
If _Q_ probably represents the kind of manuscript which circulated
pretty widely, _W_ is a good representative of the kind which
circulated only among Donne's friends. Some of the poems escaped being
transcribed into larger collections and were not published till our
own day. The value of _W_ for the text of Donne's poems must stand
high. For some of the letters and religious poems it is our sole
authority. Though a unique manuscript now, it was probably not so
always, for Addl. MS. 23229 in the British Museum contains a single
folio which must have been torn from a manuscript identical with _W_.
The handwriting is slightly different, but the order of the poems and
their text prove the identity.
_A23._ This same manuscript (Addl. MS. 23229), which is a very
miscellaneous collection of fragments, presented to the Museum by John
Wilson Croker, contains two other portions of what seem to have been
similar small 'books' of Donne's poems. The one is a fragment of what
seems to have been a carefully written copy of the _Epithalamion_,
with introductory _Eclogue_, written for the marriage of the Earl of
Somerset. Probably it was one of those prepared and circulated at
the time. The other consists of some leaves from a collection of the
_Satyres_ finely written on large quarto sheets.
_G._ This is a manuscript containing only the _Metempsychosis_, or
_Progresse of the Soule_, now in the possession of Mr. Gosse, who
(_Life &c. of John Donne_, i. 141) states that it 'belonged to a
certain Bradon, and passed into the Phillipps Collection'. It is not
without errors, but its text is, on the whole, more correct than that
of the manuscript source from which the version of 1633 was set up in
the first instance.
(2) In the second class I place manuscripts which are, or aim at
being, complete collections of Donne's poems. Most of these belong to
the years between 1620 and 1633. They vary considerably in accuracy of
text, and in the care which has been taken to include only poems that
are authentic. They were made probably by professional copyists,
and some of those whose calligraphy is most attractive show that the
scribe must have paid the smallest attention to the meaning of what he
was writing.
Of those which I have examined, two groups of manuscripts seem to me
especially noteworthy, because both show that their collectors had a
clear idea of what were, and what were not, Donne's poems, and because
of the general accuracy with which the poems in one of them are
transcribed. Taken with the edition of 1633 they form an invaluable
starting-point for the determination of the canon of Donne's poems.
The first of these is represented by three manuscripts which I
have examined, _D_ (Dowden), _H49_ (Harleian MS. 4955), and _Lec_
(Leconfield).
_D_ is a small quarto manuscript, neatly written in a thin, clear hand
and in ordinary script. It was formerly in the Haslewood collection,
and is now in the possession of Professor Edward Dowden, Trinity
College, Dublin, by whose kindness I have had it by me almost all the
time that I have been at work on my edition.
_H49_ is a collection of Donne's poems, in the British Museum, bound
up with some by Ben Jonson and others. It is a large folio written
throughout apparently in the same hand. It opens with some poems and
masques by Jonson. A certain Doctor Andrewes' poems occupy folios
57-87. They are signed _Franc: Andrilla. London August 14. 1629_.
Donne's poems follow, filling folios 88 to 144_b_. Thereafter follow
more poems by Andrewes, Jonson, and others, with some prose letters by
Jonson.
_Lec._ This is a large quarto manuscript, beautifully transcribed,
belonging to Lord Leconfield and preserved at Petworth House. Many of
the manuscripts in this collection were the property of Henry, ninth
Earl of Northumberland (1564-1632), the friend who communicated the
news of Donne's marriage to his father-in-law.
These three manuscripts are obviously derived from one common source.
They contain the same poems, except that _D_ has one more than _H49_,
and both of these have some which are not in _Lec_. The order of the
poems is the same, except that _D_ and _Lec_ show more signs of
an attempt to group the poems than _H49_. The text, with some
divergences, especially on the part of _Lec_, is identical. One
instance seems to point to one of them being the source of the others.
In the long _Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington, Brother to the Countess
of Bedford_, the original copyist, after beginning l. 159 'Vertue
whose flood', had inadvertently finished with the second half of l.
161, 'were [_sic_] blowne in, by thy first breath.' This error is
found in all the three manuscripts. It may, however, have come from
the common source of this poem, and there are divergences in order and
text which make me think that they are thus derived from one common
source.
A special interest attaches to this collection, apart from the
relative excellence of its text and soundness of its canon, from the
probability that a manuscript of this kind was used for a large, and
that textually the best, part of the edition of 1633. This becomes
manifest on a close examination of the order of the poems and of their
text. Mr. Gosse has said, in speaking of the edition of 1633: 'The
poems are thrown together without any attempt at intelligent order;
neither date, nor subject, nor relation is in the least regarded.'
