No More Learning

Hodgson and Ben Johnson'. Among the books again which he has lent to
his brother at a later date are 'John Duns Satyres'. This interest on
the part of Davison in Donne's poems makes it seem to me very unlikely
that if he had known them earlier he would not have included some of
them in his _Rhapsody_, or that if he had done so he would not
have told us. It has been the custom of late to assign to Donne the
authorship of one charming lyric in the _Rhapsody_, 'Absence hear thou
my protestation. ' I hope to show elsewhere that this is the work, not
of Donne, but of another young wit of the day, John Hoskins, whose few
extant poems are a not uninteresting link between the manner of Sidney
and the Elizabethans and of Donne and the 'Metaphysicals'.

The first collected edition of Donne's poems was issued in 1633, two
years after his death. This is a small quarto, the title-page of which
is here reproduced.




POEMS,

_By_ J. D.

WITH

ELEGIES

ON THE AUTHORS

DEATH.


LONDON.

Printed by _M. F. _ for IOHN MARRIOT,
and are to be sold at his shop in S^t '_Dunstans_
Church-yard in _Fleet-street_. 1633.
The first eight pages (Sheet A) are numbered, and contain (1) _The
Printer to the Understanders_,[4] (2) the _Hexastichon Bibliopolae_,
(3) the dedication of, and introductory epistle to, _The Progresse of
the Soule_, with which poem the volume opens. The poems themselves,
with some prose letters and the _Elegies upon the Author_, fill pages
1-406. The numbers on some of the pages are misprinted. The order of
the poems is generally chaotic, but in batches the poems follow the
order preserved in the later editions. Of the significance of this,
and of the source and character of this edition, I shall speak later.
As regards text and canon it is the most trustworthy of all the old
editions. The publisher, John Marriot, was a well-known bookseller
at the sign of the Flower de Luce, and issued the poems of Breton,
Drayton, Massinger, Quarles, and Wither. The printer was probably
Miles Fletcher, or Flesher, a printer of considerable importance
in Little Britain from 1611 to 1664. It would almost seem, from
the heading of the introductory letter, that the printer was more
responsible for the issue than the bookseller Marriot, and it is
perhaps noteworthy that when in 1650 the younger Donne succeeded in
getting the publication of the poems into his own hand, John Marriot's
name remained on the title-page (1650) as publisher, but the printer's
initials disappeared, and his prefatory letter made way for a
dedication by the younger Donne. (See page 4. ) It should be added that
copies of the 1633 edition differ considerably from one another. In
some a portrait has been inserted. Occasionally _The Printer to the
Understanders_ is omitted, the _Infinitati Sacrum &c. _ following
immediately on the title-page. In some poems, notably _The Progresse
of the Soule_, and certain of the _Letters_ to noble ladies, the text
underwent considerable alteration as the volume passed through the
press. Some copies are more correct than others.