The third edition of Donne's poems
appeared
in 1639.
Donne - 2
Here with the same intensity of feeling, and
in the same abstract, dialectical, erudite strain he emphasizes the
interdependence of soul and body:
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like soules as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtile knot, which makes us man:
So must pure lovers soules descend
T'affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
_Else a great Prince in prison lies_.
It may be that Donne has not entirely succeeded in what he here
attempts. There hangs about the poem just a suspicion of the
conventional and unreal Platonism of the seventeenth century. In
attempting to state and vindicate the relation of soul and body he
falls perhaps inevitably into the appearance, at any rate, of the
dualism which he is trying to transcend. He places them over against
each other as separate entities and the lower bulks unduly. In love,
says Pascal, the body disappears from sight in the intellectual and
spiritual passion which it has kindled. That is what happens in _The
Anniversarie_, not altogether in _The Extasie_. Yet no poem makes one
realize more fully what Jonson meant by calling Donne 'the first poet
in the world for some things'. 'I should never find any fault with
metaphysical poems,' is Coleridge's judgement, 'if they were all like
this or but half as excellent. '
It was only the force of Donne's personality that could achieve even
an approximate harmony of elements so divergent as are united in his
love-verses, that could master the lower-natured steed that drew the
chariot of his troubled and passionate soul and make it subservient to
his yoke-fellow of purer strain who is a lover of honour, and modesty,
and temperance, and the follower of true glory. In the work of his
followers, who were many, though they owed allegiance to Jonson
also, the lower elements predominated. The strain of metaphysical
love-poetry in the seventeenth century with its splendid _élan_ and
sonorous cadence is in general Epicurean and witty. It is only now and
again--in Marvell, perhaps in Herrick's
Bid me to live, and I will live,
Thy Protestant to be,
certainly in Rochester's songs, in
An age in her embraces past
Would seem a winter's day,
or the unequalled:
When wearied with a world of woe
To thy safe bosom I retire,
Where love, and peace, and truth does flow,
May I contented there expire,
that the accents of the _heart_ are clearly audible, that passion
prevails over Epicurean fancy or cynical wit. On the other hand, the
idealism of seventeenth-century poetry and romances, the Platonism of
the Hôtel de Rambouillet that one finds in Habington's _Castara_, in
Kenelm Digby's _Private Memoirs_, in the French romances of chivalry
and their imitations in English is the silliest, because the emptiest,
that ever masqueraded as such in any literature, at any period. A
sensual and cynical flippancy on the one hand, a passionless, mannered
idealism on the other, led directly to that thinly veiled contempt
of women which is so obvious in the satirical essays of Addison and
Pope's _Rape of the Lock_.
But there was one poet who meditated on the same problem as Donne, who
felt like him the power and greatness of love, and like him could
not accept a doctrine of love which seemed to exclude or depreciate
marriage. In 1640, just before his marriage, as rash in its way as
Donne's but less happy in the issue, Milton, defending his character
against accusations of immorality, traced the development of his
thought about love. The passage, in _An Apology against a Pamphlet
called 'A Modest Confutation'_, &c. , has been taken as having a
reference to the _Paradise Lost_. But Milton rather seems at the time
to have been meditating a work like the _Vita Nuova_ or a romance like
that of Tasso in which love was to be a motive as well as religion,
for the whole theme of his thought is love, true love and its
mysterious link with chastity, of which, however, 'marriage is no
defilement'. In the arrogance of his youthful purity Milton would
doubtless have looked with scorn or loathing on the _Elegies_ and the
more careless of Donne's songs. But perhaps pride is a greater enemy
of love than such faults of sense as Donne in his passionate youth was
guilty of, and from which Dante by his own evidence was not exempt.
Whatever be the cause--pride, and the disappointment of his marriage,
and political polemic--Milton never wrote any English love-poetry,
except it be the one sonnet on the death of the wife who might have
opened the sealed wells of his heart; and some want of the experience
which love brought to Dante has dimmed the splendour of the great poem
in which he undertook to justify the ways of God to men. Donne is not
a Milton, but he sounded some notes which touch the soul and quicken
the intellect in a way that Milton's magnificent and intense but
somewhat hard and objective art fails to achieve.
That the simpler and purer, the more ideal and tender of Donne's
love-poems were the expression of his love for Ann More cannot of
course be proved in the case of each individual poem, for all Donne's
verses have come to us (with a few unimportant exceptions) undated
and unarranged. But the general thesis, that it was a great experience
which purified and elevated Donne's poetry, receives a striking
confirmation from the better-known history of his devotional poetry.
Here too wit, often tortured wit, fancy, and the heat which Donne's
wit was always able to generate, would have been all his verse had to
show but for the great sorrow which struck him down in 1617 and gave
to his subsequent sonnets and hymns a sincerer and profounder note,
his imagery a more magnificent quality, his rhythms a more sonorous
music.
Donne was not by nature a devotional poet in the same way and to the
same degree as Giles Fletcher or Herbert or Crashaw. It was a sound
enough instinct which, despite his religious upbringing and his wide
and serious interest in theological questions, made him hesitate to
cross the threshold of the ministry and induced him to seek rather for
some such public service as fell to the lot of his friend Wotton. It
was not, I think, the transition from the Roman to the Anglican Church
which was the obstacle. I have tried to describe what seems to me to
have been the path of enlightenment which opened the way for him to
a change which on every ground of prudence and ambition was desirable
and natural. But to conform, and even to take a part as a free-lance
in theological controversy was one thing, to enter the ministry
another. When this was pressed upon him by Morton or by the King it
brought him into conflict with something deeper and more fundamental
than theological doctrines, namely, a temperament which was rather
that of the Renaissance than that either of Puritan England or of the
Counter-Reformation, whether in Catholic countries or in the Anglican
Church--the temperament of Raleigh and Bacon rather than of Milton or
Herbert or Crashaw.
The simple way of describing Donne's difficulty is Walton's, according
to whom Donne shrank from entering the ministry for fear the notorious
irregularities of his early years should bring discredit on the sacred
calling. But there was more in Donne's life than a youth of pleasure,
an old age of prayers. It is not the case that all which was best and
most serious in Donne's nature led him towards Holy Orders. In his
earliest satires and even in his 'love-song weeds' there is evidence
enough of an earnest, candid soul underneath the extravagances of
wit and youthful sensuality. Donne's mind was naturally serious and
religious; it was not naturally devout or ascetic, but worldly and
ambitious. But to enter the ministry was, for Donne and for all
the serious minds of his age, to enter a profession for which the
essential qualifications were a devotional and an ascetic life.
The country clergy of the Anglican Church were often careless and
scandalous livers before Laud took in hand the discipline of the
Church; but her bishops and most eminent divines, though they might
be courtly and sycophantic, were with few exceptions men of devout and
ascetic life. When Donne finally crossed the Rubicon, convinced that
from the King no promotion was to be hoped for in any other line of
life, it was rather with the deliberate resolution that he would make
his life a model of devotion and ascetic self-denial than as one drawn
by an irresistible attraction or impelled by a controlling sense of
duty to such a life. Donne was no St. Augustine whose transition from
libertinism to saintliness came entirely from within. The noblest
feature of Donne's earlier clerical life was the steadfast spirit in
which he set himself to realize the highest ideals of the calling
he had chosen, and the candour with which he accepted the contrast
between his present position and his earlier life, leaving to
whosoever wished to judge while he followed the path of duty and
penitence.
But such a spirit will not easily produce great devotional poetry.
There are qualities in the religious poetry of simpler and purer souls
to which Donne seldom or never attains. The natural love of God which
overflows the pages of the great mystics, which dilates the heart
and the verses of a poet like the Dutchman Vondel, the ardour and
tenderness of Crashaw, the chaste, pure piety and penitence of
Herbert, the love from which devotion and ascetic self-denial come
unbidden--to these Donne never attained. The high and passionate joy
of _The Anniversary_ is not heard in his sonnets or hymns. Effort is
the note which predominates--the effort to realize the majesty of God,
the heinousness of sin, the terrors of Hell, the mercy of Christ.
Some of the very worst traits in Donne's mind are brought out in
his religious writing. _The Essays on Divinity_ are an extraordinary
revelation of his accumulations of useless Scholastic erudition, and
his capacity to perform feats of ingenious deduction from traditional
and accepted premises. To compare these freakish deductions from the
theory of verbal inspiration with the luminous sense of the _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_ is to realize how much rationalism was doing
in the course of the century for the emancipation and healing of the
human intellect. Some of the poems, and those the earliest written,
before Donne had actually taken Orders, are not much more than
exercises in these theological subtleties, poems such as that _On
the Annunciation and Passion falling in the same year_ (1608), _The
Litany_ (1610), _Good-Friday_ (1613), and _The Cross_ (_c. _ 1615)
are characteristic examples of Donne's intense and imaginative wit
employed on traditional topics of Catholic devotion to which no
change of Church ever made him indifferent. Donne never ignored in his
sermons the gulf that separated the Anglican from the Roman Church, or
the link that bound her to the Protestant Churches of the Continent.
'Our great protestant divines' are one of his courts of appeal,
and included Luther and Calvin of whom he never speaks but with the
deepest respect. But he was unwilling to sacrifice to a fanatical
puritanism any element of Catholic devotion which was capable of
an innocent interpretation. His language is guarded and perhaps not
always consistent, but it would not be difficult to show from his
sermons and prose-writings that many of the most distinctively
Catholic tenets were treated by him with the utmost tenderness.
But, as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, the sincerest and profoundest of
Donne's devotional poetry dates from the death of his wife. The loss
of her who had purified and sweetened his earliest love songs lent
a new and deeper _timbre_ to the sonnets and lyrics in which he
contemplates the great topics of personal religion,--sin, death,
the Judgement, and throws himself on the mercy of God as revealed in
Christ. The seven sonnets entitled _La Corona_ have been generally
attributed to this period, but it is probable that they were composed
earlier, and their treatment of the subject of Christ's life and death
is more intellectual and theological than spiritual and poetical. It
is when the tone becomes personal, as in the _Holy Sonnets_, when he
is alone with his own soul in the prospect of death and the Judgement,
that Donne's religious poetry acquires something of the same unique
character as his love songs and elegies by a similar combination
of qualities, intensity of feeling, subtle turns of thought, and
occasional Miltonic splendour of phrase. Here again we meet the
magnificent openings of the _Songs and Sonets_:--
This is my playes last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimages last mile; and my race
Idly yet quickly run hath this last space,
My spans last inch, my minutes latest point;
or,
At the round earths imagin'd quarters blow
Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
From death you numberlesse infinities
Of soules, and to your scatter'd bodies go:
and again--
What if this present were the worlds last night!
Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright,
Teares in his eyes quench the amazing light,
Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell.
This passionate penitence, this beating as it were against the bars
of self in the desire to break through to a fuller apprehension of
the mercy and love of God, is the intensely human note of these latest
poems. Nothing came easily to his soul that knew so well how to be
subtle to plague itself. The vision of divine wrath he can conjure up
more easily than the beatific vision of the love that 'moves the sun
in heaven and all the stars'. Nevertheless it was that vision which
Donne sought. He could never have been content with Milton's heaven of
majesty and awe divorced from the quickening spirit of love. And there
are moments when he comes as close to that beatific vision as perhaps
a self-tormenting mind involved in the web of seventeenth-century
theology ever could,--at moments love and ecstasy gain the upper hand
of fear and penitence. But it is in the sermons that he reaches these
highest levels. There is nothing in the florid eloquence of Jeremy
Taylor that can equal the splendour of occasional passages in Donne's
sermons, when the lava-like flow of his heated reasoning seems
suddenly to burst and flower in such a splendid incandescence of
mystical rapture as this:--
'Death and life are in the power of the tongue, says Solomon,
in another sense: and in this sense too, If my tongue,
suggested by my heart, and by my heart rooted in faith, can
say, _non moriar, non moriar_: If I can say (and my conscience
do not tell me that I belie mine own state) if I can say, That
the blood of the Saviour runs in my veins, That the breath of
his spirit quickens all my purposes, that all my deaths
have their Resurrection, all my sins their remorses, all my
rebellions their reconciliations, I will hearken no more after
this question as it is intended _de morte naturali_, of a
natural death; I know I must die that death; what care I? nor
_de morte spirituali_, the death of sin, I know I doe, and
shall die so; why despair I? but I will find out another
death, _mortem raptus_, a death of rapture and of extasy, that
death which St. Paul died more than once, the death which St.
Gregory speaks of, _divina contemplatio quoddam sepulchrum
animae_, the contemplation of God and heaven is a kind of
burial and sepulchre and rest of the soul; and in this death
of rapture and extasy, in this death of the Contemplation of
my interest in my Saviour, I shall find myself and all my
sins enterred, and entombed in his wounds, and like a Lily in
Paradise, out of red earth, I shall see my soul rise out of
his blade, in a candor, and in an innocence, contracted there,
acceptable in the sight of his Father. '
This is the highest level that Donne ever reached in eloquence
inspired by the vision of the joy and not the terror of the Christian
faith, higher than anything in the _Second Anniversary_, but in his
last hymns hope and confidence find a simpler and a tenderer note. The
noble hymn, 'In what torn ship so ever I embark,' is in somewhat
the same anguished tone as the _Holy Sonnets_; but the highly
characteristic
Since I am coming to that Holy roome,
Where with thy Quire of Saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy Musique;
and the _Hymn to God the Father_, speak of final faith and hope in
tones which recall--recall also by their sea-coloured imagery, and
by their rhythm--the lines in which another sensitive and tormented
poet-soul contemplated the last voyage:
I have a sinne of feare, that when I have spunne
My last thred, I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by thy self that at my death thy sunne
Shall shine as he shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done,
I feare no more.
Beside the passion of these lines even Tennyson's grow a little pale:
Twilight and evening bell
And after that the dark;
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark:
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
It has not been the aim of the present editor to attempt to pronounce
a final judgement upon Donne. It seems to him idle to compare Donne's
poetry with that of other poets or to endeavour to fix its relative
worth. Its faults are great and manifest; its beauties _sui generis_,
incommunicable and incomparable. My endeavour here has been by
an analysis of some of the different elements in this composite
work--poems composed at different times and in different moods; flung
together at the end so carelessly that youthful extravagances of witty
sensuality and pious aspirations jostle each other cheek by jowl;
and presenting a texture so diverse from that of poetry as we usually
think of it--to show how many are the strands which run through it,
and that one of these is a poetry, not perfect in form, rugged of line
and careless in rhyme, a poetry in which intellect and feeling are
seldom or never perfectly fused in a work that is of imagination all
compact, yet a poetry of an extraordinarily arresting and haunting
quality, passionate, thoughtful, and with a deep melody of its own.
[Footnote 1: _History of English Poetry_, iii. 154. Mr.
Courthope qualifies this statement somewhat on the next
page: 'From this spirit of cynical lawlessness he was
perhaps reclaimed by genuine love,' &c. But he has, I think,
insufficiently analysed the diverse strains in Donne's
love-poetry. ]
[Footnote 2: Gaspary: _History of Italian Literature_
(Oelsner's translation), 1904. Consult also Karl Vossler:
_Die philosophischen Grundlagen des 'süssen neuen Stils'_,
Heidelberg, 1904, and _La Poesia giovanile &c. di Guido
Cavalcanti: Studi di Giulio Salvadori_, Roma, 1895. ]
[Footnote 3: Gaspary: _Op. Cit. _]
* * * * *
II
THE TEXT AND CANON OF DONNE'S POEMS
TEXT
Both the text and the canon of Donne's poems present problems which
have never been frankly faced by any of his editors--problems which,
considering the greatness of his reputation in the seventeenth
century, and the very considerable revival of his reputation which
began with Coleridge and De Quincey and has advanced uninterruptedly
since, are of a rather surprising character. An attempt to define and,
as far as may be, to solve these problems will begin most simply with
a brief account of the form in which Donne's poems have come down to
us.
Three of Donne's poems were printed in his lifetime--the Anniversaries
(i. e. _The Anatomy of the World_ with _A Funerall Elegie_ and _The
Progresse of the Soule_) in 1611 and 1612, with later editions in
1621 and 1625; the _Elegie upon the untimely death of the incomparable
Prince Henry_, in Sylvester's _Lachrymae Lachrymarum_, 1613; and the
lines prefixed to _Coryats Crudities_ in 1611. We know nothing of any
other poem by Donne being printed prior to 1633. It is noteworthy,
as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, that none of the _Miscellanies_ which
appeared towards the end of the sixteenth century, as _Englands
Parnassus_[1] (1600), or at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
as Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_,[2] contained poems by Donne. The
first of these is a collection of witty and elegant passages from
different authors on various general themes (Dissimulation, Faith,
Learning, &c. ) and is just the kind of book for which Donne's poems
would have been made abundant use of at a somewhat later period.
There are in our libraries manuscript collections of 'Donne's choicest
conceits', and extracts long or short from his poems, dating from the
second quarter of the seventeenth century. [3] The editor of the second
of the anthologies mentioned, Francis Davison, became later much
interested in Donne's poems. In notes which he made at some date after
1608, we find him inquiring for 'Satyres, Elegies, Epigrams etc. , by
John Don', and querying whether they might be obtained 'from Eleaz.
Hodgson and Ben Johnson'. Among the books again which he has lent to
his brother at a later date are 'John Duns Satyres'. This interest on
the part of Davison in Donne's poems makes it seem to me very unlikely
that if he had known them earlier he would not have included some of
them in his _Rhapsody_, or that if he had done so he would not
have told us. It has been the custom of late to assign to Donne the
authorship of one charming lyric in the _Rhapsody_, 'Absence hear thou
my protestation. ' I hope to show elsewhere that this is the work, not
of Donne, but of another young wit of the day, John Hoskins, whose few
extant poems are a not uninteresting link between the manner of Sidney
and the Elizabethans and of Donne and the 'Metaphysicals'.
The first collected edition of Donne's poems was issued in 1633, two
years after his death. This is a small quarto, the title-page of which
is here reproduced.
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
LONDON.
Printed by _M. F. _ for IOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in S^t '_Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_. 1633.
The first eight pages (Sheet A) are numbered, and contain (1) _The
Printer to the Understanders_,[4] (2) the _Hexastichon Bibliopolae_,
(3) the dedication of, and introductory epistle to, _The Progresse of
the Soule_, with which poem the volume opens. The poems themselves,
with some prose letters and the _Elegies upon the Author_, fill pages
1-406. The numbers on some of the pages are misprinted. The order of
the poems is generally chaotic, but in batches the poems follow the
order preserved in the later editions. Of the significance of this,
and of the source and character of this edition, I shall speak later.
As regards text and canon it is the most trustworthy of all the old
editions. The publisher, John Marriot, was a well-known bookseller
at the sign of the Flower de Luce, and issued the poems of Breton,
Drayton, Massinger, Quarles, and Wither. The printer was probably
Miles Fletcher, or Flesher, a printer of considerable importance
in Little Britain from 1611 to 1664. It would almost seem, from
the heading of the introductory letter, that the printer was more
responsible for the issue than the bookseller Marriot, and it is
perhaps noteworthy that when in 1650 the younger Donne succeeded in
getting the publication of the poems into his own hand, John Marriot's
name remained on the title-page (1650) as publisher, but the printer's
initials disappeared, and his prefatory letter made way for a
dedication by the younger Donne. (See page 4. ) It should be added that
copies of the 1633 edition differ considerably from one another. In
some a portrait has been inserted. Occasionally _The Printer to the
Understanders_ is omitted, the _Infinitati Sacrum &c. _ following
immediately on the title-page. In some poems, notably _The Progresse
of the Soule_, and certain of the _Letters_ to noble ladies, the text
underwent considerable alteration as the volume passed through the
press. Some copies are more correct than others. A few of the errors
of the 1635 edition are traceable to the use by the printer of a
comparatively imperfect copy of the 1633 edition.
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON
THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
_LONDON_
Printed by _M. F. _ for JOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his Shop in S^t _Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_.
