No More Learning

His knowledge of seventeenth-century
literature and history, which even in 1896 was extensive, has
directed me in taking up most of the questions of canon and
authorship which I have investigated. It is easy to record
one's points of disagreement with a predecessor; it is more
difficult to estimate accurately how much one owes to his
labours.

Mr. Chambers, too, has 'modernized the spelling and corrected
the exceptionally chaotic punctuation of the old editions'.
Of the latter changes he has, with one or two exceptions,
preserved no record, so that when, as is sometimes the case,
he has misunderstood the poet, it is impossible to get back to
the original text of which the stops as well as the words are
a part. ]

[Footnote 39: It is very unlikely that Donne had in his
possession when he died manuscript copies of his early poems.
(1) Walton makes no mention of them when enumerating the works
which Donne left behind in manuscript, including 'six score
sermons all written with his own hand; also an exact
and laborious treatise concerning self-murder, called
_Biathanatos'_, as well as elaborate notes on authors and
events. (2) In 1614, when Donne thought of publishing his
poems, he found it necessary to beg for copies from his
friends: 'By this occasion I am made a Rhapsoder of mine own
rags, and that cost me more diligence to seek them, then it
did to make them. This made me aske to borrow that old book
of you. ' _To Sir H. G. , Vigilia St. Tho. 1614. _ (3) Jonson
and Walton both tell us that Donne, after taking Orders, would
have been glad to destroy his early poems.
The sincerity of
this wish has been doubted because of what he says in a letter
regarding _Biathanatos_: 'I only forbid it the press and the
fire. ' But _Biathanatos_ is a very different matter from
the poems. It is a grave and devout, if daring, treatise
in casuistry. No one can enter into Donne's mind from 1617
onwards, as ascetic devotion became a more and more sincere
and consuming passion, and believe that he kept copies of
the early poems or paradoxes, prepared for the press like his
sermons or devotions. ]

[Footnote 40: _Contributions To The Textual Criticism of
The Divina Commedia, &c. By the Rev. Edward Moore, D. D. , &c.
Cambridge, 1889. _ The tests which Dr. Moore lays down for the
judgement, on internal grounds, of a reading are--I state them
shortly in my own words--(1) That is the best reading which
best explains the erroneous readings. I have sometimes
recorded a quite impossible reading of a manuscript because it
clearly came from one rather than another of two rivals, and
thus lends support to that reading despite its own aberration.
(2) Generally speaking, 'Difficilior lectio potior,' the more
difficult reading is the more likely to be the original. This
applies forcibly in the case of a subtle and difficult author
like Donne. The majority of the changes made in the later
editions arise from the tendency to make Donne's thought more
commonplace.