No More Learning

Another collection frequently cited by Grosart, but of little
value for the editor of Donne, is the _Farmer-Chetham MS. _, a
commonplace-book in the Chetham Library, Manchester, which has been
published by Grosart. It contains one or two of Donne's poems, but
its most interesting contents are the 'Gulling Sonnets' of Sir John
Davies, and some poems by Raleigh, Hoskins, and others. Nothing could
be more unsafe than to ascribe poems to Donne, as Grosart did, because
they occur here in conjunction with some that are certainly his.

A similar collection, which I have not seen, is the
_Hazlewood-Kingsborough MS. _, as Dr. Grosart called it. To judge from
the analysis in Thorpe's Catalogue, 1831, this too is a miscellaneous
anthology of poems written by, or at any rate ascribed to,
Shakespeare, Jonson, Bacon, Raleigh, Donne, and others. There is no
end to the number of such collections, and it is absurd to base a text
upon them.


The _Burley MS. _, to which I refer once or twice, and which is a
manuscript of great importance for the editor of Donne's letters,
is not a collection of poems. It is a commonplace-book of Sir Henry
Wotton's in the handwriting of his secretaries. Amid its varied
contents are some letters, unsigned but indubitably by Donne; ten of
his _Paradoxes_ with a covering letter; and a few poems of Donne's
with other poems. Of the last, one is certainly by Donne (_H. W.
in
Hibernia belligeranti_), and I have incorporated it. The others seem
to me exceedingly doubtful. They are probably the work of other
wits among Wotton's friends. I have printed a selection from them in
Appendix C. [35]


Of the manuscripts of the first two classes, which alone could put
forward any claim to be treated as independent sources of the text
of an edition of Donne's poems, it would be impossible, I think, to
construct a complete genealogy. Different poems, or different groups
of poems in the same manuscript, come from different sources, and
to trace each stream to its fountain-head would be a difficult task,
perhaps impossible without further material, and would in the end
hardly repay the trouble, for the difficulties in Donne's text are
not of so insoluble a character as to demand such heroic methods.
The interval between the composition of the poems and their first
publication ranges from about forty years at the most to a year or
two. There is no case here of groping one's way back through centuries
of transmission. The surprising fact is rather that so many of the
common errors of a text preserved and transmitted in manuscript should
have appeared so soon, that the text and canon of Donne's poems should
present an editor in one form or another with all the chief problems
which confront the editor of a classical or a mediaeval author.

The manuscripts fall into three main groups (1) _D_, _H49_, _Lec_.
These with a portion of _1633_ come from a common source. (2) _A18_,
_N_, _TCC_, _TCD_. These also come from a single stream and some parts
of _1633_ follow them. _L74_ is closely connected with them, at least
in parts. (3) _A25_, _B_, _Cy_, _JC_, _O'F_, _P_, _S_, _S96_, _W_.
These cannot be traced in their entirety to a single head, but in
certain groups of poems they tend to follow a common tradition which
may or may not be that of one or other of the first two groups.