1635.
The _Poems by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death_ were reprinted
by M. F. for John Harriot in 1635 (the title-page is here reproduced),
but with very considerable alterations. The introductory material
remained unchanged except that to the _Hexastichon Bibliopolae_ was
added a _Hexastichon ad Bibliopolam. Incerti_. (See p. 3. ) To the
title-page was prefixed a portrait in an oval frame. Outside the frame
is engraved, to the left top, ANNO DNI. 1591. ÆTATIS SVÆ. 18. ; to
the right top, on a band ending in a coat of arms, ANTES MVERTO
QUE MVDADO. Underneath the engraved portrait and background is the
following poem:
_This was for youth, Strength, Mirth, and wit that Time
Most count their golden Age; but t'was not thine.
Thine was thy later yeares, so much refind
From youths Drosse, Mirth, & wit; as thy pure mind
Thought (like the Angels) nothing but the Praise
Of thy Creator, in those last, best Dayes.
Witnes this Booke, (thy Embleme) which begins
With Love; but endes, with Sighes, & Teares for sins. _
IZ: WA:
_Will: Marshall sculpsit_. [5]
_The Printer to the Understanders_ is still followed immediately by
the dedication, _Infinitati Sacrum_, of _The Progresse of the Soule_,
although the poem itself is removed to another part of the volume. The
printer noticed this mistake, and at the end of the _Elegies upon the
Author_ adds this note:
_Errata_. [6]
_Cvrteous Reader, know, that that Epistle intituled, Infinitati
Sacrum, 16. of August, 1601. which is printed in the
beginning of the Booke, is misplaced; it should have beene
printed before the Progresse of the Soule, in Page 301.
before which it was written by the Author; if any other in the
Impression doe fall out, which I know not of, hold me excused
for I have endeavoured thy satisfaction. _
Thine, I. M.
The closing lines of Walton's poem show that it must have been written
for this edition, as they refer to what is the chief feature in the
new issue of the poems (pp. 1-388, including some prose letters in
Latin and English, pp. 275-300, but not including the _Elegies upon
the Author_ which in this edition and those of 1639, 1649, 1650,
and 1654 are added in unnumbered pages). This new feature is their
arrangement in a series of groups:[7]--
Songs and Sonets.
Epigrams.
Elegies.
Epithalamions, _or_, Marriage Songs.
Satyres.
Letters to Severall Personages.
Funerall Elegies, (including _An Anatomie of the
World_ with _A Funerall Elegie_, _Of the Progresse of
the Soule_, and _Epicedes and Obsequies upon the
deaths of sundry Personages_. )
(Letters in Prose). [8]
The Progresse of the Soule.
Divine Poems.
While the poems were thus rearranged, the canon also underwent some
alteration. One poem, viz. Basse's _Epitaph on Shakespeare_ ('Renowned
Chaucer lie a thought more nigh To rare Beaumont'), which had found
its way into _1633_, was dropped; but quite a number were added,
twenty-eight, or twenty-nine if the epitaph _On Himselfe_ be reckoned
(as it appears) twice. Professor Norton, in the bibliographical note
in the Grolier Club edition (which I occasionally call Grolier for
convenience), has inadvertently given the _Elegie on the L. C. _ as one
of the poems first printed in _1635_. This is an error. The poem was
included in _1633_ as the sixth in a group of _Elegies_, the rest of
which are love poems. The editor of _1635_ merely transferred it to
its proper place among the _Funerall Elegies_, just as modern editors
have transferred the _Elegie on his Mistris_ ('By our first strange
and fatall interview') from the funeral to the love _Elegies_.
The authenticity of the poems added in _1635_ will be fully discussed
later. The conclusion of the present editor is that of the English
poems fifteen are certainly Donne's; three or four are probably or
possibly his; the remaining eleven are pretty certainly _not_ by
Donne. There is no reason to think that _1635_ is in any way a more
authoritative edition than _1633_. It has fewer signs of competent
editing of the text, and it begins the process of sweeping in poems
from every quarter, which was continued by Waldron, Simeon, and
Grosart.
The third edition of Donne's poems appeared in 1639. This is identical
in form, contents, and paging with that of 1635. The dedication and
introduction to _The Progresse of the Soule_ are removed to their
right place and the _Errata_ dropped, and there are a considerable
number of minor alterations of the text.
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
VVITH
ELEGIES
ON
THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
[Illustration]
_LONDON_,
Printed by _M. F. _ for JOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his Shop in S^t _Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_.
1639.
In the issuing of all these editions of Donne's poems, the younger
Donne, who seems to have claimed the right to benefit by his father's
literary remains, had apparently no part. [9] What assistance, if
any, the printer and publisher had from others of Donne's friends and
executors it is impossible now to say, though one can hardly imagine
that without some assistance they could have got access to so many
poems or been allowed to publish the elegies on his death, some of
which refer to the publication of the poems. [10] Walton, as we have
seen, wrote verses to be prefixed to the second edition. At any
rate in 1637 the younger John Donne made an effort to arrest the
unauthorized issue of his father's works. Dr. Grosart first printed
in his edition of the poems (_Fuller Worthies' Library_, 1873, ii,
p. lii) the following petition and response preserved in the Record
Office:
To y^e most Reverende Father in God
William Lorde Arch-Bisshop of
Canterburie Primate, and
Metropolitan of all Eng-
lande his Grace.
The humble petition of John Donne, Clercke. Doth show unto
your Grace that since y^e death of his Father (latly Deane of
Pauls) there hath bene manie scandalous Pamflets printed, and
published, under his name, which were none of his, by severall
Boocksellers, withoute anie leave or Autoritie; in particuler
one entitoled Juvenilia, printed for Henry Seale; another
by John Marriott and William Sheares, entitoled Ignatius his
Conclave, as allsoe certaine Poems by y^e sayde John Marriote,
of which abuses thay have bene often warned by your Pe^tr
and tolde that if thay desisted not, thay should be proceeded
against beefore your Grace, which thay seeme soe much
to slight, that thay profess soddainly to publish new
impressions, verie much to the greife of your Pe^tr and the
discredite of y^e memorie of his Father.
Wherefore your Pe^tr doth beeseece your Grace that you
would bee pleased by your Commaunde, to stopp their farther
proceedinge herein, and to cale the forenamed boocksellers
beefore you, to giue an account, for what thay haue allreadie
done; and your Pe^tr shall pray, &c.
I require y^e Partyes whom this Pe^t concernes, not to meddle
any farther w^th y^e Printing or Selling of any y^e pretended
workes of y^e late Deane of St. Paules, saue onely such as
shall be licensed by publicke authority, and approued by the
Peticon^r, as they will answere y^e contrary at theyr perill.
And of this I desire Mr. Deane of y^e Arches to take care.
Dec: 16, 1637. W. Cant.
Despite this injunction the edition of 1639 was issued, as the
previous ones had been, by Marriot and M. F. It was not till ten years
later that the younger Donne succeeded in establishing his claim. In
1649 Marriot prepared a new edition, printed as before by M. F. The
introductory matter remained unchanged except that the printing being
more condensed it occupies three pages instead of five; the use of
Roman and Italic type is exactly reversed; and there are some slight
changes of spelling. The printing of the poems is also more condensed,
so that they occupy pp. 1-368 instead of 1-388 in _1635-39_. The text
underwent some generally unimportant alteration or corruption, and two
poems were added, the lines _Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities_ (p.
172. It had been printed with _Coryats Crudities_ in 1611) and the
short poem called _Sonnet. The Token_ (p. 72).
Only a very few copies of this edition were issued. W. C. Hazlitt
describes one in his _Bibliographical Collections, &c. _, _Second
Series_ (1882), p. 181. The only copy of whose existence I am aware is
in the Library of Harvard College. It was used by Professor Norton in
preparing the Grolier Club edition, and I owe my knowledge of it
to this and to a careful description made for me by Miss Mary H.
Buckingham. The title-page is here reproduced.
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON
THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
[Illustration]
_LONDON_
Printed by _M. F. _ for JOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in S^t _Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-Street_.
1649.
What happened seems to have been this. The younger Donne intervened
before the edition was issued, and either by authority or agreement
took it over. Marriot remained the publisher. The title-page which in
_1649_ was identical with that of _1635-39_, except for the change of
date and the 'W' in 'WITH', now appeared as follows:
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE
AUTHORS DEATH.
TO WHICH
_Is added divers Copies under his own hand
never before in print. _
_LONDON_,
Printed for _John Marriot_, and are
to be sold by _Richard Marriot_ at his shop
by _Chancery_ lane end over against the Inner
Temple gate. 1650.
The initials of the printer, M. F. , disappear, and the name of John
Marriot's son, partner, and successor, Richard, appears along with his
own. There is no great distance between St. Dunstan's Churchyard and
the end of Chancery Lane. With M. F. went the introductory _Printer
to the Understanders_, its place being taken by a dedicatory letter
in young Donne's most courtly style to William, Lord Craven, Baron of
Hamsted-Marsham.
In the body of the volume as prepared in 1649 no alteration was made.
The 'divers Copies . . . never before in print', of which the new editor
boasts, were inserted in a couple of sheets (or a sheet and a half,
aa, bb incomplete) at the end. These are variously bound up in
different copies, being sometimes before, sometimes at the end of
the _Elegies upon the Author_, sometimes before and among them. They
contain a quite miscellaneous assortment of writings, verse and
prose, Latin and English, by, or presumably by, Donne, with a few
complimentary verses on Donne taken from Jonson's _Epigrams_.
The text of Donne's own writings is carelessly printed. In short,
Donne's son did nothing to fix either the text or the canon of his
father's poems. The former, as it stands in the body of the volume
in the editions of 1650-54, he took over from Marriot and M. F. As
regards the latter, he speaks of the 'kindnesse of the Printer, . . .
adding something too much, lest any spark of this sacred fire might
perish undiscerned'; but he does not condescend to tell us, if he
knew, what these unauthentic poems are. He withdrew nothing.
