No More Learning

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. At the other end
of the manuscript from Donne's, are poems by Corbet.

What seems to be practically a duplicate of _JC_ is preserved in the
Dyce Collection at the South Kensington Museum.
It belonged originally
to a certain 'Johannes Nedlam e Collegio Lincolniense' and is dated
1625. Cave's poem 'Upon Doctor Donne's Satyres' is inscribed and the
contents and arrangement of the volume are identical with those of
_JC_ except that one poem, _The Dampe_, is omitted, probably by an
oversight, in the Dyce MS. After my experience of _JC_ I did not think
it necessary to collate this manuscript. It was from it that Waldron
printed some of the unpublished poems of Donne and Corbet in _A
Collection of Miscellaneous Poetry_ (1802).


_H40_ and _RP31_, i. e. Harleian MS. 4064 in the British Museum,
and Rawlinson Poetical MS. 31, in the Bodleian Library, are two
manuscripts containing a fairly large number of Donne's poems
intermingled with poems by other and contemporary authors. A note on
the fly-leaf of _RP31_ declares that the manuscript contains 'Sir John
Harringtons poems written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth', which is
certainly not an accurate description. [27] Some of the poems must have
been written as late as 1610, and they are by various authors,
Wotton, Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir John Roe, Donne, Beaumont,
and probably others, but names of authors are only occasionally given.
Each manuscript starts with the words 'Prolegomena Quaedam', and the
poem, 'Paynter while there thou sit'st. ' The poems follow the same
order in the two manuscripts, but of poems not by Donne _RP31_
contains several which are not in _H40_, and, on the other hand,
of poems by Donne _H40_ inserts at various places quite a number,
especially of songs, which are not in _RP31_. The latter is, in short,
a miscellaneous collection of Elizabethan and early Jacobean poems,
including several of Donne's; the former, the same collection in which
Donne's poems have become by insertion the principal feature. I have
cited the readings of _H40_ throughout; those of _RP31_ only when
they differ from _H40_, or when I wish to emphasize their agreement.
Wherever derived from, the poems are generally carefully and
intelligently transcribed.