I have left the
question
of authorship an open one.
John Donne
Chambers justly calls 'a very good
authority'. [14] The latter, however, believes the poem to be Donne's
because the central idea--the inseparableness of souls--is his, and so
is the contemptuous tone of
Fooles have no meanes to meet,
But by their feet.
But both the contemptuous tone and the Platonic thought were growing
common. We get it again in Lovelace's
If to be absent were to be
Away from thee.
The thought is Donne's, but not the airy note, the easy style, or
the tripping prosody. Donne never writes of absence in this cheerful,
confident strain. He consoles himself at times with the doctrine of
inseparable souls, but the note of pain is never absent. He cannot
cheat his passionate heart and senses with metaphysical subtleties.
The song _Farewell to love_, the second in the list of poems added
in _1635_, is found only in _O'F_ and _S96_. There is therefore no
weighty external evidence for assigning it to Donne, but no one can
read it without feeling that it is his. The cynical yet passionate
strain of wit, the condensed style, and the metaphysical turn given to
the argument, are all in his manner. As printed in _1635_ the point
of the third stanza is obscured. As I have ventured to amend it, an
Aristotelian doctrine is referred to in a way that only Donne would
have done in quite such a setting.
The three _Elegies_, XII, XIII, and XIV (7, 8, 9 in the list), must
also be assigned to Donne, unless some more suitable candidate can be
advanced on really convincing grounds. The first of the three, _His
parting from her_, is so fine a poem that it is difficult to think any
unknown poet could have written it. In sincerity and poetic quality it
is one of the finest of the _Elegies_,[15] and in this sincerer
note, the absence of witty paradox, it differs from poems like _The
Bracelet_ and _The Perfume_ and resembles the fine elegy called _His
Picture_ and two other pieces that stand somewhat apart from the
general tenor of the _Elegies_, namely, the famous elegy _On his
Mistris_, in which he dissuades her from travelling with him as a
page:
By our first strange and fatal interview,
and that rather enigmatical poem _The Expostulation_, which found its
way into Jonson's _Underwoods_:
To make the doubt clear that no woman's true,
Was it my fate to prove it strong in you?
All of these poems bear the imprint of some actual experience, and to
this cause we may perhaps trace the comparative rareness with which
_His parting from her_ is found in manuscripts, and that it finally
appeared in a mutilated form. The poet may have given copies only to
a few friends and desired that it should not be circulated. In the
Second Collection of poems in _TCD_ it is signed at the close, 'Sir
Franc: Wryothlesse. ' Who is intended by this I do not know. The
ascriptions in this collection are many of them purely fanciful.
Still, that the poem is Donne's rests on internal evidence alone.
Of the other two elegies, _Julia_, which is found in only two
manuscripts, _B_ and _O'F_, is quite the kind of thing Donne might
have amused himself by writing in the scurrilous style of Horace's
invectives against Canidia, frequently imitated by Mantuan and other
Humanists. The chief difficulty with regard to the second, _A Tale of
a Citizen and his Wife_, is to find Donne writing in this vein at
so late a period as 1609 or 1610, the date implied in several of the
allusions. He was already the author of religious poems, including
probably _La Corona_. In 1610 he wrote his _Litanie_, and, as
Professor Norton points out, in the same letter in which he tells of
the writing of the latter he refers to some poem of a lighter nature,
the name of which is lost through a mutilation of the letter, and
says, 'Even at this time when (I humbly thank God) I ask and have his
comfort of sadder meditations I do not condemn in myself that I
have given my wit such evaporations as those, if they be free from
profaneness, or obscene provocations. ' Whether this would cover the
elegy in question is a point on which perhaps our age and Donne's
would not decide alike. Donne's nature was a complex one. Jack Donne
and the grave and reverend divine existed side by side for not a
little time, and even in the sermons Donne's wit is once or twice
rather coarser than our generation would relish in the pulpit. But
once more we must add that it is possible Donne has in this case
been made responsible for what is another's. Every one wrote this
occasional poetry, and sometimes wrote it well.
There is no more difficult poem to understand or to assign to or from
Donne than the long letter headed _To the Countesse of Huntington_, 13
on the list, which, for the time being, I have placed in the Appendix
B. On internal grounds there is more to be said for ascribing it to
Donne than any other single poem in this collection. Nevertheless I
have resolved to let it stand, that it may challenge the attention it
deserves. [16] The reasons which led me to doubt Donne's authorship are
these:
(1) The poem was not included in the 1633 edition, nor is it found in
either of the groups _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_.
It was added in _1635_ with four other spurious poems, the dialogue
ascribed to Donne and Wotton but assigned by the great majority of
manuscripts to the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyard, the two
epistles to Ben Jonson, and the Elegy addressed to Sir Thomas Roe,
which we have assigned, for reasons given above, to Sir John Roe. The
poem is found in only two manuscript collections, viz. _P_ and the
second, miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century poems in
_TCD_. In both of these it is headed _Sr Walter Ashton_ (or _Aston_)
_to the Countesse of Huntingtone_, and no reference whatsoever is made
to Donne. I do not attach much importance to this title. Imaginary
headings were quite common in the case of poems circulating in
manuscript. Poems are inscribed as having been written by the Earl of
Essex or Sir Walter Raleigh the night before he died, or as found in
the pocket of Chidiock Tichbourne. Editors have occasionally taken
these too seriously. Drayton's _Heroicall Epistles_ made it a fashion
to write such letters in the case of any notorious love affair or
intrigue. The manuscript _P_ contains a long imaginary letter from Sir
Philip Sidney to Lady Mary Rich and a fragment of her reply. In
the same manuscript the poem, probably by the Earl of Pembroke,
'Victorious beauty though your eyes,' is headed _The Mar: B to the
Lady Fe: Her. _, i. e. the Marquis of Buckingham to--I am not sure what
lady is intended. The only thing which the title given to the letter
in question suggests is that it was not an actual letter to the
Countess but an imaginary one.
(2) Of Donne's relations with Elizabeth Stanley, who in 1603 became
the Countess of Huntingdon, his biographers have not been able to tell
us very much. He must have met her at the house of Sir Thomas Egerton
when her mother, the dowager Countess of Derby, married that statesman
in 1600. Donne says:
I was your Prophet in your yonger dayes,
And now your Chaplaine, God in you to praise.
(p. 203, ll. 69-70. )
Donne's friend, Sir Henry Goodyere, seems to have had relations with
her either directly or through her first cousin, the Countess of
Bedford, for Donne writes to him from Mitcham, 'I remember that
about this time you purpose a journey to fetch, or meet the Lady
_Huntington_. ' This fact lends support to the view of Mr. Chambers
and Mr. Gosse that she is 'the Countesse' referred to in the following
extract from a letter to Goodyere, which has an important bearing on
the poem under consideration. Very unfortunately it is not dated, and
Mr. Chambers and Mr. Gosse differ widely as to the year in which it
may have been written. The latter places it in April, 1615, when
Donne was on the eve of taking Orders, and was approaching his noble
patronesses for help in clearing himself of debt. But Mr. Chambers
points to the closing reference to 'a Christning at _Peckam_', and
dates the letter 1605-6, when Donne was at Peckham after leaving
Pyrford and before settling at Mitcham. I am not sure that this is
conclusive, for in Donne's unsettled life before 1615 Mrs. Donne might
at any time have gone for her lying-in or for a christening festival
to the house of her sister Jane, Lady Grimes, at Peckham. But the tone
of the letter, melancholy and reflective, is that of the letters to
Goodyere written at Mitcham, and the general theme of the letter, a
comparison of the different Churches, is that of other letters of
the same period. The one in question (_Letters_ 1651, p. 100;
Gosse, _Life_, ii. 77) seems to be almost a continuation of another
(_Letters_, 1651, p. 26; Gosse, _Life_, i. 225). Whatever be its date,
this is what Donne says: 'For the other part of your Letter, spent
in the praise of the Countesse, I am always very apt to beleeve it of
her, and can never beleeve it so well, and so reasonably, as now, when
it is averred by you; but for the expressing it to her, in that sort
as you seeme to counsaile, I have these two reasons to decline it.
That that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning of
a graver course then of a Poet, into which (that I may also keep my
dignity) I would not seeme to relapse. The Spanish proverb informes
me, that he is a fool which cannot make one Sonnet, and he is mad
which makes two. The other strong reason is my integrity to the other
Countesse' (i. e. probably the Countess of Bedford. The words which
follow seem to imply a more recent acquaintance than is compatible
with so late a date as 1615), 'of whose worthinesse though I swallowed
your words, yet I have had since an explicit faith, and now a
knowledge: and for her delight (since she descends to them) I had
reserved not only all the verses which I should make, but all the
thoughts of womens worthinesse. But because I hope she will not
disdain, that I should write well of her Picture, I have obeyed you
thus far as to write; but intreat you by your friendship, that by this
occasion of versifying, I be not traduced, nor esteemed light in that
Tribe, and that house where I have lived. If those reasons which moved
you to bid me write be not constant in you still, or if you meant
not that I should write verses; or if these verses be too bad, or too
good, over or under her understanding, and not fit; I pray receive
them as a companion and supplement of this Letter to you,' &c. If this
was written in 1615 it is incompatible with the fact (supposing the
poem under consideration to be by Donne) that he had already written
to the Countess of Huntingdon a letter in a very thinly disguised tone
of amatory compliment. If, however, it was written, as is probable,
earlier, the reference may be to this very poem. Perhaps Goodyere
thought it 'over or under' the Countess's understanding and did not
present it.
(3) Certainly, looking at the poem itself, one has difficulty in
declaring it to be, or not to be, Donne's work. Its metaphysical wit
and strain of high-flown, rarefied compliment suggest that only he
could have written it; in parts, on the other hand, the tone does not
seem to me to be his. It is certainly very different from that of the
other letters to noble ladies. It carries one back to the date of the
_Elegies_. If Donne's, it is a further striking proof how much of the
tone of a lover even a married poet could assume in addressing a noble
patroness. Would Donne at any time of his life write to the Countess
of Huntingdon in the vein of p. 418, ll. 21-36, or the next paragraph,
ll. 37-76? One could imagine the Earl of Pembroke, or some one on
a level of equality socially with the Countess, writing so; not a
dependent addressing a patroness. The only points of style and verse
which might serve as clues are (1) the peculiar use of 'young',
e. g. l. 84 'youngest flatteries', l. 13 'younger formes'. With which
compare in the _Letter_ to Wotton, here added, at p. 188:
Ere sicknesses attack, yong death is best.
(2) A recurring pattern of line to which Sir Walter Raleigh drew my
attention:
35. Who first looked sad, griev'd, pin'd, and shew'd his pain.
61. Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason sway.
88. You are the straight line, thing prais'd, attribute.
113. Such may have eye and hand, may sigh, may speak.
I have not found this pattern elsewhere, and indeed the versification
throughout seems to me unlike that of Donne. Donne's decasyllabic
couplets have two quite distinctive patterns. The one is that of the
_Satyres_. In these the logical or rhetorical scheme runs right across
the metrical scheme--that is, the sense overflows from line to line,
and the pauses come regularly inside the line. A good example is the
paragraph beginning at p. 156, l. 65.
Graccus loves all as one, &c.
In the _Elegies_ and in the _Letters_ the structure is not so
irregular and unmusical, but is periodic or paragraphic, i. e. the
lines do not fall into couplets but into larger groups knit together
by a single sentence or some closely connected sentences, the full
meaning or emphasis being well sustained to the close. Good examples
are _Elegie I. _ ll. 1 to 16, _Elegie IV. _ ll. 13 to 26, _Elegie V. _ l.
5 to the end, _Elegie VIII. _ ll. 1 to 34. Excellent examples are also
the letter _To the Countesse of Salisbury_ and the _Hymn to the Saints
and the Marquesse Hamylton_. Each of these is composed of three or
four paragraphs at the most. Now in the poem under consideration
there are two, or three at the most, paragraphs which suggest Donne's
manner, viz. ll. 1 to 10, ll. 11 to 16, and ll. 37 to 46. But the rest
of the poem is almost monotonously regular in its couplet structure.
To my mind the poem is not unlike what Rudyard might have written.
Indeed a fine piece of verse by Rudyard, belonging to the dialogue
between him and the Earl of Pembroke on Love and Reason, is attributed
to Donne in several manuscripts. The question is an open one, but had
I realized in time the weakness of the positive external evidence I
should not have moved the poem. I have been able to improve the text
materially.
With regard to the _Elegie on Mistris Boulstred_ (18 on the list) I
cannot expect readers to accept at once the conjecture I have ventured
to put forward regarding the authorship, for I have changed my own
mind regarding it. Two Elegies, both perhaps on Mris. Boulstred, Donne
certainly did write, viz.
Death I recant, and say, unsaid by mee
What ere hath slip'd, that might diminish thee;
and another, entitled _Death_, beginning
Language thou art too narrow, and too weake
To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake.
Both of these are attributed to Donne by quite a number of manuscripts
and are very characteristic of his poetry in this kind, highly charged
with ingenious wit and extravagant eulogy. It is worth noting that in
the Hawthornden MS. the second bears no title (it is signed 'J. D. '),
and that it is not included in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. It is certainly
Donne's; it is not quite certain that it was written on Mris.
Boulstred. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the reference to
Judith in a verse letter which seems to have been sent to Lady Bedford
with the poem, and the tenor of the poem, suggest that Lady Markham
is the subject of the elegy. Jonson, in speaking of Mris. Boulstred,
says, 'whose Epitaph Done made,' which points to a single poem; but he
may have been speaking loosely, or be loosely reported.
In contrast to these two elegies that beginning 'Death be not proud'
is found in only five manuscripts, _B_, _H40_, _O'F_, _P_, _RP31_.
Of these _H40_ and _RP31_ are really one, and in them the poem is not
ascribed to Donne. In two others, _O'F_ and _P_, the poem is given in
a very interesting and suggestive manner, viz. as a continuation of
'Death I recant'. What this suggests is the fairly obvious fact that
the second poem is to some extent a reply to the first. 'Death I
recant' is answered by 'Death be not proud'. If _O'F_ and _P_ are
right in their arrangement, then Donne answers himself. Beginning in
one mood, he closes in another; from a mood which is almost rebellious
he passes to one of Christian resignation. This was the view I put
forward in a note to the Cambridge _History of Literature_ (iv. 216).
I had hardly, however, sent off my proofs before I felt that there
was more than one objection to this view. There is in the first
place nothing to show that 'Death I recant' is not a poem complete
in itself; there is no preparation for the recantation. In the second
place, 'Death be not proud' is as a poem slighter in texture, vaguer
in thought, in feeling more sentimental and pious, than Donne's own
_Epicedes_. Whoever wrote it had a warmer feeling for Mris. Boulstred
than underlies Donne's rather frigid hyperboles. This suggested to me
that the poem was indeed an answer to 'Death I recant', but by another
person, another member of Lady Bedford's entourage. In this mood I
came on the ascription in _H40_, viz. 'By C. L. of B. ' This indicated
no one whom I knew; but in _RP31_ it appeared as 'By L. C. of B. ,'
i. e. Lucy, Countess of Bedford. We know that the Countess did write
verses, for Donne refers to them. In a letter which Mr. Gosse dates
1609 (Gosse's _Life_, &c. , i. 217; _Letters_, 1651, p. 67) he speaks
of some verses written to himself: 'They must needs be an excellent
exercise of your wit, which speak so well of so ill. ' That the
Countess of Bedford could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot
prove in the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could
she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for some verses
on the death of her friend. He replied with 'Death I recant'. The
tone, which if not pagan is certainly not Christian, while it is
untouched by any real feeling for the subject of the elegy, displeased
her, and she replied in lines at once more ardent and more resigned.
At any rate, whether by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like
Donne's work, and the external evidence is against its being his. _B_
attributes it to 'F. B. ', i. e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the
other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the _Holy Sonnets_
with the exclamation used here:
Death be not proud!
I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally I
cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.
The sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_ (19 on the list), 'In that
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_. There is little doubt
that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It is found in a series
of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C. , in Harl. MS. 7553, f. 41, which were
first published by T. Park in _Heliconia_, ii. 1815, and unless all
of these are to be given to Donne this cannot. It is not in his style,
and Donne more than once denies the Immaculate Conception in the
full Catholic sense of the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly
contradict this sonnet than the lines in the _Second Anniversarie_:
Where thou shalt see the blessed Mother-maid
Joy in not being that, which men have said.
Where she is exalted more for being good,
Then for her interest of Mother-hood.
Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, the
_Ode_ beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems to me
very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have re-transferred
it from the Appendix to the place among the _Divine Poems_ which
it occupies in _1635_. Against its authenticity are the following
considerations: (1) It is not at all in the style of Donne's other
specifically religious poems. The elevated, stoical tone is more like
Jonson's occasional religious pieces than Donne's personal, tormented,
Scholastic _Divine Poems_. (2) Of the manuscripts in which it appears,
_B_, _Cy_, _H40_, _RP31_, _O'F_, _P_, _S_, the best, _RP31_, assigns
it, not to Donne, but to 'Sir Edward Herbert', i. e. Lord Herbert of
Cherbury. [17] Mr. Chambers, indeed, inadvertently stated that in this
manuscript 'it is said to have been written to George Herbert'. The
name 'Sr Edw. Herbert' is written beside the poem, and that in such
cases is meant to indicate the author of the poem. It seems to me
quite possible that it was written by Lord Herbert, but until more
evidence be forthcoming I have let it stand, because (1) the letters
'I. D. ' printed after the poem show that the poem must have been
so initialled in the manuscript from which it was printed, and (2)
because, though not in the style of Donne's later religious poems, it
is somewhat in the style of the philosophical, stoical letter which
Donne addressed to Sir Edward Herbert at the siege of Juliers in 1610.
The poem was possibly composed at the same time. (3) The thought of
the last verse, our ignorance of ourselves, recurs in Donne's poems
and prose. Compare _Negative Love_ (p. 66):
If any who deciphers best,
What we know not, our selves,
and the passage quoted in the note to this poem.
The poem _Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney,
and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister_, if by Donne, was probably
written late in his life and never widely circulated. It occurred
to me that the author might be John Davies of Hereford, who was
a dependent of the Countess and her two sons, and who made a
calligraphic copy of the _Psalms_ of Sidney and his sister, from
which they were printed by Singer in 1823. But Professor Saintsbury
considers, I think justly, that the 'wit' of the opening lines,
Eternall God (for whom who ever dare
Seeke new expressions, doe the Circle square,
And thrust into strait corners of poore wit
Thee who art cornerlesse and infinite),
is above Davies' level, and indeed the whole poem is. The lines _To
Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders_ (22 on the list) were also
probably privately communicated to the person to whom they were
addressed. The best argument for their genuineness is that Walton
seems to quote from them when he describes Donne's preaching.
For they doe
As Angels out of clouds, from Pulpits speake,
must have suggested 'always preaching to himself, like an angel from a
cloud, but in none'. This does not, however, carry us very far. Walton
had seen the editions of 1635 and 1639 before he wrote these lines in
1640.
The verse _On the Sacrament_ (23 on the list) is probably assigned to
Donne by a pure conjecture. It is very frequently attributed to Queen
Elizabeth.
Of the two poems added in _1649_ the lines _Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats
Crudities_ are of course Donne's. They appeared with his name in his
lifetime, and Donne is one of the friends mentioned by Coryat in his
letters from India. _The Token_ (4 on the list) may or may not be
Donne's. It is found in several, but no very good, manuscripts.
Its wit is quite in Donne's style, though not absolutely beyond the
compass of another. The poems which the younger Donne added in _1650_
are in much the same position. 'He that cannot chose but love' (5
on the list) is a trifle, whoever wrote it. 'The heavens rejoice in
motion' (10 on the list) is in a much stronger strain of paradox, and
if not Donne's is by an ambitious and witty disciple. If genuine, it
is strange that it did not find its way into more collections. It is
found in _A10_, where a few of Donne's poems are given with others by
Roe, Hoskins, and other wits of his circle. It is also, however, given
in _JC_, a manuscript containing in its first part few poems that are
not demonstrably genuine. As things stand, the balance of evidence is
in favour of Donne's authorship.
Besides the _Elegies XVIII_ and _XIX_, which are Donne's, as we have
seen, and the _Satyre_ 'Sleep next Society', which is not Donne's, the
edition of 1669 prefixed to the song _Breake of Day_ a fresh stanza:
Stay, O sweet, and do not rise.
It appears in the same position in _S96_, but is given as a separate
poem in _A25_, _C_, _O'F_, and _P_. It certainly has no connexion with
Donne's poem, for the metre is entirely different and the strain of
the poetry less metaphysical.
The separate stanza was a favourite one in Song-Books of the
seventeenth century. It was printed apparently for the first time in
1612, in _The First Set of Madrigals and Motets of five Parts: apt for
Viols and Voices. Newly composed by Orlando Gibbons_. Here it begins
Ah, deare hart why doe you rise?
In the same year it was printed in _A Pilgrimes Solace. Wherein is
contained Musicall Harmonie of 3, 4 and 5 parts, to be sung and plaid
with the Lute and Viols. By John Dowland. _ The stanza begins
Sweet stay awhile, why will you rise?
Mr. Chambers conjectures that the affixing of Dowland's initials to
the verse in some collection led to Donne being credited with it,
which is quite likely; but we are not sure that Dowland wrote it, and
the common theme appears to have drawn the poems together. In _The
Academy of Complements, Wherein Ladies, Gentlewomen, Schollers,
and Strangers may accomodate their Courtly practice with gentile
Ceremonies, Complemental amorous high expressions, and Formes of
speaking or writing of Letters most in fashion_ (1650) the verse is
connected with a variation of the first stanza of Donne's poem so as
to make a consistent song:
Lie still, my dear, why dost thou rise?
The light that shines comes from thine eyes.
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part.
Stay or else my joys will die,
And perish in their infancy.
'Tis time, 'tis day, what if it be?
Wilt thou therefore arise from me?
Did we lie down because of night,
And shall we rise for fear of light?
No, since in darkness we came hither,
In spight of light we'll lye together.
Oh! let me dye on thy sweet breast
Far sweeter than the Ph? oenix nest.
It was probably some such combination as this which suggested to the
editor of _1669_ to prefix the stanza to Donne's poem. The poem in
_The Academy of Compliments_ was repeated in _Wits Interpreter, the
English Parnassus, a sure guide to those Admirable Accomplishments
that compleat our English Gentry in the most acceptable Qualifications
of Discourse or Writing_ (1655). But the first stanza is given again
in this collection as a separate poem.
The translation of the _Psalme 137_, which was inserted in _1633_
and never withdrawn (as the _Epitaph on Shakespeare_ was) is pretty
certainly not by Donne. The only manuscript which ascribes it to him
is _A25_ followed by _C_. On the other hand it is assigned to Francis
Davison, editor of the _Poetical Rhapsody_, in _RP61_ (Bodleian
Library). In one manuscript, Addl. MS. 27407, the poem is accompanied
with a letter, unsigned and undirected, which speaks of this as one
out of several translations made by the author. The handwriting and
style of the letter are not Donne's, but the letter explains why this
one Psalm is found floating around by itself. It was, the translator
says, a freer paraphrase than the others. Apparently it proved a
favourite.
When one turns from the poems attributed to Donne in the old editions
to those which some of the more recent editors have added, one
launches into a sea which I have no intention of attempting to
navigate in its entirety. Both Sir John Simeon and Dr. Grosart were
disposed to cry 'Eureka' too readily, and assigned to Donne a number
of poems culled from various manuscripts for the genuineness of which
there is no evidence external or internal. I shall confine my remarks
to the few poems I have myself incorporated for the first time in an
edition of Donne's poems; to the Song 'Absence hear my protestation',
which it is now the fashion to ascribe to Donne absolutely, letting
evidence 'go hang'; and to the four poems which Mr. Chambers printed
from _A25_. I have added some more in my Appendix C, because they are
interesting [Greek: adespota] illustrative of the influence in
seventeenth-century poetry of Donne's realistic passion and his
paradoxical wit.