In 1654 the poems were published once more, but printed from the same
types as in 1650. The text of the poems (pp. 1-368) is identical in
_1649_, _1650_, _1654_; of the additional matter (pp. 369-392) in
_1650_, _1654_. The only change made in the last is on the title-page,
where a new publisher's name appears,[11] as in the following
facsimile:
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE
AUTHORS DEATH.
TO WHICH
_Is added divers Copies under his own hand
never before in Print. _
_LONDON_,
Printed by _J. Flesher_, and are to be sold
by _John Sweeting_ at the Angel in
Popeshead-Alley. 1654.
James Flesher was the son of Miles Flesher, or Fletcher, who is
probably the M. F. of the earlier editions. John Sweeting was an
active bookseller and publisher, first at the Crown in Cornhill, and
subsequently at the Angel as above (1639-1661). He was the publisher
of many plays and poems, and in 1657 the publication of Donne's
_Letters to Severall Persons of Honour_ was transferred to him from
Richard Marriot, who issued them in 1651.
POEMS, &c.
BY
JOHN DONNE,
_late Dean of St. _ Pauls.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE
AUTHORS DEATH.
To which is added
_Divers Copies under his own hand_,
+Never before Printed. +
_In the SAVOY_,
Printed by _T. N. _ for _Henry Herringman_, at the sign of
the _Anchor_, in the lower-walk of the
_New-Exchange. _ 1669.
The last edition of Donne's poems which bears evidence of recourse
to manuscript sources, and which enlarged the canon of the poems, was
that of 1669. The younger Donne died in 1662, and this edition was
purely a printer's venture. Its title-page runs as opposite.
This edition added two elegies which a sense of propriety had hitherto
excluded from Donne's printed works, though they are in almost all
the manuscript collections, and a satire which most of the manuscripts
assign not to Donne but to Sir John Roe. The introductory material
remains as in _1650-54_ and unpaged; but the _Elegies to the Author_
are now paged, and the poems with the prose letters inserted in _1633_
and added to in _1635_ (see above, p. lxiii, note 8), the _Elegies to
the Author_, and the additional sheets inserted in _1650_, occupy pp.
1-414. The love _Elegies_ were numbered as in earlier editions, but
the titles which some had borne were all dropped. _Elegie XIIII_ (XII
in this edition) was enlarged. Two new Elegies were added, one (_Loves
Progress_) as _Elegie XVIII_, the second (_Going to Bed_) unnumbered
and simply headed _To his Mistress going to bed_. The text of the
poems underwent considerable alteration, some of the changes showing
a reversion to the text of _1633_, others a reference to manuscript
sources, many editorial conjecture.
The edition of 1669 is the last edition of Donne's poems which can
be regarded as in any degree an authority for the text of the poems,
because it is the last which affords evidence of access to independent
manuscript sources. All subsequent editions, till we come to those of
Grosart and Chambers, were based on these. If the editor preferred one
reading to another it was on purely internal evidence, a result of
his own decision as to which was the more correct or the preferable
reading. In 1719, for example, a new edition was brought out by the
well-known publisher Jacob Tonson. The title-page runs as over.
POEMS
ON SEVERAL
OCCASIONS.
Written by the Reverend
_JOHN DONNE_, D. D.
Late Dean of St. PAUL'S.
WITH
ELEGIES on the Author's Death.
To this Edition is added,
Some ACCOUNT of the LIFE
of the AUTHOR.
_LONDON_:
Printed for J. TONSON, and Sold by
W. TAYLOR at the _Ship_ in
_Pater-noster-Row_. 1719.
This edition opens with the Epistle Dedicatory as in _1650-69_,
which is followed by an abridgement of Walton's _Life_ of Donne. An
examination of the text of the poems shows clearly that this
edition was printed from that of 1669, but is by no means a slavish
reproduction. The editor has consulted earlier editions and corrected
mistakes, but I have found no evidence either that he knew the
editions of 1633 and 1635, or had access to manuscript collections. He
very wisely dropped the Satire 'Sleep next Society', inserted for the
first time by the editor of _1669_, and certainly not by Donne. It was
reinserted by Chalmers in 1810. [12]
These, then, are the early editions of Donne's poems. But the printed
editions are not the only form in which the poems, or the great
majority of the poems, have come down to us. None of these editions,
we have seen, was issued before the poet's death. None, so far as
we can discover (I shall discuss this point more fully later), was
printed from sources carefully prepared for the press by the author,
as were for example the _LXXX Sermons_ issued in 1640. But Donne's
poems were well known to many readers before 1633. One of the earliest
published references to them occurs in 1614, in a collection of
Epigrams by Thomas Freeman, called _Runne_ | _And a great Cast_ |
_The_ | _Second Book_.
Epigram 84.
To Iohn Dunne.
The _Storme_ describ'd hath set thy name afloate,
Thy _Calme_ a gale of famous winde hath got:
Thy _Satyres_ short, too soone we them o'relooke,
I prethee Persius write a bigger booke.
In 1616 Ben Jonson's _Epigrammes_ were published in the first (folio)
edition of his works, and they contain the Epigram, printed in this
edition, _To Lucy, Countesse of Bedford, with Mr. Donnes Satyres_. In
these and similar cases the 'bookes' referred to are not printed but
manuscript works. Mr. Chambers has pointed out (_Poems of John Donne_,
i, pp. xxxviii-ix) an interesting reference in Drayton's _Epistle to
Reynolds_ to poems circulating thus 'by transcription'; and Anthony
Wood speaks of Hoskins having left a 'book of poems neatly written'.
In Donne's own letters we find references to his poems, his paradoxes
and problems, and even a long treatise like the [Greek: BIATHANATOS],
being sent to his friends with injunctions of secrecy, and in the case
of the last with an express statement that it had not been, and was
not to be, printed. Sometimes the manuscript collection seems to have
been made by Donne himself, or on his instruction, for a special
friend and patron like Lord Ancrum; but after he had become a
distinguished Churchman who, as Jonson told Drummond, 'repenteth
highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems,' it was his friends and
admirers who collected and copied them. An instructive reference to
the interest awakened in Donne's early poems by his fame as a preacher
comes to us from Holland. Constantine Huyghens, the Dutch poet, and
father of the more famous scientist, Christian, was a member of the
Dutch embassy in 1618, 1621-23, and again in 1624. He moved in the
best circles, and made the acquaintance of Donne ('great preacher and
great conversationalist', he calls him) at the house probably of Sir
Robert Killigrew. Writing to his friend and fellow-poet Hooft, in
1630, he says:[13]
'I think I have often entertained you with reminiscences of
Dr. Donne, now Dean of St. Pauls in London, and on account
of this remunerative post (such is the custom of the English)
held in high esteem, in still higher for the wealth of his
unequalled wit, and yet more incomparable eloquence in the
pulpit. Educated early at Court in the service of the great;
experienced in the ways of the world; sharpened by study; in
poetry, he is more famous than anyone. Many rich fruits from
the green branches of his wit[14] have lain mellowing among
the lovers of art, which now, when _nearly rotten with age_,
they _are distributing_. Into my hands have fallen, by the
help of my special friends among the gentlemen of that nation,
some five and twenty of the best sort of medlars. Among
our people, I cannot select anyone to whom they ought to be
communicated sooner than to you,[15] as this poets manner of
conceit and expression are exactly yours, Sir. '
This is a very interesting piece of evidence as to the manner in which
Donne's poems had been preserved by his friends, and the form in which
they were being distributed. There is no reference to publication. It
is doubtless due to this activity in collecting and transcribing the
poems of the now famous preacher that we owe the number of manuscript
collections dating from the years before and immediately after 1630.
Had Donne undertaken the publication of his own poems, such of these
manuscript collections as have been preserved--none of which
are autograph, and few or none of which have a now traceable
history--would have little importance for a modern editor. The most
that they could do would be to show us occasionally what changes a
poem had undergone between its earliest and its latest appearance.
But Donne's poems were not published in this way, and the manuscripts
cannot be ignored. They must have for his editor at least the
same interest and importance as the Quartos have for the editor
of Shakespeare. Whatever opinion he may hold, on _a priori_ or _a
posteriori_ grounds, regarding the superior authority of the First
Folio of Shakespeare's plays, no editor, not 'thirled to' a theory,
will deny that a right reading has been preserved for us often by the
Quartos and the Quartos only. No wise man will neglect the assistance
even of the more imperfect of them. Before therefore discussing the
relative value of the different editions, and the use that may be made
of the manuscripts, it will be well to give a short description of the
manuscripts which the present editor has consulted and used, of their
relation to one another, their comparative value, and the relation of
_some_ of them to the editions. It is, of course, possible that there
are manuscripts of Donne's poems which have not yet come to light; and
among them may be some more correctly transcribed than any which
has come into the present editor's hands. He has, however, examined
between twenty and thirty, and with the feeling recently of moving
in a circle--that new manuscripts were in part or whole duplicates of
those which had been already examined, and confirmed readings already
noted but did not suggest anything fresh.
I will divide the manuscripts into four classes, of which the first
two, it will be seen at a glance, are likely to be the most important
for the textual critic.
(1) Manuscript collections of portions of Donne's poems, e. g. the
_Satyres_. The 'booke' to which Freeman refers in the epigram quoted
above was probably a small collection of this kind, and we have seen
that Jonson sent the _Satyres_ to Lady Bedford, and Francis Davison
lent them to his brother. Of such collections I have examined the
following:
_Q. _ This is a small quarto manuscript, bound up with a number of
other manuscripts, in a volume (MS. 216) in the library of Queen's
College, Oxford. It is headed _Mr. John Dunnes Satires_, and contains
the five Satires (which alone I have accepted as Donne's own) followed
by _A Storme_, _A Calme_, and one song, _The Curse_ (see p. 41), here
headed _Dirae_. As Mr. Chambers says (_Poems of John Donne_, i, p.
xxxvi), this is probably just the kind of 'booke' which Freeman read.
in the same abstract, dialectical, erudite strain he emphasizes the
interdependence of soul and body:
As our blood labours to beget
Spirits, as like soules as it can,
Because such fingers need to knit
That subtile knot, which makes us man:
So must pure lovers soules descend
T'affections, and to faculties,
Which sense may reach and apprehend,
_Else a great Prince in prison lies_.
