No More Learning

[22]

Whoever was responsible for this collection of Donne's poems, it was
evidently made with care, at least as regards the canon. Very few
poems that are not certainly by Donne are included, and they are
correctly initialled. The only uninitialled doubtful poems are _A
Paradox_, 'Whoso terms Love a fire,' which in all the four manuscripts
follows 'No Lover saith, I love', and Beaumont's letter to the
Countess of Bedford, which begins, 'Soe may my verses pleasing be. ' In
_N_, _TCD_ this follows Donne's letter to the same lady, 'You that are
she and you. ' It is regrettable that the text of the poems is not
so good as the canon is pure. The punctuation is careless. There are
numerous stupid blunders, and there are evidences of editing in the
interest of more regular metre or a more obvious meaning. At times,
however, it would seem that the copyist is following a different
version of a poem or poems (e. g. the _Satyres_) from that given
in _D_, _H49_, and other manuscripts, and is embodying corrections
perhaps made by the author himself. It is quite credible that Donne,
in sending copies of his poems at different times to different people,
may have revised and amended them. It is quite clear, as my notes will
show, that of certain poems more than one version (each correct in
itself) was in circulation.

Was _A18_, _N_, _TC_, or a manuscript resembling it one of the sources
of the edition of _1633_? In part, I think, it was. The most probable
case at first sight is that of the _Satyres_.
These, we have seen,
Marriot was at first prohibited from printing. Otherwise they would
have followed the _Epigrams_, and immediately preceded the _Elegies_.
As it is, they come after all the other poems; they are edited with
some cautious dashes; and their text is almost identical with that of
_N_, _TCD_. In the first satire the only difference between _1633_
and _N_, _TCD_ occurs in l. 70, where _N_, _TCD_, with all the other
manuscripts read--

Sells for a little state his libertie;

_1633_,

Sells for a little state high libertie;

'high' is either a slip or an editorial emendation. There are other
cases of similar editing, not all of which it is possible to correct
with confidence; but a study of the textual notes will show that in
general _1633_ follows the version preserved in _N_, _TCD_, and also
in _L74_ (of which later), when the rest of the manuscripts present an
interestingly different text. But strangely enough this version of
the _Satyres_ is also in _Lec_. This is the feature in which that
manuscript diverges most strikingly from _D_ and _H49_. Moreover in
some details in which _1633_ differs from _A18_, _N_, _TC_ it agrees
with _Lec_. It is possible therefore that the _Satyres_ were printed
from the same manuscript as the majority of the poems.

Again in the _Letters_ not found in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ there is a close
but not invariable agreement between the text of _1633_ and that of
this group of manuscripts. Those letters, which follow that _To Sir
Edward Herbert_, are printed in _1633_ in the same order as in
this edition (pp. 195-226), except that the group of short letters
beginning at p. 203 ('All haile sweete Poet') is here amplified and
rearranged from _W_. Now in _A18_, _N_, _TC_ these letters are also
brought together (_N_, _TCD_ adding some which are not in _A18_,
_TCC_), and the special group referred to, of letters to intimate
friends, are arranged in exactly the same order as in _1633_; have the
same headings, the same omissions, and the same accidental linking
of two poems. In the other letters, to the Countesses of Bedford,
Huntingdon, Salisbury, &c.