_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