This is not entirely the case. Satires, Elegies, Epigrams, Songs are
grouped to some extent. The disorder which prevails is due to two
causes: (1) to the fact that the printer set up from a variety
of sources. There was no previous collected edition to guide him.
Different friends supplied collections, and of a few poems there were
earlier editions. He seems to have passed from one of these to another
as was most convenient at the moment. Perhaps some were lent him only
for a time. The differences between copies of _1633_ show that it was
prepared carefully, but emended from time to time while the printing
was actually going on. (2) The second source of the order of the poems
is their order in the manuscripts from which they were copied. Now
a comparison of the order in _1633_ with that in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_
reveals a close connexion between them, and throws light on the
composition of _1633_.
It is necessary, before instituting this comparison with _1633_, to
say a word on the order of the poems in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ themselves,
as it is not quite the same in all three. _H49_ is the most irregular,
perhaps therefore the earliest, each of the others showing efforts
to obtain a better grouping of the poems. All three begin with the
_Satyres_, of which _D_ and _Lec_ have five, _H49_ only four; but
the text of _Lec_ differs from that of the other two, agreeing
more closely with the version of _1633_ and of another group of
manuscripts. They have all, then, thirteen _Elegies_ in the same
order. After these _H49_ continues with a number of letters (_The
Storme_, _The Calme_, _To S^r Henry Wotton_, _To S^r Henry Goodyere_,
_To the Countesse of Bedford_, _To S^r Edward Herbert_, and others)
intermingled with Funeral Elegies (_Lady Markham_, _Mris Boulstred_)
and religious poems (_The Crosse_, _The Annuntiation_, _Good Friday_).
Then follows a long series of lyrical pieces, broken after _The
Funerall_ by _A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mrs. Essex Rich_, the
_Epithalamion_ on the Palatine marriage, and an _Old Letter_ ('At once
from hence', p. 206). The lyrical pieces are then resumed, and the
collection ends with the Somerset _Eclogue_ and _Epithalamion_, the
_Letanye_, both sets of _Holy Sonnets_, a letter (_To the Countesse of
Salisbury_), and the long _Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington_.
_D_ makes an effort to arrange the poems following the _Elegies_ in
groups. The _Funeral Elegies_ come first, and two blank pages are
headed _An Elegye on Prince Henry_. The letters are then brought
together, and are followed by the religious poems dispersed in _H49_.
The lyrical poems follow piece by piece as in _H49_, and the whole
closes with the two epithalamia and the _Obsequies to the Ld.
Harrington_.
The order in _Lec_ resembles that of _H49_ more closely than that of
_D_. The mixed letters, funeral elegies, and religious poems follow
the _Elegies_ as in _H49_, but _Lec_ adds to them the two letters
(_Lady Carey_ and _The Countess of Salisbury_) and the _Letanie_ which
in _H49_ are dispersed through the lyrical pieces. _Lec_ does not
contain any of the _Holy Sonnets_, but after _The Letanie_ ten pages
are left blank, evidently intended to receive them. Thereafter, the
lyrical poems follow piece by piece as in _D_, _H49_, except that _The
Prohibition_ ('Take heed of loving mee') is omitted--a fact of some
interest when we come to consider _1633_. _Lec_ closes, like _D_, with
the epithalamia and the _Obsequies to the Lo: Harrington_.
Turning now to _1633_, we shall see that, whatever other sources the
editor of that edition used, one was a collection identical with, or
closely resembling, _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, especially _Lec_. That edition
begins with the _Progresse of the Soule_, which was _not_ derived from
this manuscript. Thereafter follow the two sets of _Holy Sonnets_, the
second set containing exactly the same number of sonnets, and in the
same order, as in _D_, _H49_, whereas other manuscripts, e.g. _B_,
_O'F_, _S_, _S96_, which will be described later, have more sonnets
and in a different order; and _W_, which agrees otherwise with _B_,
_O'F_, _S_, _S96_, adds three that are found nowhere else. The sonnets
are followed in _1633_ by the _Epigrams_, which are not in _D_, _H49_,
_Lec_, but after that the resemblance of _1633_ to _D_, _H49_, _Lec_
becomes quite striking. These manuscripts, we have seen, begin
with the _Satyres_. The edition, however, passes on at once to the
_Elegies_. Of the thirteen given in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, _1633_ prints
eight, omitting the first (_The Bracelet_), the second (_Going to
Bed_), the tenth (_Loves Warr_), the eleventh (_On his Mistris_),
and the thirteenth (_Loves Progresse_). That the editor, however,
had before him, and intended to print, the _Satyres_ and the thirteen
_Elegies_ as he found them in _his_ copy of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, is
proved by the following extract which Mr. Chambers quotes from the
Stationers' Register: