'He was the Word that spake it.'
Of these twenty-three poems there is none which does not seem to me
fairly open to question, though of some I think Donne is certainly the
author.
Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have gathered
together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe force' and 'True
love finds witt', the first of which[6] was printed in _Le Prince
d'Amour_, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, 1856, and Grosart, 1872), as
the work not of Donne but of Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led
me to do so are not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they
form a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The argument
starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond of Hawthornden
regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): 'That Sir John Roe loved
him; and that when they two were ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a
Mask, Roe writt a moral Epistle to him, which began. That next to
playes the Court and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings,
Kings Lords [as] Lords do us.' (_Drummond's Conversations with
Jonson_), ed. Laing.
Now this statement of Jonson's is confirmed by some at any rate of
the manuscripts which contain the poem (see textual notes) since these
append the initials 'J. R.' But all the manuscripts which contain the
one poem contain also the next, 'If great men wrong me,' and though
none have added the initials 'J. R.', _B_, in which it has been
separated from 'The state and mens affairs' by two other poems,
appends 'doubtfull author' (the whole collection being professedly one
of Donne's poems). The third poem, _To Sr Tho. Roe, 1603_ (p. 410),
is in the same way found in all the manuscripts (except two, which are
one, _H40_ and _RP31_) which contain the epistles to Jonson, generally
in their immediate proximity, and in _B_ initialled 'J. R.' In the
others the poem is unsigned, and in _L74_ a much later hand has added
'J. D.'
Of the other poems, the first--the poem which was in _1669_ printed
as Donne's seventh _Satyre_, was dropped in _1719_ but restored by
Chalmers, Grosart, and Chambers--is said in _B_ to be 'By Sir John
Roe', and it is initialled 'J. R.' in _TCD_. Even an undiscriminating
manuscript like _O'F_ adds the note 'Quere, if Donnes or Sr Th:
Rowes', the more famous Sir Thomas Roe being substituted for his (in
1632) forgotten relative. Of the remaining five poems only two, 'Dear
Love, continue nice and chaste' (p. 412) and 'Shall I goe force an
Elegie?' (p. 410) are actually initialled in any of the manuscripts in
which I have found them.
But the presence or absence of a name or initials is not a conclusive
argument. It depends on the character of the manuscript. That 'Sleep
next Society' is initialled 'J. R.' in so carefully prepared a
collection of Donne's poems as _TCD_ is valuable evidence, and the
initials in a collection so well vouched for as _HN_, Drummond's copy
of a collection of poems in the possession of Donne, can only be set
aside by a scepticism which makes all historical questions insoluble.
But no reliance can be placed upon the unsupported statement of any
other of the manuscripts in which some or all of these poems occur,
any more than on that of the 1635 and later editions. The best of
them (_H40_, _RP31_) are often silent, and the others are too often
mistaken to be implicitly trusted. If we are to get the truth from
them it must be by cross-examination.
For the second proof on which my ascription of the poems to Roe
is based is the singular regularity with which they adhere to one
another. If a manuscript has one it generally has the rest in close
proximity. Thus _B_, after giving thirty-six poems by Donne, of which
only one is wrongly ascribed, continues with a number that are clearly
by other authors as well as Donne, and of ten sequent poems five are
'Sleep next Society,' 'The State and mens affairs,' 'True love finds
witt,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Dear Thom: Tell her if she.' A
fragment of 'Men say that love and reason disagree' comes rather
later. _H40_ and _RP31_ give in immediate sequence 'The State and mens
affairs,' 'If great men wrong me,' 'True Love finds witt,' 'Shall
I goe force an elegie,' 'Come Fates; I fear you not.' _L74_, a
collection not only of poems by Donne but of the work of other wits of
the day, transcribes in immediate sequence 'Deare Love continue,' 'The
State and mens affairs,' 'If great men wrong mee,' 'Shall I goe force
an elegie,' 'Tell her if shee,' 'True love finds witt,' 'Come Fates,
I fear you not.' Lastly _A10_, a quite miscellaneous collection, gives
in immediate or very close sequence '[Dear Thom:] Tell her if she,'
'True love finds witt,' 'Dear Love continue nice and chaste,' 'Shall I
goe force an elegie,' 'Men write that love and reason disagree.' 'Come
Fates; I fear you not' follows after a considerable interval.
