No More Learning

Three of Donne's poems were printed in his lifetime--the Anniversaries
(i. e. _The Anatomy of the World_ with _A Funerall Elegie_ and _The
Progresse of the Soule_) in 1611 and 1612, with later editions in
1621 and 1625; the _Elegie upon the untimely death of the incomparable
Prince Henry_, in Sylvester's _Lachrymae Lachrymarum_, 1613; and the
lines prefixed to _Coryats Crudities_ in 1611. We know nothing of any
other poem by Donne being printed prior to 1633. It is noteworthy,
as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, that none of the _Miscellanies_ which
appeared towards the end of the sixteenth century, as _Englands
Parnassus_[1] (1600), or at the beginning of the seventeenth century,
as Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_,[2] contained poems by Donne. The
first of these is a collection of witty and elegant passages from
different authors on various general themes (Dissimulation, Faith,
Learning, &c. ) and is just the kind of book for which Donne's poems
would have been made abundant use of at a somewhat later period.
There are in our libraries manuscript collections of 'Donne's choicest
conceits', and extracts long or short from his poems, dating from the
second quarter of the seventeenth century. [3] The editor of the second
of the anthologies mentioned, Francis Davison, became later much
interested in Donne's poems. In notes which he made at some date after
1608, we find him inquiring for 'Satyres, Elegies, Epigrams etc. , by
John Don', and querying whether they might be obtained 'from Eleaz.
Hodgson and Ben Johnson'. Among the books again which he has lent to
his brother at a later date are 'John Duns Satyres'. This interest on
the part of Davison in Donne's poems makes it seem to me very unlikely
that if he had known them earlier he would not have included some of
them in his _Rhapsody_, or that if he had done so he would not
have told us.
It has been the custom of late to assign to Donne the
authorship of one charming lyric in the _Rhapsody_, 'Absence hear thou
my protestation. ' I hope to show elsewhere that this is the work, not
of Donne, but of another young wit of the day, John Hoskins, whose few
extant poems are a not uninteresting link between the manner of Sidney
and the Elizabethans and of Donne and the 'Metaphysicals'.

The first collected edition of Donne's poems was issued in 1633, two
years after his death. This is a small quarto, the title-page of which
is here reproduced.




POEMS,

_By_ J. D.

WITH

ELEGIES

ON THE AUTHORS

DEATH.


LONDON.

Printed by _M. F. _ for IOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in S^t '_Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_. 1633.


The first eight pages (Sheet A) are numbered, and contain (1) _The
Printer to the Understanders_,[4] (2) the _Hexastichon Bibliopolae_,
(3) the dedication of, and introductory epistle to, _The Progresse of
the Soule_, with which poem the volume opens. The poems themselves,
with some prose letters and the _Elegies upon the Author_, fill pages
1-406. The numbers on some of the pages are misprinted. The order of
the poems is generally chaotic, but in batches the poems follow the
order preserved in the later editions.