Of the poems which appear here for the first time in a collected
edition, it is not necessary to say much of those which are taken from
_W_, the Westmoreland MS. now in the possession of Mr. Gosse, who with
the greatest and most spontaneous kindness has permitted me to print
them all. These include two Epigrams, four additional Letters, and
three Holy Sonnets. The Epigrams, the Holy Sonnets, and two of the
Letters have been already printed by Mr. Gosse in his _Life of John
Donne_, 1899. There can be no doubt of their genuineness. They enlarge
a series of Letters and a series of Sonnets which appear in _1633_ and
in all the best manuscript collections. In their arrangement I have
followed _W_ in preference to _1633_, which is based on _A18_, _N_,
_TC_. Of the letter taken from the Burley MS. there may be greater
doubt in some minds. To me it seems unquestionably Donne's (aut Donne
aut Diabolus), an addition to the series of letters which he wrote
to Sir Henry Wotton between the return of the Islands Expedition and
Essex's return from Ireland. The Burley MS. is a commonplace-book
of Wotton's and includes poems which we know as Donne's, e. g. 'Come,
Madam, come'; some of his Paradoxes with a covering letter; other
letters which from their substance and style seem to be Donne's; and a
number of poems, including this which alone of all the doubtful poems
in the manuscript is initialled 'J. D. ' The manuscript contains work
by Donne. Does this come under that head? Only internal evidence can
decide. Of the other poems in the manuscript, most of which I print in
Appendix C, none are certainly Donne's.
'Absence heare my protestation' was printed in Donne's lifetime
in Davison's _A Poetical Rhapsody_ (1602, 1608, 1621), but with no
reference to Donne's authorship, although his name was yearly growing
a more popular hostel for wandering, unclaimed poems. [18] It was not
printed in any edition of his poems from _1633_ to _1719_. It is not
found in either of the most trustworthy manuscript collections, _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_, or _A18_, _N_, _TC_. It _is_ found in _B_, _Cy_, _L74_,
_O'F_, _P_, _S96_, but none of these can be counted an authority. In
1711 it was for the first time ascribed to Donne in _The Grove_,
a miscellaneous collection of poems, on the authority of 'an old
Manuscript of Sir John Cotton's of Stratton in Huntington-Shire'.
On the other hand, in one well authenticated manuscript, _HN_, it is
transcribed by William Drummond of Hawthornden from what he describes
as a collection of poems 'belonging to John Don' (not '_by_ Donne'),
and, with another poem, is initialled 'J. H. ' That other poem called
_His Melancholy. _
Love is a foolish melancholy, &c. ,
is by a Manchester manuscript (Farmer-Chetham MS. , ed. Grosart,
_Chetham Society Publications_, lxxxix, xc) assigned to 'Mr. Hoskins',
and in another manuscript (_A10_) it is signed 'H' with the left leg
of H so written as to suggest JH run together. Clearly at any rate
the _onus probandi_ lies with those who say the poem is by Donne.
Internally it has never seemed to me so since I came to know Donne
well. The metaphysical, subtle strain is like Donne, as it is in
_Soules Joy_, but here as there (though there is more feeling in
_Absence_, the closing line has a very Donne-like note of sudden
anguish, 'and so miss her') the tone is airier, the prosody more
tripping. The stressed syllables are less weighted emotionally and
vocally. Compare
Sweetest love, I do not goe,
For wearinesse of thee
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter Love for me;
or
Draw not up seas to drowne me in thy spheare,
Weepe me not dead, in thine armes, but forbeare
To teach the sea, what it may doe too soone;
with the more tripping measure, in which one touches the stressed
syllables as with tiptoe, of
By absence this good means I gaine,
That I can catch her
Where none can watch her,
In some close corner of my braine.
There are more of Hoskins' poems extant, but the manuscript volume of
poems which he left behind ('bigger than those of Dr. Donne') was lost
in 1653.
Four poems were first printed as Donne's by Mr. Chambers (op. cit. ,
Appendix B). They are all found in Addl. MS. 25707 (_A25_), and, so
far as I know, there only. I have placed them first in Appendix C,
as the only pieces in that Appendix which are at all likely to be by
Donne. _A25_ is a manuscript written in a number of different hands,
some six within the portion that includes poems by Donne. The relative
age of these it would be impossible to assign with any confidence.
What looks the oldest (I may call it A) is used only for three poems,
viz. Donne's _Elegye_: 'What [_sic_] that in Color it was like thy
haire,' his _Obsequies Upon the Lord Harrington yt last died_, and the
_Elegie of Loves progresse_. It is in Elizabethan secretary's hand,
and seems to me identical with the writing in which the same poems are
copied in C, the Cambridge University Library MS. A second hand, B,
inserts the larger number of the poems unquestionably by Donne in
close succession, but a third hand, C, transcribes several by Donne
along with poems by other wits, as Francis Beaumont. A fourth hand,
D, seems to be the latest because it is the handwriting in which the
Index was made out, and the poems inserted in this hand are inserted
in odd spaces left by the other writers. Now of the poems in question,
one, _A letter written by S^{r} H: G: and J. D. alternis vicibus_,
is copied by D, and the same hand adds immediately _An Elegie on the
Death of my never enough Lamented master King Charles the First_, by
Henry Skipwith. The poem attributed to Donne was therefore not entered
here till after 1649. But of course it may have come from an older
source, and it has quite the appearance of being genuine. Whoever made
the collection would seem to have had access to some of Goodyere's
work, for this poem is almost immediately preceded by an _Epithalamion
of the Princess Mariage_, by S^{r} H. G. , and a little earlier the
_Good Friday_ poem by Donne is headed _Mr J. Dun goeing from Sir H. G.
on good friday sent him back this Meditacon on the waye_. That reads
like a note by Goodyere himself. If this be what happened, the copyist
may have ascribed to Donne some of Goodyere's own verses. Certainly
there is nothing in the other three poems, 'O Fruitful garden,'
'Fie, fie, you sons of Pallas,' 'Why chose she black' (all in the
handwriting C) which would warrant our ascribing them to Donne. Later
in the collection a coarse poem, 'Why should not Pilgrims to thy body
come,' in a fifth hand, is signed J. D. , but _P_ assigns it to F. B. ,
and it is more in Beaumont's style. Poems by and on Beaumont occupy a
considerable space in _A25_. He is a quite possible candidate for the
authorship of some of the poems assigned to Donne in the hand C.
Mr. Hazlitt attributes to Donne (_General Index to Hazlitt's Handbook,
&c. _, p. 228) a Funeral Elegie on the death of Philip Stanhope, who
died at Christ Church in 1625. I have not been able to find the volume
in which it appears; but, as it is said to be by John Donne _Alumnus_,
the author must be the younger Donne.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Chambers has reprinted a good many of these,
but only in an Appendix and under the title of _Doubtful
Poems_. He has added a few more from _A25_, from _Coryats
Crudities_, and from some manuscripts in the Bodleian Library.
If printed at all it is a pity that these poems were not
reproduced more correctly. Textually the appendices are much
the worst part of Mr. Chambers' edition. In most cases he has,
I presume, taken the poems over as they stand from Simeon and
Grosart. ]
[Footnote 2: All three editors have also dropped the song
'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', David Laing having
pointed out (_Archaeologia Scotica_, iv. 73-6) that this poem
occurs in the Hawthornden MSS, with the signature 'J. R. '
Chambers also rejects the sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_,
probably by Henry Constable, and all three editors exclude the
lines _On the Sacrament_. ]
[Footnote 3: I have given with each poem a list of the
editions and manuscripts (known to me) in which it is
contained. A glance at these will show the weight of the
external evidence. Of internal evidence every man must be
judge for himself. ]
[Footnote 4: To these must of course be added poems already
published in Donne's name. See II. lvi. ]
[Footnote 5: In F. G. Waldron's _A Collection of Miscellaneous
Poetry_. 1802.
authority'. [14] The latter, however, believes the poem to be Donne's
because the central idea--the inseparableness of souls--is his, and so
is the contemptuous tone of
Fooles have no meanes to meet,
But by their feet.
But both the contemptuous tone and the Platonic thought were growing
common. We get it again in Lovelace's
If to be absent were to be
Away from thee.
The thought is Donne's, but not the airy note, the easy style, or
the tripping prosody. Donne never writes of absence in this cheerful,
confident strain. He consoles himself at times with the doctrine of
inseparable souls, but the note of pain is never absent. He cannot
cheat his passionate heart and senses with metaphysical subtleties.