It cannot be by an entire accident that these poems thus recur in
manuscripts which have so far as we can see no common origin.[7] And
as one is ascribed to Roe on indisputable (and) three on very
strong evidence, it is a fair inference, if borne out by a general
resemblance of thought, and style, and verse, that they are all by
Roe.
To my mind they have a strong family resemblance, and very little
resemblance to Donne's work. They are witty, but not with the subtle,
brilliant, metaphysical wit of Donne; they are obscure at times, but
not as Donne's poetry is, by too swift and subtle transitions, and
ingeniously applied erudition; there are in them none of Donne's
peculiar scholastic doctrines of angelic knowledge, of the microcosm,
of soul and body, or of his chemical and medical allusions; they are
coarse and licentious, but not as Donne's poems are, with a kind of
witty depravity, Italian in origin, and reminding one of Ovid and
Aretino, but like Jonson's poetry with the coarseness of the tavern
and the camp. On both Jonson's and Roe's work rests the trail of what
was probably the most licentious and depraving school in Europe, the
professional armies serving in the Low Countries.
For a brief account of Roe's life will explain some features of his
poetry, especially the vivid picture of life in London in the Satire,
'Sleep next Society,' which is strikingly different in tone, and in
the aspects of that life which are presented, from anything in Donne's
_Satyres_. Roe has been hitherto a mere name appearing in the notes
to Jonson's and to Donne's poems. No critic has taken the trouble to
identify him. Gifford suggested or stated that he was the son of Sir
Thomas Roe, who as Mayor of London was knighted in 1569. Mr. Chambers
accepts this and when referring to Jonson, _Epigram 98_, on Roe the
ambassador, he adds, 'there are others in the same collection to his
uncles Sir John Roe and William Roe.' Who this uncle was they do not
tell us, but Hunter in the _Chorus Vatum_ notes that, if Gifford's
conjecture be sound, then he must be John Roe of Clapham in
Bedfordshire, the eldest son of the Lord Mayor.
It is a quaint picture we thus get of the famous ambassador's uncle
(he was older than 'Dear Thom's' father)--a kind of Sir Toby Belch,
taking the pleasures of the town with his nephew, and writing a satire
which might make a young man blush to read. But in fact John Roe of
Clapham was never Sir John, and he was dead twelve years before
1603, when these poems were written.[8] Sir John Roe the poet was the
cousin, not the uncle, of the ambassador. He was the eldest son of
William Rowe (or Roe) of Higham Hill, near Walthamstow, in the county
of Essex.[9] William Roe was the third son of the first Lord Mayor
of the name Roe.[10] He had two sons, John and William, the latter
of whom is probably the person addressed in Jonson's _Epigrammes_,
cxxviii. John was born, according to a statement in Morant's _History
of Essex_ (1768), on the fifth of May, 1581. This harmonizes with the
fact that when the elder William Roe died in 1596 John was still a
minor and thereby a cause of anxiety to his father, who in his will,
proved in 1596, begs his wife and executors to 'be suiters for his
wardeshipp, that his utter spoyle (as much as in them is) maie be
prevented'. This probably refers to the chance of a courtier being
made ward and despoiling the lad. The following year he matriculated
at Queen's College, Oxford.[11] How long he stayed there is not known,
probably not long. The career he chose was that of a soldier, and his
first service was in Ireland. If he went there with Essex in 1599 he
is perhaps one of that general's many knights. But he may have gone
thither later, for he evidently found a patron in Mountjoy. In 1605
that nobleman, then Earl of Devonshire, wrote to Sir Ralph Winwood,
Ambassador to the United Provinces, first to recommend Roe to him as
one wishing to follow the wars and therein to serve the States; and
then to thank him for his readiness to befriend Sir John Roe. He adds
that he will be ever ready to serve the States to requite any favour
Roe shall receive.[12] By 1608 he was dead, for a list of captains
discharged in Ireland since 1603 gives the following: 'Born in England
and dead in 1608--Sir John Roe.'[13]
Such in brief outline is the life of the man who in 1603, possibly
between his Irish and Low Country campaigns, appears in London as
one, with his more famous cousin Thomas, of the band of wits and poets
whose leader was Jonson, whose most brilliant star was Donne. Jonson's
epigrams and conversations enable us to fill in some of the colours
wanting in the above outline. The most interesting of these shows Roe
to have been in Russia as well as Ireland and the Low Countries, and
tells us that he was, like 'Natta the new knight' in his _Satyre_, a
duellist: