No More Learning

In _Elegie IV_, for example, ll. 7, 8, which occur in all
the other manuscripts and editions, are omitted by _1633_ and by
_D_, _H49_, _Lec_. Again, when a song has no title in _1633_ it
has frequently none in the manuscript. When there are evidently two
versions of a poem, as e. g. in _The Good-morrow_ and _The Flea_, the
version given in _1633_ is generally that of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. Later
editions often contaminate this with another version of the poem. At
the same time there are ever and again divergences between the edition
and the manuscript which are not to be ignored, and cannot always be
explained. Some are due to error in one or the other, but some point
either to divergence between the text of the editor's manuscript and
ours, or to the use by the editor of other sources as well as this.
In the fifth elegy (_The Picture_), for example, _1633_ twice seems
to follow, not _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, but another source, another group of
manuscripts which has been preserved; and in _The Aniversarie_ ll. 23,
24, the version of _1633_ is not that of _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ but of
the same second group, which will be described later. On the whole,
however, it is clear that a manuscript closely resembling that now
represented by these three manuscripts supplied the editor of _1633_
with the bulk of the shorter poems, especially the older and more
privately circulated poems, the _Songs and Sonets_ and _Elegies_. When
he is not following this manuscript he draws from miscellaneous and
occasionally inferior sources.

It would be interesting if we could tell whence this manuscript was
obtained, and whether it was _a priori_ likely to be a good one. On
this point we can only conjecture, but it seems to me a fairly tenable
conjecture (though not to be built on in any way) that the nucleus of
the collection, at any rate, may have been a commonplace-book which
had belonged to Sir Henry Goodyere.
The ground for this conjecture is
the inclusion in the edition of some prose letters addressed to this
friend, one in Latin and seven in English. There is indeed also one
addressed to the Countess of Bedford; but in the preceding letter to
Goodyere Donne says, 'I send you, with this, a letter which I sent to
the Countesse. It is not my use nor duty to do so. But for your having
it, there were but two consents, and I am sure you have mine, and you
are sure you have hers. ' He goes on to refer to some verses which are
the subject of the letter to the Countesse. There can be no doubt that
the letter printed is the letter sent to Goodyere. The Burley MS. (see
Pearsall-Smith's _Life and Letters of Sir Henry Wotton_, Oxford, 1907)
gives us a good example of how a gentleman in the seventeenth century
dealt with his correspondence. That contains, besides various letters,
as of Sidney to Queen Elizabeth on the Anjou marriage, and other
matter which recurs in commonplace-books, a number of poems and
letters, sent to Wotton by his friends, including Donne, and
transcribed by one or other of Wotton's secretaries. The letters have
no signatures appended, which is the case with the letters in the
1633 edition of Donne's poems. Wotton and Goodyere did not need to be
reminded of the authors, and perhaps did not wish others to know. The
reason then for the rather odd inclusion of nine prose letters in a
collection of poems is probably, that the principal manuscript used
by the printer was an 'old book'[20] which had belonged to Sir Henry
Goodyere and in which his secretaries had transcribed poems and
letters by Donne. Goodyere's collection of Donne's poems would not
necessarily be exhaustive, but it would be full; it would not like the
collections of others include poems that were none of Donne's; and its
text would be accurate, allowing for the carelessness, indifference,
and misunderstandings of secretaries and copyists.

After _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, the most carefully made collection of Donne's
poems is one represented now by four distinct manuscripts:

_A18. _ Additional MS. 18646, in the British Museum.