The song _Farewell to love_, the second in the list of poems added
in _1635_, is found only in _O'F_ and _S96_. There is therefore no
weighty external evidence for assigning it to Donne, but no one can
read it without feeling that it is his. The cynical yet passionate
strain of wit, the condensed style, and the metaphysical turn given to
the argument, are all in his manner. As printed in _1635_ the point
of the third stanza is obscured. As I have ventured to amend it, an
Aristotelian doctrine is referred to in a way that only Donne would
have done in quite such a setting.
The three _Elegies_, XII, XIII, and XIV (7, 8, 9 in the list), must
also be assigned to Donne, unless some more suitable candidate can be
advanced on really convincing grounds. The first of the three, _His
parting from her_, is so fine a poem that it is difficult to think any
unknown poet could have written it. In sincerity and poetic quality it
is one of the finest of the _Elegies_,[15] and in this sincerer
note, the absence of witty paradox, it differs from poems like _The
Bracelet_ and _The Perfume_ and resembles the fine elegy called _His
Picture_ and two other pieces that stand somewhat apart from the
general tenor of the _Elegies_, namely, the famous elegy _On his
Mistris_, in which he dissuades her from travelling with him as a
page:
By our first strange and fatal interview,
and that rather enigmatical poem _The Expostulation_, which found its
way into Jonson's _Underwoods_:
To make the doubt clear that no woman's true,
Was it my fate to prove it strong in you?
All of these poems bear the imprint of some actual experience, and to
this cause we may perhaps trace the comparative rareness with which
_His parting from her_ is found in manuscripts, and that it finally
appeared in a mutilated form. The poet may have given copies only to
a few friends and desired that it should not be circulated. In the
Second Collection of poems in _TCD_ it is signed at the close, 'Sir
Franc: Wryothlesse. ' Who is intended by this I do not know. The
ascriptions in this collection are many of them purely fanciful.
Still, that the poem is Donne's rests on internal evidence alone.
Of the other two elegies, _Julia_, which is found in only two
manuscripts, _B_ and _O'F_, is quite the kind of thing Donne might
have amused himself by writing in the scurrilous style of Horace's
invectives against Canidia, frequently imitated by Mantuan and other
Humanists. The chief difficulty with regard to the second, _A Tale of
a Citizen and his Wife_, is to find Donne writing in this vein at
so late a period as 1609 or 1610, the date implied in several of the
allusions. He was already the author of religious poems, including
probably _La Corona_. In 1610 he wrote his _Litanie_, and, as
Professor Norton points out, in the same letter in which he tells of
the writing of the latter he refers to some poem of a lighter nature,
the name of which is lost through a mutilation of the letter, and
says, 'Even at this time when (I humbly thank God) I ask and have his
comfort of sadder meditations I do not condemn in myself that I
have given my wit such evaporations as those, if they be free from
profaneness, or obscene provocations. ' Whether this would cover the
elegy in question is a point on which perhaps our age and Donne's
would not decide alike. Donne's nature was a complex one. Jack Donne
and the grave and reverend divine existed side by side for not a
little time, and even in the sermons Donne's wit is once or twice
rather coarser than our generation would relish in the pulpit. But
once more we must add that it is possible Donne has in this case
been made responsible for what is another's. Every one wrote this
occasional poetry, and sometimes wrote it well.
There is no more difficult poem to understand or to assign to or from
Donne than the long letter headed _To the Countesse of Huntington_, 13
on the list, which, for the time being, I have placed in the Appendix
B. On internal grounds there is more to be said for ascribing it to
Donne than any other single poem in this collection. Nevertheless I
have resolved to let it stand, that it may challenge the attention it
deserves. [16] The reasons which led me to doubt Donne's authorship are
these:
(1) The poem was not included in the 1633 edition, nor is it found in
either of the groups _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_.
It was added in _1635_ with four other spurious poems, the dialogue
ascribed to Donne and Wotton but assigned by the great majority of
manuscripts to the Earl of Pembroke and Sir Benjamin Rudyard, the two
epistles to Ben Jonson, and the Elegy addressed to Sir Thomas Roe,
which we have assigned, for reasons given above, to Sir John Roe. The
poem is found in only two manuscript collections, viz. _P_ and the
second, miscellaneous collection of seventeenth-century poems in
_TCD_. In both of these it is headed _Sr Walter Ashton_ (or _Aston_)
_to the Countesse of Huntingtone_, and no reference whatsoever is made
to Donne. I do not attach much importance to this title. Imaginary
headings were quite common in the case of poems circulating in
manuscript. Poems are inscribed as having been written by the Earl of
Essex or Sir Walter Raleigh the night before he died, or as found in
the pocket of Chidiock Tichbourne. Editors have occasionally taken
these too seriously. Drayton's _Heroicall Epistles_ made it a fashion
to write such letters in the case of any notorious love affair or
intrigue. The manuscript _P_ contains a long imaginary letter from Sir
Philip Sidney to Lady Mary Rich and a fragment of her reply. In
the same manuscript the poem, probably by the Earl of Pembroke,
'Victorious beauty though your eyes,' is headed _The Mar: B to the
Lady Fe: Her. _, i. e. the Marquis of Buckingham to--I am not sure what
lady is intended. The only thing which the title given to the letter
in question suggests is that it was not an actual letter to the
Countess but an imaginary one.
(2) Of Donne's relations with Elizabeth Stanley, who in 1603 became
the Countess of Huntingdon, his biographers have not been able to tell
us very much. He must have met her at the house of Sir Thomas Egerton
when her mother, the dowager Countess of Derby, married that statesman
in 1600. Donne says:
I was your Prophet in your yonger dayes,
And now your Chaplaine, God in you to praise.
(p. 203, ll. 69-70. )
Donne's friend, Sir Henry Goodyere, seems to have had relations with
her either directly or through her first cousin, the Countess of
Bedford, for Donne writes to him from Mitcham, 'I remember that
about this time you purpose a journey to fetch, or meet the Lady
_Huntington_. ' This fact lends support to the view of Mr. Chambers
and Mr. Gosse that she is 'the Countesse' referred to in the following
extract from a letter to Goodyere, which has an important bearing on
the poem under consideration. Very unfortunately it is not dated, and
Mr. Chambers and Mr. Gosse differ widely as to the year in which it
may have been written. The latter places it in April, 1615, when
Donne was on the eve of taking Orders, and was approaching his noble
patronesses for help in clearing himself of debt. But Mr. Chambers
points to the closing reference to 'a Christning at _Peckam_', and
dates the letter 1605-6, when Donne was at Peckham after leaving
Pyrford and before settling at Mitcham. I am not sure that this is
conclusive, for in Donne's unsettled life before 1615 Mrs. Donne might
at any time have gone for her lying-in or for a christening festival
to the house of her sister Jane, Lady Grimes, at Peckham. But the tone
of the letter, melancholy and reflective, is that of the letters to
Goodyere written at Mitcham, and the general theme of the letter, a
comparison of the different Churches, is that of other letters of
the same period. The one in question (_Letters_ 1651, p. 100;
Gosse, _Life_, ii. 77) seems to be almost a continuation of another
(_Letters_, 1651, p. 26; Gosse, _Life_, i. 225). Whatever be its date,
this is what Donne says: 'For the other part of your Letter, spent
in the praise of the Countesse, I am always very apt to beleeve it of
her, and can never beleeve it so well, and so reasonably, as now, when
it is averred by you; but for the expressing it to her, in that sort
as you seeme to counsaile, I have these two reasons to decline it.
