No More Learning

It may, however, have come from
the common source of this poem, and there are divergences in order and
text which make me think that they are thus derived from one common
source.

A special interest attaches to this collection, apart from the
relative excellence of its text and soundness of its canon, from the
probability that a manuscript of this kind was used for a large, and
that textually the best, part of the edition of 1633. This becomes
manifest on a close examination of the order of the poems and of their
text. Mr. Gosse has said, in speaking of the edition of 1633: 'The
poems are thrown together without any attempt at intelligent order;
neither date, nor subject, nor relation is in the least regarded. '
This is not entirely the case. Satires, Elegies, Epigrams, Songs are
grouped to some extent. The disorder which prevails is due to two
causes: (1) to the fact that the printer set up from a variety
of sources. There was no previous collected edition to guide him.
Different friends supplied collections, and of a few poems there were
earlier editions. He seems to have passed from one of these to another
as was most convenient at the moment. Perhaps some were lent him only
for a time. The differences between copies of _1633_ show that it was
prepared carefully, but emended from time to time while the printing
was actually going on. (2) The second source of the order of the poems
is their order in the manuscripts from which they were copied. Now
a comparison of the order in _1633_ with that in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_
reveals a close connexion between them, and throws light on the
composition of _1633_.
It is necessary, before instituting this comparison with _1633_, to
say a word on the order of the poems in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ themselves,
as it is not quite the same in all three. _H49_ is the most irregular,
perhaps therefore the earliest, each of the others showing efforts
to obtain a better grouping of the poems. All three begin with the
_Satyres_, of which _D_ and _Lec_ have five, _H49_ only four; but
the text of _Lec_ differs from that of the other two, agreeing
more closely with the version of _1633_ and of another group of
manuscripts. They have all, then, thirteen _Elegies_ in the same
order. After these _H49_ continues with a number of letters (_The
Storme_, _The Calme_, _To S^r Henry Wotton_, _To S^r Henry Goodyere_,
_To the Countesse of Bedford_, _To S^r Edward Herbert_, and others)
intermingled with Funeral Elegies (_Lady Markham_, _Mris Boulstred_)
and religious poems (_The Crosse_, _The Annuntiation_, _Good Friday_).
Then follows a long series of lyrical pieces, broken after _The
Funerall_ by _A Letter to the Lady Carey, and Mrs. Essex Rich_, the
_Epithalamion_ on the Palatine marriage, and an _Old Letter_ ('At once
from hence', p. 206). The lyrical pieces are then resumed, and the
collection ends with the Somerset _Eclogue_ and _Epithalamion_, the
_Letanye_, both sets of _Holy Sonnets_, a letter (_To the Countesse of
Salisbury_), and the long _Obsequies to the Ld. Harrington_.


_D_ makes an effort to arrange the poems following the _Elegies_ in
groups. The _Funeral Elegies_ come first, and two blank pages are
headed _An Elegye on Prince Henry_. The letters are then brought
together, and are followed by the religious poems dispersed in _H49_.
The lyrical poems follow piece by piece as in _H49_, and the whole
closes with the two epithalamia and the _Obsequies to the Ld.
Harrington_.

The order in _Lec_ resembles that of _H49_ more closely than that of
_D_.