No More Learning

It sometimes, however, supports readings which are otherwise confined
to _O'F_ and the later editions of the poem, showing that these may be
older than 1632-5.


_Cy. _ The Carnaby MS. consists of one hundred folio pages bound in
flexible vellum, and is now in the Harvard College Library, Boston.
It is by no means an exhaustive collection; the poems are chaotically
arranged; the text seems to be careless, and the spelling unusually
erratic; but most of the poems it contains are genuine. [26] This
manuscript is not as a whole identical with _P_, but some of the poems
it contains must have come from that or from a common source.


_JC. _ The John Cave MS. is a small collection of Donne's poems now
in the possession of Mr. Elkin Matthews, who has kindly allowed me
to collate it. It was formerly in Mr. O'Flaherty's possession. The
original possessor had been a certain John Cave, and the volume opens
with the following poem, written, it will be seen, while Donne was
still alive:

Oh how it joys me that this quick brain'd Age
can nere reach thee (Donn) though it should engage
at once all its whole stock of witt to finde
out of thy well plac'd words thy more pure minde.
Noe, wee are bastard Aeglets all; our eyes
could not endure the splendor that would rise
from hence like rays from out a cloud. That Man
who first found out the Perspective which can
make starrs at midday plainly seen, did more
then could the whole Chaos of Arte<s> before
or since; If I might have my wish 't shuld bee
That Man might be reviv'd againe to see
If hee could such another frame, whereby
the minde might bee made see as farr as th' eye.
Then might we hope to finde thy sense, till then
The Age of Ignorance I'le still condemn.

IO. CA.
Jun. 3. 1620.

The manuscript is divided into three parts, the first containing the
five _Satyres_, the _Litany_ and the _Storme_ and _Calme_. The second
consists of _Elegies_ and _Epigrammes_ and the third of _Miscellanea,
Poems, Elegies, Sonnets by the same Author_. The elegies in the second
part are, as in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, and _W_, thirteen in number.
Their arrangement is that of _W_, and, like _W_, _JC_ gives _The
Comparison_, which, _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ do not, but drops _Loves
Progress_, which the latter group contains. The text of these poems is
generally that of _W_, but here and throughout _JC_ abounds in errors
and emendations. It contains one or two poems which were published
in the edition of 1650, and which I have found in no other manuscript
except _O'F_. In these _JC_ supplies some obvious emendations. The
poems in the third part are very irregularly arranged. This is the
only manuscript, professing to be of Donne's poems, which contains the
elegy, 'The heavens rejoice in motion,' which the younger Donne
added to the edition of 1650. It is not a very correct, but is an
interesting manuscript, with very few spurious poems.