That that knowledge which she hath of me, was in the beginning of
a graver course then of a Poet, into which (that I may also keep my
dignity) I would not seeme to relapse. The Spanish proverb informes
me, that he is a fool which cannot make one Sonnet, and he is mad
which makes two. The other strong reason is my integrity to the other
Countesse' (i. e. probably the Countess of Bedford. The words which
follow seem to imply a more recent acquaintance than is compatible
with so late a date as 1615), 'of whose worthinesse though I swallowed
your words, yet I have had since an explicit faith, and now a
knowledge: and for her delight (since she descends to them) I had
reserved not only all the verses which I should make, but all the
thoughts of womens worthinesse. But because I hope she will not
disdain, that I should write well of her Picture, I have obeyed you
thus far as to write; but intreat you by your friendship, that by this
occasion of versifying, I be not traduced, nor esteemed light in that
Tribe, and that house where I have lived. If those reasons which moved
you to bid me write be not constant in you still, or if you meant
not that I should write verses; or if these verses be too bad, or too
good, over or under her understanding, and not fit; I pray receive
them as a companion and supplement of this Letter to you,' &c. If this
was written in 1615 it is incompatible with the fact (supposing the
poem under consideration to be by Donne) that he had already written
to the Countess of Huntingdon a letter in a very thinly disguised tone
of amatory compliment. If, however, it was written, as is probable,
earlier, the reference may be to this very poem. Perhaps Goodyere
thought it 'over or under' the Countess's understanding and did not
present it.
(3) Certainly, looking at the poem itself, one has difficulty in
declaring it to be, or not to be, Donne's work. Its metaphysical wit
and strain of high-flown, rarefied compliment suggest that only he
could have written it; in parts, on the other hand, the tone does not
seem to me to be his. It is certainly very different from that of the
other letters to noble ladies. It carries one back to the date of the
_Elegies_. If Donne's, it is a further striking proof how much of the
tone of a lover even a married poet could assume in addressing a noble
patroness. Would Donne at any time of his life write to the Countess
of Huntingdon in the vein of p. 418, ll. 21-36, or the next paragraph,
ll. 37-76? One could imagine the Earl of Pembroke, or some one on
a level of equality socially with the Countess, writing so; not a
dependent addressing a patroness. The only points of style and verse
which might serve as clues are (1) the peculiar use of 'young',
e. g. l. 84 'youngest flatteries', l. 13 'younger formes'. With which
compare in the _Letter_ to Wotton, here added, at p. 188:
Ere sicknesses attack, yong death is best.
(2) A recurring pattern of line to which Sir Walter Raleigh drew my
attention:
35. Who first looked sad, griev'd, pin'd, and shew'd his pain.
61. Love is wise here, keeps home, gives reason sway.
88. You are the straight line, thing prais'd, attribute.
113. Such may have eye and hand, may sigh, may speak.
I have not found this pattern elsewhere, and indeed the versification
throughout seems to me unlike that of Donne. Donne's decasyllabic
couplets have two quite distinctive patterns. The one is that of the
_Satyres_. In these the logical or rhetorical scheme runs right across
the metrical scheme--that is, the sense overflows from line to line,
and the pauses come regularly inside the line. A good example is the
paragraph beginning at p. 156, l. 65.
Graccus loves all as one, &c.
In the _Elegies_ and in the _Letters_ the structure is not so
irregular and unmusical, but is periodic or paragraphic, i. e. the
lines do not fall into couplets but into larger groups knit together
by a single sentence or some closely connected sentences, the full
meaning or emphasis being well sustained to the close. Good examples
are _Elegie I. _ ll. 1 to 16, _Elegie IV. _ ll. 13 to 26, _Elegie V. _ l.
5 to the end, _Elegie VIII. _ ll. 1 to 34. Excellent examples are also
the letter _To the Countesse of Salisbury_ and the _Hymn to the Saints
and the Marquesse Hamylton_. Each of these is composed of three or
four paragraphs at the most. Now in the poem under consideration
there are two, or three at the most, paragraphs which suggest Donne's
manner, viz. ll. 1 to 10, ll. 11 to 16, and ll. 37 to 46. But the rest
of the poem is almost monotonously regular in its couplet structure.
To my mind the poem is not unlike what Rudyard might have written.
Indeed a fine piece of verse by Rudyard, belonging to the dialogue
between him and the Earl of Pembroke on Love and Reason, is attributed
to Donne in several manuscripts. The question is an open one, but had
I realized in time the weakness of the positive external evidence I
should not have moved the poem. I have been able to improve the text
materially.
With regard to the _Elegie on Mistris Boulstred_ (18 on the list) I
cannot expect readers to accept at once the conjecture I have ventured
to put forward regarding the authorship, for I have changed my own
mind regarding it. Two Elegies, both perhaps on Mris. Boulstred, Donne
certainly did write, viz.
Death I recant, and say, unsaid by mee
What ere hath slip'd, that might diminish thee;
and another, entitled _Death_, beginning
Language thou art too narrow, and too weake
To ease us now; great sorrow cannot speake.
Both of these are attributed to Donne by quite a number of manuscripts
and are very characteristic of his poetry in this kind, highly charged
with ingenious wit and extravagant eulogy. It is worth noting that in
the Hawthornden MS. the second bears no title (it is signed 'J. D. '),
and that it is not included in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. It is certainly
Donne's; it is not quite certain that it was written on Mris.
Boulstred. Indeed, as I have pointed out elsewhere, the reference to
Judith in a verse letter which seems to have been sent to Lady Bedford
with the poem, and the tenor of the poem, suggest that Lady Markham
is the subject of the elegy. Jonson, in speaking of Mris. Boulstred,
says, 'whose Epitaph Done made,' which points to a single poem; but he
may have been speaking loosely, or be loosely reported.
In contrast to these two elegies that beginning 'Death be not proud'
is found in only five manuscripts, _B_, _H40_, _O'F_, _P_, _RP31_.
Of these _H40_ and _RP31_ are really one, and in them the poem is not
ascribed to Donne. In two others, _O'F_ and _P_, the poem is given in
a very interesting and suggestive manner, viz. as a continuation of
'Death I recant'. What this suggests is the fairly obvious fact that
the second poem is to some extent a reply to the first. 'Death I
recant' is answered by 'Death be not proud'. If _O'F_ and _P_ are
right in their arrangement, then Donne answers himself. Beginning in
one mood, he closes in another; from a mood which is almost rebellious
he passes to one of Christian resignation. This was the view I put
forward in a note to the Cambridge _History of Literature_ (iv. 216).
I had hardly, however, sent off my proofs before I felt that there
was more than one objection to this view. There is in the first
place nothing to show that 'Death I recant' is not a poem complete
in itself; there is no preparation for the recantation. In the second
place, 'Death be not proud' is as a poem slighter in texture, vaguer
in thought, in feeling more sentimental and pious, than Donne's own
_Epicedes_. Whoever wrote it had a warmer feeling for Mris. Boulstred
than underlies Donne's rather frigid hyperboles. This suggested to me
that the poem was indeed an answer to 'Death I recant', but by another
person, another member of Lady Bedford's entourage. In this mood I
came on the ascription in _H40_, viz. 'By C. L. of B. ' This indicated
no one whom I knew; but in _RP31_ it appeared as 'By L. C. of B. ,'
i. e. Lucy, Countess of Bedford. We know that the Countess did write
verses, for Donne refers to them. In a letter which Mr. Gosse dates
1609 (Gosse's _Life_, &c. , i. 217; _Letters_, 1651, p. 67) he speaks
of some verses written to himself: 'They must needs be an excellent
exercise of your wit, which speak so well of so ill. ' That the
Countess of Bedford could have written 'Death be not proud', we cannot
prove in the absence of other examples of her work; that if she could
she did, is very likely. She had probably asked Donne for some verses
on the death of her friend. He replied with 'Death I recant'. The
tone, which if not pagan is certainly not Christian, while it is
untouched by any real feeling for the subject of the elegy, displeased
her, and she replied in lines at once more ardent and more resigned.
At any rate, whether by Lady Bedford or not, the poem is not like
Donne's work, and the external evidence is against its being his. _B_
attributes it to 'F. B. ', i. e. Francis Beaumont. It is right, on the
other hand, to point out that Donne opens one of the _Holy Sonnets_
with the exclamation used here:
Death be not proud!
I have left the question of authorship an open one. Personally I
cannot bring myself to think that it is Donne's.
The sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_ (19 on the list), 'In that
O Queene of Queenes, thy birth was free,' is included among Donne's
poems in _1635_ and in _B_, _O'F_, _S_, _S96_. There is little doubt
that it is not Donne's but Henry Constable's. It is found in a series
of Spiritual Sonnets by H. C. , in Harl. MS. 7553, f. 41, which were
first published by T. Park in _Heliconia_, ii. 1815, and unless all
of these are to be given to Donne this cannot. It is not in his style,
and Donne more than once denies the Immaculate Conception in the
full Catholic sense of the doctrine. Nothing could more expressly
contradict this sonnet than the lines in the _Second Anniversarie_:
Where thou shalt see the blessed Mother-maid
Joy in not being that, which men have said.
Where she is exalted more for being good,
Then for her interest of Mother-hood.
Of the next three poems (20, 21, 22 on the list), the second, the
_Ode_ beginning 'Vengeance will sit above our faults', seems to me
very doubtful, although on second thoughts I have re-transferred
it from the Appendix to the place among the _Divine Poems_ which
it occupies in _1635_. Against its authenticity are the following
considerations: (1) It is not at all in the style of Donne's other
specifically religious poems. The elevated, stoical tone is more like
Jonson's occasional religious pieces than Donne's personal, tormented,
Scholastic _Divine Poems_. (2) Of the manuscripts in which it appears,
_B_, _Cy_, _H40_, _RP31_, _O'F_, _P_, _S_, the best, _RP31_, assigns
it, not to Donne, but to 'Sir Edward Herbert', i. e. Lord Herbert of
Cherbury. [17] Mr. Chambers, indeed, inadvertently stated that in this
manuscript 'it is said to have been written to George Herbert'. The
name 'Sr Edw. Herbert' is written beside the poem, and that in such
cases is meant to indicate the author of the poem. It seems to me
quite possible that it was written by Lord Herbert, but until more
evidence be forthcoming I have let it stand, because (1) the letters
'I. D. ' printed after the poem show that the poem must have been
so initialled in the manuscript from which it was printed, and (2)
because, though not in the style of Donne's later religious poems, it
is somewhat in the style of the philosophical, stoical letter which
Donne addressed to Sir Edward Herbert at the siege of Juliers in 1610.
The poem was possibly composed at the same time. (3) The thought of
the last verse, our ignorance of ourselves, recurs in Donne's poems
and prose. Compare _Negative Love_ (p. 66):
If any who deciphers best,
What we know not, our selves,
and the passage quoted in the note to this poem.
The poem _Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney,
and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister_, if by Donne, was probably
written late in his life and never widely circulated. It occurred
to me that the author might be John Davies of Hereford, who was
a dependent of the Countess and her two sons, and who made a
calligraphic copy of the _Psalms_ of Sidney and his sister, from
which they were printed by Singer in 1823. But Professor Saintsbury
considers, I think justly, that the 'wit' of the opening lines,
Eternall God (for whom who ever dare
Seeke new expressions, doe the Circle square,
And thrust into strait corners of poore wit
Thee who art cornerlesse and infinite),
is above Davies' level, and indeed the whole poem is. The lines _To
Mr. Tilman after he had taken orders_ (22 on the list) were also
probably privately communicated to the person to whom they were
addressed. The best argument for their genuineness is that Walton
seems to quote from them when he describes Donne's preaching.
For they doe
As Angels out of clouds, from Pulpits speake,
must have suggested 'always preaching to himself, like an angel from a
cloud, but in none'. This does not, however, carry us very far. Walton
had seen the editions of 1635 and 1639 before he wrote these lines in
1640.
The verse _On the Sacrament_ (23 on the list) is probably assigned to
Donne by a pure conjecture. It is very frequently attributed to Queen
Elizabeth.
Of the two poems added in _1649_ the lines _Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats
Crudities_ are of course Donne's. They appeared with his name in his
lifetime, and Donne is one of the friends mentioned by Coryat in his
letters from India. _The Token_ (4 on the list) may or may not be
Donne's. It is found in several, but no very good, manuscripts.
Its wit is quite in Donne's style, though not absolutely beyond the
compass of another. The poems which the younger Donne added in _1650_
are in much the same position. 'He that cannot chose but love' (5
on the list) is a trifle, whoever wrote it. 'The heavens rejoice in
motion' (10 on the list) is in a much stronger strain of paradox, and
if not Donne's is by an ambitious and witty disciple. If genuine, it
is strange that it did not find its way into more collections. It is
found in _A10_, where a few of Donne's poems are given with others by
Roe, Hoskins, and other wits of his circle. It is also, however, given
in _JC_, a manuscript containing in its first part few poems that are
not demonstrably genuine. As things stand, the balance of evidence is
in favour of Donne's authorship.
Besides the _Elegies XVIII_ and _XIX_, which are Donne's, as we have
seen, and the _Satyre_ 'Sleep next Society', which is not Donne's, the
edition of 1669 prefixed to the song _Breake of Day_ a fresh stanza:
Stay, O sweet, and do not rise.
It appears in the same position in _S96_, but is given as a separate
poem in _A25_, _C_, _O'F_, and _P_. It certainly has no connexion with
Donne's poem, for the metre is entirely different and the strain of
the poetry less metaphysical.
The separate stanza was a favourite one in Song-Books of the
seventeenth century. It was printed apparently for the first time in
1612, in _The First Set of Madrigals and Motets of five Parts: apt for
Viols and Voices. Newly composed by Orlando Gibbons_. Here it begins
Ah, deare hart why doe you rise?
In the same year it was printed in _A Pilgrimes Solace. Wherein is
contained Musicall Harmonie of 3, 4 and 5 parts, to be sung and plaid
with the Lute and Viols. By John Dowland. _ The stanza begins
Sweet stay awhile, why will you rise?
Mr. Chambers conjectures that the affixing of Dowland's initials to
the verse in some collection led to Donne being credited with it,
which is quite likely; but we are not sure that Dowland wrote it, and
the common theme appears to have drawn the poems together. In _The
Academy of Complements, Wherein Ladies, Gentlewomen, Schollers,
and Strangers may accomodate their Courtly practice with gentile
Ceremonies, Complemental amorous high expressions, and Formes of
speaking or writing of Letters most in fashion_ (1650) the verse is
connected with a variation of the first stanza of Donne's poem so as
to make a consistent song:
Lie still, my dear, why dost thou rise?
The light that shines comes from thine eyes.
The day breaks not, it is my heart,
Because that you and I must part.
Stay or else my joys will die,
And perish in their infancy.
'Tis time, 'tis day, what if it be?
Wilt thou therefore arise from me?
Did we lie down because of night,
And shall we rise for fear of light?
No, since in darkness we came hither,
In spight of light we'll lye together.
Oh! let me dye on thy sweet breast
Far sweeter than the Ph? oenix nest.
It was probably some such combination as this which suggested to the
editor of _1669_ to prefix the stanza to Donne's poem. The poem in
_The Academy of Compliments_ was repeated in _Wits Interpreter, the
English Parnassus, a sure guide to those Admirable Accomplishments
that compleat our English Gentry in the most acceptable Qualifications
of Discourse or Writing_ (1655). But the first stanza is given again
in this collection as a separate poem.
The translation of the _Psalme 137_, which was inserted in _1633_
and never withdrawn (as the _Epitaph on Shakespeare_ was) is pretty
certainly not by Donne. The only manuscript which ascribes it to him
is _A25_ followed by _C_. On the other hand it is assigned to Francis
Davison, editor of the _Poetical Rhapsody_, in _RP61_ (Bodleian
Library). In one manuscript, Addl. MS. 27407, the poem is accompanied
with a letter, unsigned and undirected, which speaks of this as one
out of several translations made by the author. The handwriting and
style of the letter are not Donne's, but the letter explains why this
one Psalm is found floating around by itself. It was, the translator
says, a freer paraphrase than the others. Apparently it proved a
favourite.
When one turns from the poems attributed to Donne in the old editions
to those which some of the more recent editors have added, one
launches into a sea which I have no intention of attempting to
navigate in its entirety. Both Sir John Simeon and Dr. Grosart were
disposed to cry 'Eureka' too readily, and assigned to Donne a number
of poems culled from various manuscripts for the genuineness of which
there is no evidence external or internal. I shall confine my remarks
to the few poems I have myself incorporated for the first time in an
edition of Donne's poems; to the Song 'Absence hear my protestation',
which it is now the fashion to ascribe to Donne absolutely, letting
evidence 'go hang'; and to the four poems which Mr. Chambers printed
from _A25_. I have added some more in my Appendix C, because they are
interesting [Greek: adespota] illustrative of the influence in
seventeenth-century poetry of Donne's realistic passion and his
paradoxical wit.
