John Marriot. Entered for his copy under the hands of Sir
Henry Herbert and both the Wardens, a book
of verse and poems (the five Satires, the first,
second, tenth, eleventh and thirteenth Elegies
being excepted) and these before excepted to
be his, when he brings lawful authority.
vi_d._
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.
After _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, the most carefully made collection of Donne's
poems is one represented now by four distinct manuscripts:
_A18._ Additional MS. 18646, in the British Museum.
_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.