No More Learning

The Grolier Club edition preserves the groups and their
original order (except that the _Epigrams_ and _Progresse of
the Soule_ follow the _Satyres_), but corrects some of the
errors in placing, and assigns to their relevant groups the
poems added in _1650_. Chambers makes similar corrections and
replacings, but he further rearranges the groups. In his first
volume he brings together--possibly because of their special
interest--the _Songs and Sonets_, _Epithalamions_, _Elegies_,
and _Divine Poems_, keeping for his second volume the _Letters
to Severall Personages_, _Funerall Elegies_, _Progresse of the
Soul_, _Satyres_, and _Epigrams_. There is this to be said
for the old arrangement, that it does, as Walton indicated,
correspond generally to the order in which the poems were
written, to the succession of mood and experience in Donne's
life. In the present edition this original order has been
preserved with these modifications: (1) In the _Songs and
Sonets_, _The Flea_ has been restored to the place which it
occupied in _1633_; (2) the rearrangement of the misplaced
_Elegies_ by modern editors has been accepted; (3) their
distribution of the few poems added in _1650_ (in two sheets
bound up with the body of the work) has also been accepted,
but I have placed the poem _On Mr. Thomas Coryats Crudities_
after the _Satyres_; (4) two new groups have been inserted,
_Heroical Epistles_ and _Epitaphs_. It was absurd to
class _Sappho to Philaenis_ with the _Letters to Severall
Personages_. At the same time it is not exactly an _Elegy_.
There is a slight difference again between the _Funerall
Elegy_ and the _Epitaph_, though the latter term is sometimes
loosely used. Ben Jonson speaks of Donne's _Epitaph on Prince
Henry_. (5) The _Letter, to E. of D. with six holy Sonnets_
has been placed before the _Divine Poems_. (6) The _Hymne to
the Saints, and to Marquesse Hamylton_ has been transferred
to the _Epicedes_. (7) Some poems have been assigned to an
Appendix as doubtful.
]

[Footnote 8: The edition of 1633 contained one Latin, and
seven English, letters to Sir Henry Goodyere, with one letter
to the Countess of Bedford, a copy of which had been sent
to Goodyere. To these were added in _1635_ a letter in Latin
verse, _De libro cum mutuaretur_ (see p. 397), and four prose
letters in English, one _To the La. G. _ written from _Amyens_
in February, 1611-2, and three _To my honour'd friend G.
G. Esquier_, the first dated April 14, 1612, the two last
November 2, 1630, and January 7, 1630. ]

[Footnote 9: In the copy of the 1633 edition belonging to the
Library of Christ Church, Oxford, which has been used for the
present edition, and bears the name 'Garrard att his quarters
in ? ermyte' (_perhaps_ Donne's friend George Garrard or
Gerrard: see Gosse: _Life and Letters &c. _ i. 285), are some
lines, signed J. V. , which seem to imply that the writer had
some hand in the publication of the poems; but the reference
may be simply to his gift:

An early offer of him to yo^r sight
Was the best way to doe the Author right
My thoughts could fall on; w^ch his soule w^ch knew
The weight of a iust Prayse will think't a true.
Our commendation is suspected, when
Wee Elegyes compose on sleeping men,
The Manners of the Age prevayling so
That not our conscience wee, but witts doe show.
And 'tis an often gladnes, that men dye
Of unmatch'd names to write more easyly.
Such my religion is of him; I hold
It iniury to have his merrit tould;
Who (like the Sunn) is righted best when wee
Doe not dispute but shew his quality.