Chapter 5

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 general1633follows the version preserved inN,TCD, and also inL74(of which later), when the rest of the manuscripts present an interestingly different text. But strangely enough this version of theSatyresis also inLec. This is the feature in which that manuscript diverges most strikingly fromDandH49. Moreover in some details in which1633differs fromA18,N,TCit agrees withLec. It is possible therefore that theSatyreswere printed from the same manuscript as the majority of the poems.

Again in theLettersnot found inD,H49,Lecthere is a close but not invariable agreement between the text of1633and that of this group of manuscripts. Those letters, which follow thatTo Sir Edward Herbert, are printed in1633in 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 fromW. Now inA18,N,TCthese letters are also brought together (N,TCDadding some which are not inA18,TCC), and the special group referred to, of letters to intimate friends, are arranged in exactly the same order as in1633; have the same headings, the same omissions, and the same accidental linking of twopoems. 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),1633followsN,TCDwhereO'Fgives 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 toN,TCD, where 'a praiser prayes' has accidentally but explicably been written 'a prayer praise'. In the letterTo the Countesse of Huntingdon(p.201) the1633version of ll. 25, 26 is a correct rendering of whatN,TCDgive wrongly:

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

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. TheProgresse of the SouleorMetempsychosis, as printed in1633, 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' ofA18,N,TC; and similarly the 'leagues o'rpast', l. 296 of1633, is probably due to the omission of 'many' before 'leagues' inA18,N,TC—'o'rpast' supplies the lost foot. It is clear, however, from a comparison of different copies that as1633passed 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 fromG.

The paraphrase ofLamentations, and theEpithalamion made at Lincolns Inn(which is not inD,H49,Lec) are other poems which show, in passages where there are divergent readings, a tendency to follow the readings ofA18,N,TC, though in neither of these poems is the identity complete. It is further noteworthy that to several poems unnamed inD,H49,Lecthe editor of1633has given the title which these bear inA18,N,TCC, andTCD, 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 of1633. What other poems that edition contains were derived either from previously printed editions (TheAnniversariesand theElegy 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 when1635and the subsequent editions depart from1633and 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 toNotes 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

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 in1635, 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 theElegie XI. The Bracelet, in1635, is evidently taken from a manuscript differing in important respects fromO'Fand resembling closelyCyandP.Elegie XII, also,His parting from her, can hardly have been derived fromO'F, as1635gives an incomplete,O'Fhas 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 withO'Fthan with any of the other manuscripts cited. The second of these,On his Mistris, is a notable case, and so are the fourDivine Sonnetsadded in1635. Most striking of all is the case of theSong, 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 of1633in which1635has the support ofO'F, one can hardly doubt that among the fresh manuscript collections which came into the hands of the printer of1635(often only to mislead him)O'Fwas one.

Besides the twenty poems which passed into1635,O'Fattributes some eighteen other poems to Donne, of which feware probably genuine.23Of the other manuscript collections I must speak more shortly. There is no evidence that any of them was used by the seventeenth-century editors.

Bis 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'sComus. 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 theHoly Sonnetsit does not contain the hymns written at the close of the poet's life. It resemblesO'F,S,S96, andP, rather than either of the first two collections which I have described,D,H49,LecandA18,N,TC, in that it includes with Donne's poems a number of poems not by Donne,24but most of themapparently 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, orCharactersin 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 alsoBtends to range itself, especially in certain groups of poems, as theSatyresandHoly Sonnets, withO'F,S96,Wwhen these differ fromD,H49,LecandA18,N,TC. In such cases the tradition which it represents is most correctly preserved inW. In a few poems the text ofBis identical with that ofS96. On the wholeBcannot 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.Pis 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 writtenin 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,25and most of the poems are signed 'J. D. Finis.' The date of the collection is between 1619, when the poemWhen he went with the Lo Doncasterwas written, and 1623, the date on the title-page. Neither for text nor for canon isPan 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 ofCy, even to absurd errors. It sometimes, however, supports readings which are otherwise confined toO'Fand the later editions of the poem, showing that these may be older than 1632-5.

Cy.The Carnaby MS. consists of one hundred foliopages 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.26This manuscript is not as a whole identical withP, 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 Agecan nere reach thee (Donn) though it should engageat once all its whole stock of witt to findeout of thy well plac'd words thy more pure minde.Noe, wee are bastard Aeglets all; our eyescould not endure the splendor that would risefrom hence like rays from out a cloud. That Manwho first found out the Perspective which canmake starrs at midday plainly seen, did morethen could the whole Chaos of Arte〈s〉 beforeor since; If I might have my wish 't shuld beeThat Man might be reviv'd againe to seeIf hee could such another frame, wherebythe minde might bee made see as farr as th' eye.Then might we hope to finde thy sense, till thenThe Age of Ignorance I'le still condemn.IO. CA.Jun. 3. 1620.

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 fiveSatyres, theLitanyand theStormeandCalme. The second consists ofElegiesandEpigrammesand the third ofMiscellanea, Poems, Elegies, Sonnets by the same Author. The elegies in the second part are, as inD,H49,Lec, andW, thirteen in number. Their arrangement is that ofW, and, likeW,JCgivesThe Comparison, which,D,H49,Lecdo not, but dropsLoves Progress, which the latter group contains. The text of these poems is generally that ofW, but here and throughoutJCabounds 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 exceptO'F. In theseJCsupplies 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 ofJCis 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 ofJCexcept that one poem,The Dampe, is omitted, probably by an oversight, in the Dyce MS. After my experience ofJCI 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 inA Collection of Miscellaneous Poetry(1802).