Of the poems which appear here for the first time in a collected
edition, it is not necessary to say much of those which are taken from
_W_, the Westmoreland MS. now in the possession of Mr. Gosse, who with
the greatest and most spontaneous kindness has permitted me to print
them all. These include two Epigrams, four additional Letters, and
three Holy Sonnets. The Epigrams, the Holy Sonnets, and two of the
Letters have been already printed by Mr. Gosse in his _Life of John
Donne_, 1899. There can be no doubt of their genuineness. They enlarge
a series of Letters and a series of Sonnets which appear in _1633_ and
in all the best manuscript collections. In their arrangement I have
followed _W_ in preference to _1633_, which is based on _A18_, _N_,
_TC_. Of the letter taken from the Burley MS. there may be greater
doubt in some minds. To me it seems unquestionably Donne's (aut Donne
aut Diabolus), an addition to the series of letters which he wrote
to Sir Henry Wotton between the return of the Islands Expedition and
Essex's return from Ireland. The Burley MS. is a commonplace-book
of Wotton's and includes poems which we know as Donne's, e. g. 'Come,
Madam, come'; some of his Paradoxes with a covering letter; other
letters which from their substance and style seem to be Donne's; and a
number of poems, including this which alone of all the doubtful poems
in the manuscript is initialled 'J. D. ' The manuscript contains work
by Donne. Does this come under that head? Only internal evidence can
decide. Of the other poems in the manuscript, most of which I print in
Appendix C, none are certainly Donne's.
'Absence heare my protestation' was printed in Donne's lifetime
in Davison's _A Poetical Rhapsody_ (1602, 1608, 1621), but with no
reference to Donne's authorship, although his name was yearly growing
a more popular hostel for wandering, unclaimed poems. [18] It was not
printed in any edition of his poems from _1633_ to _1719_. It is not
found in either of the most trustworthy manuscript collections, _D_,
_H49_, _Lec_, or _A18_, _N_, _TC_. It _is_ found in _B_, _Cy_, _L74_,
_O'F_, _P_, _S96_, but none of these can be counted an authority. In
1711 it was for the first time ascribed to Donne in _The Grove_,
a miscellaneous collection of poems, on the authority of 'an old
Manuscript of Sir John Cotton's of Stratton in Huntington-Shire'.
On the other hand, in one well authenticated manuscript, _HN_, it is
transcribed by William Drummond of Hawthornden from what he describes
as a collection of poems 'belonging to John Don' (not '_by_ Donne'),
and, with another poem, is initialled 'J. H. ' That other poem called
_His Melancholy. _
Love is a foolish melancholy, &c. ,
is by a Manchester manuscript (Farmer-Chetham MS. , ed. Grosart,
_Chetham Society Publications_, lxxxix, xc) assigned to 'Mr. Hoskins',
and in another manuscript (_A10_) it is signed 'H' with the left leg
of H so written as to suggest JH run together. Clearly at any rate
the _onus probandi_ lies with those who say the poem is by Donne.
Internally it has never seemed to me so since I came to know Donne
well. The metaphysical, subtle strain is like Donne, as it is in
_Soules Joy_, but here as there (though there is more feeling in
_Absence_, the closing line has a very Donne-like note of sudden
anguish, 'and so miss her') the tone is airier, the prosody more
tripping. The stressed syllables are less weighted emotionally and
vocally. Compare
Sweetest love, I do not goe,
For wearinesse of thee
Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter Love for me;
or
Draw not up seas to drowne me in thy spheare,
Weepe me not dead, in thine armes, but forbeare
To teach the sea, what it may doe too soone;
with the more tripping measure, in which one touches the stressed
syllables as with tiptoe, of
By absence this good means I gaine,
That I can catch her
Where none can watch her,
In some close corner of my braine.
There are more of Hoskins' poems extant, but the manuscript volume of
poems which he left behind ('bigger than those of Dr. Donne') was lost
in 1653.
Four poems were first printed as Donne's by Mr. Chambers (op. cit. ,
Appendix B). They are all found in Addl. MS. 25707 (_A25_), and, so
far as I know, there only. I have placed them first in Appendix C,
as the only pieces in that Appendix which are at all likely to be by
Donne. _A25_ is a manuscript written in a number of different hands,
some six within the portion that includes poems by Donne. The relative
age of these it would be impossible to assign with any confidence.
What looks the oldest (I may call it A) is used only for three poems,
viz. Donne's _Elegye_: 'What [_sic_] that in Color it was like thy
haire,' his _Obsequies Upon the Lord Harrington yt last died_, and the
_Elegie of Loves progresse_. It is in Elizabethan secretary's hand,
and seems to me identical with the writing in which the same poems are
copied in C, the Cambridge University Library MS. A second hand, B,
inserts the larger number of the poems unquestionably by Donne in
close succession, but a third hand, C, transcribes several by Donne
along with poems by other wits, as Francis Beaumont. A fourth hand,
D, seems to be the latest because it is the handwriting in which the
Index was made out, and the poems inserted in this hand are inserted
in odd spaces left by the other writers. Now of the poems in question,
one, _A letter written by S^{r} H: G: and J. D. alternis vicibus_,
is copied by D, and the same hand adds immediately _An Elegie on the
Death of my never enough Lamented master King Charles the First_, by
Henry Skipwith. The poem attributed to Donne was therefore not entered
here till after 1649. But of course it may have come from an older
source, and it has quite the appearance of being genuine. Whoever made
the collection would seem to have had access to some of Goodyere's
work, for this poem is almost immediately preceded by an _Epithalamion
of the Princess Mariage_, by S^{r} H. G. , and a little earlier the
_Good Friday_ poem by Donne is headed _Mr J. Dun goeing from Sir H. G.
on good friday sent him back this Meditacon on the waye_. That reads
like a note by Goodyere himself. If this be what happened, the copyist
may have ascribed to Donne some of Goodyere's own verses. Certainly
there is nothing in the other three poems, 'O Fruitful garden,'
'Fie, fie, you sons of Pallas,' 'Why chose she black' (all in the
handwriting C) which would warrant our ascribing them to Donne. Later
in the collection a coarse poem, 'Why should not Pilgrims to thy body
come,' in a fifth hand, is signed J. D. , but _P_ assigns it to F. B. ,
and it is more in Beaumont's style. Poems by and on Beaumont occupy a
considerable space in _A25_. He is a quite possible candidate for the
authorship of some of the poems assigned to Donne in the hand C.
Mr. Hazlitt attributes to Donne (_General Index to Hazlitt's Handbook,
&c. _, p. 228) a Funeral Elegie on the death of Philip Stanhope, who
died at Christ Church in 1625. I have not been able to find the volume
in which it appears; but, as it is said to be by John Donne _Alumnus_,
the author must be the younger Donne.
[Footnote 1: Mr. Chambers has reprinted a good many of these,
but only in an Appendix and under the title of _Doubtful
Poems_. He has added a few more from _A25_, from _Coryats
Crudities_, and from some manuscripts in the Bodleian Library.
If printed at all it is a pity that these poems were not
reproduced more correctly. Textually the appendices are much
the worst part of Mr. Chambers' edition. In most cases he has,
I presume, taken the poems over as they stand from Simeon and
Grosart. ]
[Footnote 2: All three editors have also dropped the song
'Deare Love continue nice and chaste', David Laing having
pointed out (_Archaeologia Scotica_, iv. 73-6) that this poem
occurs in the Hawthornden MSS, with the signature 'J. R. '
Chambers also rejects the sonnet _On the Blessed Virgin Mary_,
probably by Henry Constable, and all three editors exclude the
lines _On the Sacrament_. ]
[Footnote 3: I have given with each poem a list of the
editions and manuscripts (known to me) in which it is
contained. A glance at these will show the weight of the
external evidence. Of internal evidence every man must be
judge for himself. ]
[Footnote 4: To these must of course be added poems already
published in Donne's name. See II. lvi. ]
[Footnote 5: In F. G. Waldron's _A Collection of Miscellaneous
Poetry_. 1802.