It may be that Donne has not entirely succeeded in what he here
attempts. There hangs about the poem just a suspicion of the
conventional and unreal Platonism of the seventeenth century. In
attempting to state and vindicate the relation of soul and body he
falls perhaps inevitably into the appearance, at any rate, of the
dualism which he is trying to transcend. He places them over against
each other as separate entities and the lower bulks unduly. In love,
says Pascal, the body disappears from sight in the intellectual and
spiritual passion which it has kindled. That is what happens in _The
Anniversarie_, not altogether in _The Extasie_. Yet no poem makes one
realize more fully what Jonson meant by calling Donne 'the first poet
in the world for some things'. 'I should never find any fault with
metaphysical poems,' is Coleridge's judgement, 'if they were all like
this or but half as excellent. '
It was only the force of Donne's personality that could achieve even
an approximate harmony of elements so divergent as are united in his
love-verses, that could master the lower-natured steed that drew the
chariot of his troubled and passionate soul and make it subservient to
his yoke-fellow of purer strain who is a lover of honour, and modesty,
and temperance, and the follower of true glory. In the work of his
followers, who were many, though they owed allegiance to Jonson
also, the lower elements predominated. The strain of metaphysical
love-poetry in the seventeenth century with its splendid _élan_ and
sonorous cadence is in general Epicurean and witty. It is only now and
again--in Marvell, perhaps in Herrick's
Bid me to live, and I will live,
Thy Protestant to be,
certainly in Rochester's songs, in
An age in her embraces past
Would seem a winter's day,
or the unequalled:
When wearied with a world of woe
To thy safe bosom I retire,
Where love, and peace, and truth does flow,
May I contented there expire,
that the accents of the _heart_ are clearly audible, that passion
prevails over Epicurean fancy or cynical wit. On the other hand, the
idealism of seventeenth-century poetry and romances, the Platonism of
the Hôtel de Rambouillet that one finds in Habington's _Castara_, in
Kenelm Digby's _Private Memoirs_, in the French romances of chivalry
and their imitations in English is the silliest, because the emptiest,
that ever masqueraded as such in any literature, at any period. A
sensual and cynical flippancy on the one hand, a passionless, mannered
idealism on the other, led directly to that thinly veiled contempt
of women which is so obvious in the satirical essays of Addison and
Pope's _Rape of the Lock_.
But there was one poet who meditated on the same problem as Donne, who
felt like him the power and greatness of love, and like him could
not accept a doctrine of love which seemed to exclude or depreciate
marriage. In 1640, just before his marriage, as rash in its way as
Donne's but less happy in the issue, Milton, defending his character
against accusations of immorality, traced the development of his
thought about love. The passage, in _An Apology against a Pamphlet
called 'A Modest Confutation'_, &c. , has been taken as having a
reference to the _Paradise Lost_. But Milton rather seems at the time
to have been meditating a work like the _Vita Nuova_ or a romance like
that of Tasso in which love was to be a motive as well as religion,
for the whole theme of his thought is love, true love and its
mysterious link with chastity, of which, however, 'marriage is no
defilement'. In the arrogance of his youthful purity Milton would
doubtless have looked with scorn or loathing on the _Elegies_ and the
more careless of Donne's songs. But perhaps pride is a greater enemy
of love than such faults of sense as Donne in his passionate youth was
guilty of, and from which Dante by his own evidence was not exempt.
Whatever be the cause--pride, and the disappointment of his marriage,
and political polemic--Milton never wrote any English love-poetry,
except it be the one sonnet on the death of the wife who might have
opened the sealed wells of his heart; and some want of the experience
which love brought to Dante has dimmed the splendour of the great poem
in which he undertook to justify the ways of God to men. Donne is not
a Milton, but he sounded some notes which touch the soul and quicken
the intellect in a way that Milton's magnificent and intense but
somewhat hard and objective art fails to achieve.
That the simpler and purer, the more ideal and tender of Donne's
love-poems were the expression of his love for Ann More cannot of
course be proved in the case of each individual poem, for all Donne's
verses have come to us (with a few unimportant exceptions) undated
and unarranged. But the general thesis, that it was a great experience
which purified and elevated Donne's poetry, receives a striking
confirmation from the better-known history of his devotional poetry.
Here too wit, often tortured wit, fancy, and the heat which Donne's
wit was always able to generate, would have been all his verse had to
show but for the great sorrow which struck him down in 1617 and gave
to his subsequent sonnets and hymns a sincerer and profounder note,
his imagery a more magnificent quality, his rhythms a more sonorous
music.
Donne was not by nature a devotional poet in the same way and to the
same degree as Giles Fletcher or Herbert or Crashaw. It was a sound
enough instinct which, despite his religious upbringing and his wide
and serious interest in theological questions, made him hesitate to
cross the threshold of the ministry and induced him to seek rather for
some such public service as fell to the lot of his friend Wotton. It
was not, I think, the transition from the Roman to the Anglican Church
which was the obstacle. I have tried to describe what seems to me to
have been the path of enlightenment which opened the way for him to
a change which on every ground of prudence and ambition was desirable
and natural. But to conform, and even to take a part as a free-lance
in theological controversy was one thing, to enter the ministry
another. When this was pressed upon him by Morton or by the King it
brought him into conflict with something deeper and more fundamental
than theological doctrines, namely, a temperament which was rather
that of the Renaissance than that either of Puritan England or of the
Counter-Reformation, whether in Catholic countries or in the Anglican
Church--the temperament of Raleigh and Bacon rather than of Milton or
Herbert or Crashaw.
The simple way of describing Donne's difficulty is Walton's, according
to whom Donne shrank from entering the ministry for fear the notorious
irregularities of his early years should bring discredit on the sacred
calling. But there was more in Donne's life than a youth of pleasure,
an old age of prayers. It is not the case that all which was best and
most serious in Donne's nature led him towards Holy Orders. In his
earliest satires and even in his 'love-song weeds' there is evidence
enough of an earnest, candid soul underneath the extravagances of
wit and youthful sensuality. Donne's mind was naturally serious and
religious; it was not naturally devout or ascetic, but worldly and
ambitious. But to enter the ministry was, for Donne and for all
the serious minds of his age, to enter a profession for which the
essential qualifications were a devotional and an ascetic life.
The country clergy of the Anglican Church were often careless and
scandalous livers before Laud took in hand the discipline of the
Church; but her bishops and most eminent divines, though they might
be courtly and sycophantic, were with few exceptions men of devout and
ascetic life. When Donne finally crossed the Rubicon, convinced that
from the King no promotion was to be hoped for in any other line of
life, it was rather with the deliberate resolution that he would make
his life a model of devotion and ascetic self-denial than as one drawn
by an irresistible attraction or impelled by a controlling sense of
duty to such a life. Donne was no St. Augustine whose transition from
libertinism to saintliness came entirely from within. The noblest
feature of Donne's earlier clerical life was the steadfast spirit in
which he set himself to realize the highest ideals of the calling
he had chosen, and the candour with which he accepted the contrast
between his present position and his earlier life, leaving to
whosoever wished to judge while he followed the path of duty and
penitence.
But such a spirit will not easily produce great devotional poetry.
There are qualities in the religious poetry of simpler and purer souls
to which Donne seldom or never attains. The natural love of God which
overflows the pages of the great mystics, which dilates the heart
and the verses of a poet like the Dutchman Vondel, the ardour and
tenderness of Crashaw, the chaste, pure piety and penitence of
Herbert, the love from which devotion and ascetic self-denial come
unbidden--to these Donne never attained. The high and passionate joy
of _The Anniversary_ is not heard in his sonnets or hymns. Effort is
the note which predominates--the effort to realize the majesty of God,
the heinousness of sin, the terrors of Hell, the mercy of Christ.
Some of the very worst traits in Donne's mind are brought out in
his religious writing. _The Essays on Divinity_ are an extraordinary
revelation of his accumulations of useless Scholastic erudition, and
his capacity to perform feats of ingenious deduction from traditional
and accepted premises. To compare these freakish deductions from the
theory of verbal inspiration with the luminous sense of the _Tractatus
Theologico-Politicus_ is to realize how much rationalism was doing
in the course of the century for the emancipation and healing of the
human intellect. Some of the poems, and those the earliest written,
before Donne had actually taken Orders, are not much more than
exercises in these theological subtleties, poems such as that _On
the Annunciation and Passion falling in the same year_ (1608), _The
Litany_ (1610), _Good-Friday_ (1613), and _The Cross_ (_c. _ 1615)
are characteristic examples of Donne's intense and imaginative wit
employed on traditional topics of Catholic devotion to which no
change of Church ever made him indifferent. Donne never ignored in his
sermons the gulf that separated the Anglican from the Roman Church, or
the link that bound her to the Protestant Churches of the Continent.
'Our great protestant divines' are one of his courts of appeal,
and included Luther and Calvin of whom he never speaks but with the
deepest respect. But he was unwilling to sacrifice to a fanatical
puritanism any element of Catholic devotion which was capable of
an innocent interpretation. His language is guarded and perhaps not
always consistent, but it would not be difficult to show from his
sermons and prose-writings that many of the most distinctively
Catholic tenets were treated by him with the utmost tenderness.
But, as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, the sincerest and profoundest of
Donne's devotional poetry dates from the death of his wife. The loss
of her who had purified and sweetened his earliest love songs lent
a new and deeper _timbre_ to the sonnets and lyrics in which he
contemplates the great topics of personal religion,--sin, death,
the Judgement, and throws himself on the mercy of God as revealed in
Christ. The seven sonnets entitled _La Corona_ have been generally
attributed to this period, but it is probable that they were composed
earlier, and their treatment of the subject of Christ's life and death
is more intellectual and theological than spiritual and poetical. It
is when the tone becomes personal, as in the _Holy Sonnets_, when he
is alone with his own soul in the prospect of death and the Judgement,
that Donne's religious poetry acquires something of the same unique
character as his love songs and elegies by a similar combination
of qualities, intensity of feeling, subtle turns of thought, and
occasional Miltonic splendour of phrase. Here again we meet the
magnificent openings of the _Songs and Sonets_:--
This is my playes last scene; here heavens appoint
My pilgrimages last mile; and my race
Idly yet quickly run hath this last space,
My spans last inch, my minutes latest point;
or,
At the round earths imagin'd quarters blow
Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
From death you numberlesse infinities
Of soules, and to your scatter'd bodies go:
and again--
What if this present were the worlds last night!
