No More Learning

In contrast to these two elegies that beginning 'Death be not proud'
is found in only five manuscripts, _B_, _H40_, _O'F_, _P_, _RP31_.
Of these _H40_ and _RP31_ are really one, and in them the poem is not
ascribed to Donne. In two others, _O'F_ and _P_, the poem is given in
a very interesting and suggestive manner, viz. as a continuation of
'Death I recant'. What this suggests is the fairly obvious fact that
the second poem is to some extent a reply to the first. 'Death I
recant' is answered by 'Death be not proud'. If _O'F_ and _P_ are
right in their arrangement, then Donne answers himself. Beginning in
one mood, he closes in another; from a mood which is almost rebellious
he passes to one of Christian resignation. This was the view I put
forward in a note to the Cambridge _History of Literature_ (iv. 216).
I had hardly, however, sent off my proofs before I felt that there
was more than one objection to this view. There is in the first
place nothing to show that 'Death I recant' is not a poem complete
in itself; there is no preparation for the recantation. In the second
place, 'Death be not proud' is as a poem slighter in texture, vaguer
in thought, in feeling more sentimental and pious, than Donne's own
_Epicedes_. Whoever wrote it had a warmer feeling for Mris. Boulstred
than underlies Donne's rather frigid hyperboles.
This suggested to me
that the poem was indeed an answer to 'Death I recant', but by another
person, another member of Lady Bedford's entourage. In this mood I
came on the ascription in _H40_, viz. 'By C. L. of B. ' This indicated
no one whom I knew; but in _RP31_ it appeared as 'By L. C. of B. ,'
i. e. Lucy, Countess of Bedford. We know that the Countess did write
verses, for Donne refers to them. In a letter which Mr. Gosse dates
1609 (Gosse's _Life_, &c. , i. 217; _Letters_, 1651, p.