No More Learning

Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have gathered
together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe force' and 'True
love finds witt', the first of which[6] was printed in _Le Prince
d'Amour_, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, 1856, and Grosart, 1872), as
the work not of Donne but of Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led
me to do so are not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they
form a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The argument
starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond of Hawthornden
regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): 'That Sir John Roe loved
him; and that when they two were ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a
Mask, Roe writt a moral Epistle to him, which began. That next to
playes the Court and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings,
Kings Lords [as] Lords do us. ' (_Drummond's Conversations with
Jonson_), ed. Laing.

Now this statement of Jonson's is confirmed by some at any rate of
the manuscripts which contain the poem (see textual notes) since these
append the initials 'J. R. ' But all the manuscripts which contain the
one poem contain also the next, 'If great men wrong me,' and though
none have added the initials 'J. R. ', _B_, in which it has been
separated from 'The state and mens affairs' by two other poems,
appends 'doubtfull author' (the whole collection being professedly one
of Donne's poems). The third poem, _To Sr Tho. Roe, 1603_ (p.
410),
is in the same way found in all the manuscripts (except two, which are
one, _H40_ and _RP31_) which contain the epistles to Jonson, generally
in their immediate proximity, and in _B_ initialled 'J. R. ' In the
others the poem is unsigned, and in _L74_ a much later hand has added
'J. D. '

Of the other poems, the first--the poem which was in _1669_ printed
as Donne's seventh _Satyre_, was dropped in _1719_ but restored by
Chalmers, Grosart, and Chambers--is said in _B_ to be 'By Sir John
Roe', and it is initialled 'J. R. ' in _TCD_. Even an undiscriminating
manuscript like _O'F_ adds the note 'Quere, if Donnes or Sr Th:
Rowes', the more famous Sir Thomas Roe being substituted for his (in
1632) forgotten relative. Of the remaining five poems only two, 'Dear
Love, continue nice and chaste' (p. 412) and 'Shall I goe force an
Elegie? ' (p. 410) are actually initialled in any of the manuscripts in
which I have found them.

But the presence or absence of a name or initials is not a conclusive
argument. It depends on the character of the manuscript. That 'Sleep
next Society' is initialled 'J. R.