Marke in my heart, O Soule, where thou dost dwell,
The picture of Christ crucified, and tell
Whether that countenance can thee affright,
Teares in his eyes quench the amazing light,
Blood fills his frownes, which from his pierc'd head fell.
This passionate penitence, this beating as it were against the bars
of self in the desire to break through to a fuller apprehension of
the mercy and love of God, is the intensely human note of these latest
poems. Nothing came easily to his soul that knew so well how to be
subtle to plague itself. The vision of divine wrath he can conjure up
more easily than the beatific vision of the love that 'moves the sun
in heaven and all the stars'. Nevertheless it was that vision which
Donne sought. He could never have been content with Milton's heaven of
majesty and awe divorced from the quickening spirit of love. And there
are moments when he comes as close to that beatific vision as perhaps
a self-tormenting mind involved in the web of seventeenth-century
theology ever could,--at moments love and ecstasy gain the upper hand
of fear and penitence. But it is in the sermons that he reaches these
highest levels. There is nothing in the florid eloquence of Jeremy
Taylor that can equal the splendour of occasional passages in Donne's
sermons, when the lava-like flow of his heated reasoning seems
suddenly to burst and flower in such a splendid incandescence of
mystical rapture as this:--
'Death and life are in the power of the tongue, says Solomon,
in another sense: and in this sense too, If my tongue,
suggested by my heart, and by my heart rooted in faith, can
say, _non moriar, non moriar_: If I can say (and my conscience
do not tell me that I belie mine own state) if I can say, That
the blood of the Saviour runs in my veins, That the breath of
his spirit quickens all my purposes, that all my deaths
have their Resurrection, all my sins their remorses, all my
rebellions their reconciliations, I will hearken no more after
this question as it is intended _de morte naturali_, of a
natural death; I know I must die that death; what care I? nor
_de morte spirituali_, the death of sin, I know I doe, and
shall die so; why despair I? but I will find out another
death, _mortem raptus_, a death of rapture and of extasy, that
death which St. Paul died more than once, the death which St.
Gregory speaks of, _divina contemplatio quoddam sepulchrum
animae_, the contemplation of God and heaven is a kind of
burial and sepulchre and rest of the soul; and in this death
of rapture and extasy, in this death of the Contemplation of
my interest in my Saviour, I shall find myself and all my
sins enterred, and entombed in his wounds, and like a Lily in
Paradise, out of red earth, I shall see my soul rise out of
his blade, in a candor, and in an innocence, contracted there,
acceptable in the sight of his Father. '
This is the highest level that Donne ever reached in eloquence
inspired by the vision of the joy and not the terror of the Christian
faith, higher than anything in the _Second Anniversary_, but in his
last hymns hope and confidence find a simpler and a tenderer note. The
noble hymn, 'In what torn ship so ever I embark,' is in somewhat
the same anguished tone as the _Holy Sonnets_; but the highly
characteristic
Since I am coming to that Holy roome,
Where with thy Quire of Saints for evermore,
I shall be made thy Musique;
and the _Hymn to God the Father_, speak of final faith and hope in
tones which recall--recall also by their sea-coloured imagery, and
by their rhythm--the lines in which another sensitive and tormented
poet-soul contemplated the last voyage:
I have a sinne of feare, that when I have spunne
My last thred, I shall perish on the shore;
Swear by thy self that at my death thy sunne
Shall shine as he shines now and heretofore:
And having done that, Thou hast done,
I feare no more.
Beside the passion of these lines even Tennyson's grow a little pale:
Twilight and evening bell
And after that the dark;
And may there be no sadness of farewell
When I embark:
For though from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
It has not been the aim of the present editor to attempt to pronounce
a final judgement upon Donne. It seems to him idle to compare Donne's
poetry with that of other poets or to endeavour to fix its relative
worth. Its faults are great and manifest; its beauties _sui generis_,
incommunicable and incomparable. My endeavour here has been by
an analysis of some of the different elements in this composite
work--poems composed at different times and in different moods; flung
together at the end so carelessly that youthful extravagances of witty
sensuality and pious aspirations jostle each other cheek by jowl;
and presenting a texture so diverse from that of poetry as we usually
think of it--to show how many are the strands which run through it,
and that one of these is a poetry, not perfect in form, rugged of line
and careless in rhyme, a poetry in which intellect and feeling are
seldom or never perfectly fused in a work that is of imagination all
compact, yet a poetry of an extraordinarily arresting and haunting
quality, passionate, thoughtful, and with a deep melody of its own.
[Footnote 1: _History of English Poetry_, iii. 154. Mr.
Courthope qualifies this statement somewhat on the next
page: 'From this spirit of cynical lawlessness he was
perhaps reclaimed by genuine love,' &c. But he has, I think,
insufficiently analysed the diverse strains in Donne's
love-poetry. ]
[Footnote 2: Gaspary: _History of Italian Literature_
(Oelsner's translation), 1904. Consult also Karl Vossler:
_Die philosophischen Grundlagen des 'süssen neuen Stils'_,
Heidelberg, 1904, and _La Poesia giovanile &c. di Guido
Cavalcanti: Studi di Giulio Salvadori_, Roma, 1895. ]
[Footnote 3: Gaspary: _Op. Cit. _]
* * * * *
II
THE TEXT AND CANON OF DONNE'S POEMS
TEXT
Both the text and the canon of Donne's poems present problems which
have never been frankly faced by any of his editors--problems which,
considering the greatness of his reputation in the seventeenth
century, and the very considerable revival of his reputation which
began with Coleridge and De Quincey and has advanced uninterruptedly
since, are of a rather surprising character. An attempt to define and,
as far as may be, to solve these problems will begin most simply with
a brief account of the form in which Donne's poems have come down to
us.
Three of Donne's poems were printed in his lifetime--the Anniversaries
(i. e. _The Anatomy of the World_ with _A Funerall Elegie_ and _The
Progresse of the Soule_) in 1611 and 1612, with later editions in
1621 and 1625; the _Elegie upon the untimely death of the incomparable
Prince Henry_, in Sylvester's _Lachrymae Lachrymarum_, 1613; and the
lines prefixed to _Coryats Crudities_ in 1611. We know nothing of any
other poem by Donne being printed prior to 1633. It is noteworthy,
as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, that none of the _Miscellanies_ which
appeared towards the end of the sixteenth century, as _Englands
Parnassus_[1] (1600), or at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
as Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_,[2] contained poems by Donne. The
first of these is a collection of witty and elegant passages from
different authors on various general themes (Dissimulation, Faith,
Learning, &c. ) and is just the kind of book for which Donne's poems
would have been made abundant use of at a somewhat later period.
There are in our libraries manuscript collections of 'Donne's choicest
conceits', and extracts long or short from his poems, dating from the
second quarter of the seventeenth century. [3] The editor of the second
of the anthologies mentioned, Francis Davison, became later much
interested in Donne's poems. In notes which he made at some date after
1608, we find him inquiring for 'Satyres, Elegies, Epigrams etc. , by
John Don', and querying whether they might be obtained 'from Eleaz.
Hodgson and Ben Johnson'. Among the books again which he has lent to
his brother at a later date are 'John Duns Satyres'. This interest on
the part of Davison in Donne's poems makes it seem to me very unlikely
that if he had known them earlier he would not have included some of
them in his _Rhapsody_, or that if he had done so he would not
have told us. It has been the custom of late to assign to Donne the
authorship of one charming lyric in the _Rhapsody_, 'Absence hear thou
my protestation. ' I hope to show elsewhere that this is the work, not
of Donne, but of another young wit of the day, John Hoskins, whose few
extant poems are a not uninteresting link between the manner of Sidney
and the Elizabethans and of Donne and the 'Metaphysicals'.
The first collected edition of Donne's poems was issued in 1633, two
years after his death. This is a small quarto, the title-page of which
is here reproduced.
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
LONDON.
Printed by _M. F. _ for IOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in S^t '_Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_. 1633.
The first eight pages (Sheet A) are numbered, and contain (1) _The
Printer to the Understanders_,[4] (2) the _Hexastichon Bibliopolae_,
(3) the dedication of, and introductory epistle to, _The Progresse of
the Soule_, with which poem the volume opens. The poems themselves,
with some prose letters and the _Elegies upon the Author_, fill pages
1-406. The numbers on some of the pages are misprinted. The order of
the poems is generally chaotic, but in batches the poems follow the
order preserved in the later editions. Of the significance of this,
and of the source and character of this edition, I shall speak later.
As regards text and canon it is the most trustworthy of all the old
editions. The publisher, John Marriot, was a well-known bookseller
at the sign of the Flower de Luce, and issued the poems of Breton,
Drayton, Massinger, Quarles, and Wither. The printer was probably
Miles Fletcher, or Flesher, a printer of considerable importance
in Little Britain from 1611 to 1664. It would almost seem, from
the heading of the introductory letter, that the printer was more
responsible for the issue than the bookseller Marriot, and it is
perhaps noteworthy that when in 1650 the younger Donne succeeded in
getting the publication of the poems into his own hand, John Marriot's
name remained on the title-page (1650) as publisher, but the printer's
initials disappeared, and his prefatory letter made way for a
dedication by the younger Donne. (See page 4. ) It should be added that
copies of the 1633 edition differ considerably from one another. In
some a portrait has been inserted. Occasionally _The Printer to the
Understanders_ is omitted, the _Infinitati Sacrum &c. _ following
immediately on the title-page. In some poems, notably _The Progresse
of the Soule_, and certain of the _Letters_ to noble ladies, the text
underwent considerable alteration as the volume passed through the
press. Some copies are more correct than others. A few of the errors
of the 1635 edition are traceable to the use by the printer of a
comparatively imperfect copy of the 1633 edition.
