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in the South Kensington Museum. This contains the five _Satyres_, and
the _Storme_ and _Calme_. The MSS. are evidently transcribed from the
same source, but one is not a copy of the other. They agree in such
exceptional readings as e. g. _Satyres_, I. 58 'Infanta of London'; 94
'goes in the way' &c. ; II. 86 'In wringing each acre'; 88 'Assurances
as bigge as glossie civill lawes'. The last suggests that the one is
a copy of the other, but again they diverge in such cases as III. 49
'Crants' _Dyce MS. _; 'Crates' _Q_; and IV. 215-16 'a Topclief would
have ravisht him quite away' _Q_, where the _Dyce MS. _ preserves the
normal 'a Pursevant would have ravisht him quite away'.
If manuscripts like _Q_ and the _Dyce MS. _ carry us back, as they seem
to do, to the form in which the _Satyres_ circulated before any of the
later collections of Donne's poems were made (between 1620 and 1630),
they are clearly of great importance for the editor. The text of the
_Satyres_ in _1633_ and the later editions, which closely resembles
that of one of the later MS. collections, presents many variants from
the older tradition. It is a difficult matter to decide how far these
may be the corrections of the author himself, or of the collector and
editor.


_W. _ This, the Westmoreland MS. , belonging to Mr. Edmund Gosse, is
one of the most interesting and valuable manuscripts of Donne's poems
which have come down to us. It is bound in its original vellum, and
was written, Mr. Warner, late Egerton Librarian, British Museum,
conjectured from the handwriting, 'a little later than 1625'. This
date agrees with what one would gather from the contents, for the
manuscript contains sonnets which must have been written after 1617,
but does not contain any of the hymns written just at the close of
Donne's life.

_W_ is a much larger 'book' than _Q_. It begins with the five
_Satyres_, as that does. Leaving one page blank, it then continues
with a collection of the _Elegies_ numbered, thirteen in all, of which
twelve are Love Elegies, and one, the last, a Funeral Elegy, 'Sorrow
who to this house. '[16] These are followed by an _Epithalamion_ (that
generally called 'made at Lincolns Inn') and a number of verse letters
to different friends, some of which are not contained in any of the
old editions.