H40andRP31, 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 andcontemporary authors. A note on the fly-leaf ofRP31declares that the manuscript contains 'Sir John Harringtons poems written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth', which is certainly not an accurate description.27Some 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 DonneRP31contains several which are not inH40, and, on the other hand, of poems by DonneH40inserts at various places quite a number, especially of songs, which are not inRP31. 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 ofH40throughout; those ofRP31only when they differ fromH40, 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.28The text oftheSatyresconnects this collection withA18,N,TC, but it is probably older, as it contains none of theDivine Poemsand 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 inP, 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 theDivine Poems, includingLa Corona, butnottheHoly 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 theDivine Poemsinterspersed. 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 theHymne 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 differentkinds 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 anElegieby 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 inJC,W, and to some extentO'F, which is not the order ofD,H49,Lecand1633; a number ofSongswith someLettersandObsequiesfollowing one another sometimes in batches, at times interspersed with poems by other writers; the fiveSatyres, separated from the other poems and showing some evidences in the text of deriving from a collection likeQor its duplicate in the Dyce collection.31The only one of theDivine PoemswhichA25contains isThe 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 duplicateC) is the only manuscript which attributes to'J. D.' the Psalm, 'By Euphrates flowery side,' that was printed in1633and all the subsequent editions.32

C.A strange duplicate of certain parts ofA25is 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 theElegiescontained inA25. It then omits eleven poems which are inA25, and continues with twentySongsandObsequies, following the order ofA25but omitting the intervening poems. Some nine more poems are given, following the order ofA25, but many are omitted inCwhich are found inA25, and the poems inCare often only fragments of the whole poems inA25. EvidentlyCis a selection of poems either made directly fromA25, or from the collection of Donne's poems (with one or two by Beaumont and others) whichA25itself 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'sCharacterismes 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).34The 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'sThe Baiteis 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 theFarmer-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 theHazlewood-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.

TheBurley 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 hisParadoxeswith 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 tome 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 of1633come from a common source. (2)A18,N,TCC,TCD. These also come from a single stream and some parts of1633follow them.L74is 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 theElegies, for example,A25,JC,O'FandWtranscribe twelve in the same order and with much the same text. Again,B,O'F,S96, andWhave taken theHoly Sonnetsfrom a common source, butO'Fhas corrected or altered its readings by a reference to a manuscript resemblingD,H49,Lec, whileWhas a more correct version than the others of the common tradition, and three sonnets which none of these include. Generally, wheneverB,O'F,S96, andWderive from the same source,Wis much the most reliable witness.

Indeed, our first two groups andWhave 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. Grosart36proceeded on a principlewhich 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 edition37was constructed on a different principle. For all those poems which1633contains, that edition was accepted as the basis; for other poems, the first edition, whichever that might be. The text of1633is reproduced very closely, even when the editor leans to the acceptance of a later reading as correct. Only one or two corrections areactually 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 of1633are 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. Chambers38for theMuses Librarywas 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 noa prioriauthority. It was notpublished, or (like the sermons) prepared for the press39by 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 to1633thea posterioritests described by Dr. Moore in his work on the textual criticism of Dante'sDivina 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,40we shall find that1633is, taken all over,far and away superior to any other single edition, and, I may add at once, to anysinglemanuscript.

Moreover, any careful examination of the later editions, of their variations from1633, 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 of1633like 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 for1633. Our analysis of that edition has made it appear probable that a manuscript resemblingD,H49,Lecwas the source of a large part of its text. But it would be very rash to preferD,H49,Lecas a whole to1633.41It corrects some errors in that edition; it has others of its own. EvenW, which hasa completer version of some poems than1633, in these poems makes some mistakes which1633avoids.

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 of1633which are supported by the tests of intrinsic probability referred to above,42and 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 vindicate1633, and to provide us with a means of distinguishing among later variants those which have, from those which have not, authority. But in vindicating1633the agreement of the manuscripts vindicates itself. IfB's evidence is found always or most often to supportA, a good witness, on those points on whichA's evidence is in itself most probably correct, not only isA's evidence strengthened butB's owncharacter as a witness is established, and he may be called in whenA, followed byC, an inferior witness, has gone astray. In some cases the manuscriptsalonegive 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 in1633.

For my analysis of this edition has thrown light upon what of itself is evident—that of some poems or groups of poems1633provides a more accurate text than of others, viz. of those for which its source was a manuscript resemblingD,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,44theEpithalamion made at Lincolns Inne,The Prohibition, and a few others, for whichD,H49,Lecwas not available,1633seems to have followed an inferior manuscript,A18,N,TCor one resembling it. In these cases it is possible to correct1633by comparing it with a better single manuscript, asGorW, or group of manuscripts, asD,H49,Lec. Sometimes even a generally inferior manuscript likeO'Fseems to offer a better text of an individual poem, at least in parts, foroccasionally the correct reading has been preserved in only one or two manuscripts. OnlyWamong eleven manuscripts which I have recorded (and I have examined others) preserves the reading in theEpithalamion 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 inSatyre I, l. 58, p.147:

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