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON
THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
_LONDON_
Printed by _M. F. _ for JOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his Shop in S^t _Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_.
1635.
The _Poems by J. D. with Elegies on the Authors Death_ were reprinted
by M. F. for John Harriot in 1635 (the title-page is here reproduced),
but with very considerable alterations. The introductory material
remained unchanged except that to the _Hexastichon Bibliopolae_ was
added a _Hexastichon ad Bibliopolam. Incerti_. (See p. 3. ) To the
title-page was prefixed a portrait in an oval frame. Outside the frame
is engraved, to the left top, ANNO DNI. 1591. ÆTATIS SVÆ. 18. ; to
the right top, on a band ending in a coat of arms, ANTES MVERTO
QUE MVDADO. Underneath the engraved portrait and background is the
following poem:
_This was for youth, Strength, Mirth, and wit that Time
Most count their golden Age; but t'was not thine.
Thine was thy later yeares, so much refind
From youths Drosse, Mirth, & wit; as thy pure mind
Thought (like the Angels) nothing but the Praise
Of thy Creator, in those last, best Dayes.
Witnes this Booke, (thy Embleme) which begins
With Love; but endes, with Sighes, & Teares for sins. _
IZ: WA:
_Will: Marshall sculpsit_. [5]
_The Printer to the Understanders_ is still followed immediately by
the dedication, _Infinitati Sacrum_, of _The Progresse of the Soule_,
although the poem itself is removed to another part of the volume. The
printer noticed this mistake, and at the end of the _Elegies upon the
Author_ adds this note:
_Errata_. [6]
_Cvrteous Reader, know, that that Epistle intituled, Infinitati
Sacrum, 16. of August, 1601. which is printed in the
beginning of the Booke, is misplaced; it should have beene
printed before the Progresse of the Soule, in Page 301.
before which it was written by the Author; if any other in the
Impression doe fall out, which I know not of, hold me excused
for I have endeavoured thy satisfaction. _
Thine, I. M.
The closing lines of Walton's poem show that it must have been written
for this edition, as they refer to what is the chief feature in the
new issue of the poems (pp. 1-388, including some prose letters in
Latin and English, pp. 275-300, but not including the _Elegies upon
the Author_ which in this edition and those of 1639, 1649, 1650,
and 1654 are added in unnumbered pages). This new feature is their
arrangement in a series of groups:[7]--
Songs and Sonets.
Epigrams.
Elegies.
Epithalamions, _or_, Marriage Songs.
Satyres.
Letters to Severall Personages.
Funerall Elegies, (including _An Anatomie of the
World_ with _A Funerall Elegie_, _Of the Progresse of
the Soule_, and _Epicedes and Obsequies upon the
deaths of sundry Personages_. )
(Letters in Prose). [8]
The Progresse of the Soule.
Divine Poems.
While the poems were thus rearranged, the canon also underwent some
alteration. One poem, viz. Basse's _Epitaph on Shakespeare_ ('Renowned
Chaucer lie a thought more nigh To rare Beaumont'), which had found
its way into _1633_, was dropped; but quite a number were added,
twenty-eight, or twenty-nine if the epitaph _On Himselfe_ be reckoned
(as it appears) twice. Professor Norton, in the bibliographical note
in the Grolier Club edition (which I occasionally call Grolier for
convenience), has inadvertently given the _Elegie on the L. C. _ as one
of the poems first printed in _1635_. This is an error. The poem was
included in _1633_ as the sixth in a group of _Elegies_, the rest of
which are love poems. The editor of _1635_ merely transferred it to
its proper place among the _Funerall Elegies_, just as modern editors
have transferred the _Elegie on his Mistris_ ('By our first strange
and fatall interview') from the funeral to the love _Elegies_.
The authenticity of the poems added in _1635_ will be fully discussed
later. The conclusion of the present editor is that of the English
poems fifteen are certainly Donne's; three or four are probably or
possibly his; the remaining eleven are pretty certainly _not_ by
Donne. There is no reason to think that _1635_ is in any way a more
authoritative edition than _1633_. It has fewer signs of competent
editing of the text, and it begins the process of sweeping in poems
from every quarter, which was continued by Waldron, Simeon, and
Grosart.
The third edition of Donne's poems appeared in 1639. This is identical
in form, contents, and paging with that of 1635. The dedication and
introduction to _The Progresse of the Soule_ are removed to their
right place and the _Errata_ dropped, and there are a considerable
number of minor alterations of the text.
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
VVITH
ELEGIES
ON
THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
[Illustration]
_LONDON_,
Printed by _M. F. _ for JOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his Shop in S^t _Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_.
1639.
In the issuing of all these editions of Donne's poems, the younger
Donne, who seems to have claimed the right to benefit by his father's
literary remains, had apparently no part. [9] What assistance, if
any, the printer and publisher had from others of Donne's friends and
executors it is impossible now to say, though one can hardly imagine
that without some assistance they could have got access to so many
poems or been allowed to publish the elegies on his death, some of
which refer to the publication of the poems. [10] Walton, as we have
seen, wrote verses to be prefixed to the second edition. At any
rate in 1637 the younger John Donne made an effort to arrest the
unauthorized issue of his father's works. Dr. Grosart first printed
in his edition of the poems (_Fuller Worthies' Library_, 1873, ii,
p. lii) the following petition and response preserved in the Record
Office:
To y^e most Reverende Father in God
William Lorde Arch-Bisshop of
Canterburie Primate, and
Metropolitan of all Eng-
lande his Grace.
The humble petition of John Donne, Clercke. Doth show unto
your Grace that since y^e death of his Father (latly Deane of
Pauls) there hath bene manie scandalous Pamflets printed, and
published, under his name, which were none of his, by severall
Boocksellers, withoute anie leave or Autoritie; in particuler
one entitoled Juvenilia, printed for Henry Seale; another
by John Marriott and William Sheares, entitoled Ignatius his
Conclave, as allsoe certaine Poems by y^e sayde John Marriote,
of which abuses thay have bene often warned by your Pe^tr
and tolde that if thay desisted not, thay should be proceeded
against beefore your Grace, which thay seeme soe much
to slight, that thay profess soddainly to publish new
impressions, verie much to the greife of your Pe^tr and the
discredite of y^e memorie of his Father.
Wherefore your Pe^tr doth beeseece your Grace that you
would bee pleased by your Commaunde, to stopp their farther
proceedinge herein, and to cale the forenamed boocksellers
beefore you, to giue an account, for what thay haue allreadie
done; and your Pe^tr shall pray, &c.
I require y^e Partyes whom this Pe^t concernes, not to meddle
any farther w^th y^e Printing or Selling of any y^e pretended
workes of y^e late Deane of St. Paules, saue onely such as
shall be licensed by publicke authority, and approued by the
Peticon^r, as they will answere y^e contrary at theyr perill.
And of this I desire Mr. Deane of y^e Arches to take care.
Dec: 16, 1637. W. Cant.
Despite this injunction the edition of 1639 was issued, as the
previous ones had been, by Marriot and M. F. It was not till ten years
later that the younger Donne succeeded in establishing his claim. In
1649 Marriot prepared a new edition, printed as before by M. F. The
introductory matter remained unchanged except that the printing being
more condensed it occupies three pages instead of five; the use of
Roman and Italic type is exactly reversed; and there are some slight
changes of spelling. The printing of the poems is also more condensed,
so that they occupy pp. 1-368 instead of 1-388 in _1635-39_. The text
underwent some generally unimportant alteration or corruption, and two
poems were added, the lines _Upon Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities_ (p.
172. It had been printed with _Coryats Crudities_ in 1611) and the
short poem called _Sonnet. The Token_ (p. 72).
Only a very few copies of this edition were issued. W. C. Hazlitt
describes one in his _Bibliographical Collections, &c. _, _Second
Series_ (1882), p. 181. The only copy of whose existence I am aware is
in the Library of Harvard College. It was used by Professor Norton in
preparing the Grolier Club edition, and I owe my knowledge of it
to this and to a careful description made for me by Miss Mary H.
Buckingham. The title-page is here reproduced.
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON
THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
[Illustration]
_LONDON_
Printed by _M. F. _ for JOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in S^t _Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-Street_.
1649.
What happened seems to have been this. The younger Donne intervened
before the edition was issued, and either by authority or agreement
took it over. Marriot remained the publisher. The title-page which in
_1649_ was identical with that of _1635-39_, except for the change of
date and the 'W' in 'WITH', now appeared as follows:
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE
AUTHORS DEATH.
TO WHICH
_Is added divers Copies under his own hand
never before in print. _
_LONDON_,
Printed for _John Marriot_, and are
to be sold by _Richard Marriot_ at his shop
by _Chancery_ lane end over against the Inner
Temple gate. 1650.
The initials of the printer, M. F. , disappear, and the name of John
Marriot's son, partner, and successor, Richard, appears along with his
own. There is no great distance between St. Dunstan's Churchyard and
the end of Chancery Lane. With M. F. went the introductory _Printer
to the Understanders_, its place being taken by a dedicatory letter
in young Donne's most courtly style to William, Lord Craven, Baron of
Hamsted-Marsham.
In the body of the volume as prepared in 1649 no alteration was made.
The 'divers Copies . . . never before in print', of which the new editor
boasts, were inserted in a couple of sheets (or a sheet and a half,
aa, bb incomplete) at the end. These are variously bound up in
different copies, being sometimes before, sometimes at the end of
the _Elegies upon the Author_, sometimes before and among them. They
contain a quite miscellaneous assortment of writings, verse and
prose, Latin and English, by, or presumably by, Donne, with a few
complimentary verses on Donne taken from Jonson's _Epigrams_.
The text of Donne's own writings is carelessly printed. In short,
Donne's son did nothing to fix either the text or the canon of his
father's poems. The former, as it stands in the body of the volume
in the editions of 1650-54, he took over from Marriot and M. F. As
regards the latter, he speaks of the 'kindnesse of the Printer, . . .
adding something too much, lest any spark of this sacred fire might
perish undiscerned'; but he does not condescend to tell us, if he
knew, what these unauthentic poems are. He withdrew nothing.
