No More Learning

'In that, o Queene of Queenes. '

20. Upon the translation of the Psalmes by Sir Philip Sydney
and the Countesse of Pembroke his Sister.

'Eternall God, (for whom who ever dare). '

21. Ode.

'Vengeance will sit. '

22. To Mr. Tilman after he had taken Orders.

'Thou, whose diviner soule hath caus'd thee now. '

23. On the Sacrament.

'He was the Word that spake it. '

Of these twenty-three poems there is none which does not seem to me
fairly open to question, though of some I think Donne is certainly the
author.
Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have gathered
together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe force' and 'True
love finds witt', the first of which[6] was printed in _Le Prince
d'Amour_, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, 1856, and Grosart, 1872), as
the work not of Donne but of Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led
me to do so are not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they
form a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The argument
starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond of Hawthornden
regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): 'That Sir John Roe loved
him; and that when they two were ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a
Mask, Roe writt a moral Epistle to him, which began. That next to
playes the Court and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings,
Kings Lords [as] Lords do us. ' (_Drummond's Conversations with
Jonson_), ed. Laing.

Now this statement of Jonson's is confirmed by some at any rate of
the manuscripts which contain the poem (see textual notes) since these
append the initials 'J. R. ' But all the manuscripts which contain the
one poem contain also the next, 'If great men wrong me,' and though
none have added the initials 'J. R. ', _B_, in which it has been
separated from 'The state and mens affairs' by two other poems,
appends 'doubtfull author' (the whole collection being professedly one
of Donne's poems). The third poem, _To Sr Tho. Roe, 1603_ (p. 410),
is in the same way found in all the manuscripts (except two, which are
one, _H40_ and _RP31_) which contain the epistles to Jonson, generally
in their immediate proximity, and in _B_ initialled 'J.