In 1654 the poems were published once more, but printed from the same
types as in 1650. The text of the poems (pp. 1-368) is identical in
_1649_, _1650_, _1654_; of the additional matter (pp. 369-392) in
_1650_, _1654_. The only change made in the last is on the title-page,
where a new publisher's name appears,[11] as in the following
facsimile:
POEMS,
_By_ J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE
AUTHORS DEATH.
TO WHICH
_Is added divers Copies under his own hand
never before in Print. _
_LONDON_,
Printed by _J. Flesher_, and are to be sold
by _John Sweeting_ at the Angel in
Popeshead-Alley. 1654.
James Flesher was the son of Miles Flesher, or Fletcher, who is
probably the M. F. of the earlier editions. John Sweeting was an
active bookseller and publisher, first at the Crown in Cornhill, and
subsequently at the Angel as above (1639-1661). He was the publisher
of many plays and poems, and in 1657 the publication of Donne's
_Letters to Severall Persons of Honour_ was transferred to him from
Richard Marriot, who issued them in 1651.
POEMS, &c.
BY
JOHN DONNE,
_late Dean of St. _ Pauls.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE
AUTHORS DEATH.
To which is added
_Divers Copies under his own hand_,
+Never before Printed. +
_In the SAVOY_,
Printed by _T. N. _ for _Henry Herringman_, at the sign of
the _Anchor_, in the lower-walk of the
_New-Exchange. _ 1669.
The last edition of Donne's poems which bears evidence of recourse
to manuscript sources, and which enlarged the canon of the poems, was
that of 1669. The younger Donne died in 1662, and this edition was
purely a printer's venture. Its title-page runs as opposite.
This edition added two elegies which a sense of propriety had hitherto
excluded from Donne's printed works, though they are in almost all
the manuscript collections, and a satire which most of the manuscripts
assign not to Donne but to Sir John Roe. The introductory material
remains as in _1650-54_ and unpaged; but the _Elegies to the Author_
are now paged, and the poems with the prose letters inserted in _1633_
and added to in _1635_ (see above, p. lxiii, note 8), the _Elegies to
the Author_, and the additional sheets inserted in _1650_, occupy pp.
1-414. The love _Elegies_ were numbered as in earlier editions, but
the titles which some had borne were all dropped. _Elegie XIIII_ (XII
in this edition) was enlarged. Two new Elegies were added, one (_Loves
Progress_) as _Elegie XVIII_, the second (_Going to Bed_) unnumbered
and simply headed _To his Mistress going to bed_. The text of the
poems underwent considerable alteration, some of the changes showing
a reversion to the text of _1633_, others a reference to manuscript
sources, many editorial conjecture.
The edition of 1669 is the last edition of Donne's poems which can
be regarded as in any degree an authority for the text of the poems,
because it is the last which affords evidence of access to independent
manuscript sources. All subsequent editions, till we come to those of
Grosart and Chambers, were based on these. If the editor preferred one
reading to another it was on purely internal evidence, a result of
his own decision as to which was the more correct or the preferable
reading. In 1719, for example, a new edition was brought out by the
well-known publisher Jacob Tonson. The title-page runs as over.
POEMS
ON SEVERAL
OCCASIONS.
Written by the Reverend
_JOHN DONNE_, D. D.
Late Dean of St. PAUL'S.
WITH
ELEGIES on the Author's Death.
To this Edition is added,
Some ACCOUNT of the LIFE
of the AUTHOR.
_LONDON_:
Printed for J. TONSON, and Sold by
W. TAYLOR at the _Ship_ in
_Pater-noster-Row_. 1719.
This edition opens with the Epistle Dedicatory as in _1650-69_,
which is followed by an abridgement of Walton's _Life_ of Donne. An
examination of the text of the poems shows clearly that this
edition was printed from that of 1669, but is by no means a slavish
reproduction. The editor has consulted earlier editions and corrected
mistakes, but I have found no evidence either that he knew the
editions of 1633 and 1635, or had access to manuscript collections. He
very wisely dropped the Satire 'Sleep next Society', inserted for the
first time by the editor of _1669_, and certainly not by Donne. It was
reinserted by Chalmers in 1810. [12]
These, then, are the early editions of Donne's poems. But the printed
editions are not the only form in which the poems, or the great
majority of the poems, have come down to us. None of these editions,
we have seen, was issued before the poet's death. None, so far as
we can discover (I shall discuss this point more fully later), was
printed from sources carefully prepared for the press by the author,
as were for example the _LXXX Sermons_ issued in 1640. But Donne's
poems were well known to many readers before 1633. One of the earliest
published references to them occurs in 1614, in a collection of
Epigrams by Thomas Freeman, called _Runne_ | _And a great Cast_ |
_The_ | _Second Book_.
Epigram 84.
To Iohn Dunne.
The _Storme_ describ'd hath set thy name afloate,
Thy _Calme_ a gale of famous winde hath got:
Thy _Satyres_ short, too soone we them o'relooke,
I prethee Persius write a bigger booke.
In 1616 Ben Jonson's _Epigrammes_ were published in the first (folio)
edition of his works, and they contain the Epigram, printed in this
edition, _To Lucy, Countesse of Bedford, with Mr. Donnes Satyres_. In
these and similar cases the 'bookes' referred to are not printed but
manuscript works. Mr. Chambers has pointed out (_Poems of John Donne_,
i, pp. xxxviii-ix) an interesting reference in Drayton's _Epistle to
Reynolds_ to poems circulating thus 'by transcription'; and Anthony
Wood speaks of Hoskins having left a 'book of poems neatly written'.
In Donne's own letters we find references to his poems, his paradoxes
and problems, and even a long treatise like the [Greek: BIATHANATOS],
being sent to his friends with injunctions of secrecy, and in the case
of the last with an express statement that it had not been, and was
not to be, printed. Sometimes the manuscript collection seems to have
been made by Donne himself, or on his instruction, for a special
friend and patron like Lord Ancrum; but after he had become a
distinguished Churchman who, as Jonson told Drummond, 'repenteth
highlie and seeketh to destroy all his poems,' it was his friends and
admirers who collected and copied them. An instructive reference to
the interest awakened in Donne's early poems by his fame as a preacher
comes to us from Holland. Constantine Huyghens, the Dutch poet, and
father of the more famous scientist, Christian, was a member of the
Dutch embassy in 1618, 1621-23, and again in 1624. He moved in the
best circles, and made the acquaintance of Donne ('great preacher and
great conversationalist', he calls him) at the house probably of Sir
Robert Killigrew. Writing to his friend and fellow-poet Hooft, in
1630, he says:[13]
'I think I have often entertained you with reminiscences of
Dr. Donne, now Dean of St. Pauls in London, and on account
of this remunerative post (such is the custom of the English)
held in high esteem, in still higher for the wealth of his
unequalled wit, and yet more incomparable eloquence in the
pulpit. Educated early at Court in the service of the great;
experienced in the ways of the world; sharpened by study; in
poetry, he is more famous than anyone. Many rich fruits from
the green branches of his wit[14] have lain mellowing among
the lovers of art, which now, when _nearly rotten with age_,
they _are distributing_. Into my hands have fallen, by the
help of my special friends among the gentlemen of that nation,
some five and twenty of the best sort of medlars. Among
our people, I cannot select anyone to whom they ought to be
communicated sooner than to you,[15] as this poets manner of
conceit and expression are exactly yours, Sir. '
This is a very interesting piece of evidence as to the manner in which
Donne's poems had been preserved by his friends, and the form in which
they were being distributed. There is no reference to publication. It
is doubtless due to this activity in collecting and transcribing the
poems of the now famous preacher that we owe the number of manuscript
collections dating from the years before and immediately after 1630.
Had Donne undertaken the publication of his own poems, such of these
manuscript collections as have been preserved--none of which
are autograph, and few or none of which have a now traceable
history--would have little importance for a modern editor. The most
that they could do would be to show us occasionally what changes a
poem had undergone between its earliest and its latest appearance.
But Donne's poems were not published in this way, and the manuscripts
cannot be ignored. They must have for his editor at least the
same interest and importance as the Quartos have for the editor
of Shakespeare. Whatever opinion he may hold, on _a priori_ or _a
posteriori_ grounds, regarding the superior authority of the First
Folio of Shakespeare's plays, no editor, not 'thirled to' a theory,
will deny that a right reading has been preserved for us often by the
Quartos and the Quartos only. No wise man will neglect the assistance
even of the more imperfect of them. Before therefore discussing the
relative value of the different editions, and the use that may be made
of the manuscripts, it will be well to give a short description of the
manuscripts which the present editor has consulted and used, of their
relation to one another, their comparative value, and the relation of
_some_ of them to the editions. It is, of course, possible that there
are manuscripts of Donne's poems which have not yet come to light; and
among them may be some more correctly transcribed than any which
has come into the present editor's hands. He has, however, examined
between twenty and thirty, and with the feeling recently of moving
in a circle--that new manuscripts were in part or whole duplicates of
those which had been already examined, and confirmed readings already
noted but did not suggest anything fresh.
I will divide the manuscripts into four classes, of which the first
two, it will be seen at a glance, are likely to be the most important
for the textual critic.
(1) Manuscript collections of portions of Donne's poems, e. g. the
_Satyres_. The 'booke' to which Freeman refers in the epigram quoted
above was probably a small collection of this kind, and we have seen
that Jonson sent the _Satyres_ to Lady Bedford, and Francis Davison
lent them to his brother. Of such collections I have examined the
following:
_Q. _ This is a small quarto manuscript, bound up with a number of
other manuscripts, in a volume (MS. 216) in the library of Queen's
College, Oxford. It is headed _Mr. John Dunnes Satires_, and contains
the five Satires (which alone I have accepted as Donne's own) followed
by _A Storme_, _A Calme_, and one song, _The Curse_ (see p. 41), here
headed _Dirae_. As Mr. Chambers says (_Poems of John Donne_, i, p.
xxxvi), this is probably just the kind of 'booke' which Freeman read.
