University of Virginia Library

New Texts of John Donne
by
C. F. Main

Modern editors of Donne's verse have been able to compensate somewhat for the absence of holograph manuscripts by consulting the so-called commonplace books, or manuscript miscellanies, in which his poems circulated before they were printed in 1633. Such collections abound, and while many of them merely perpetuate scribal errors, all must be scrutinized on the chance that they preserve readings more authoritative than those in the posthumously published editions. The manuscripts not only help establish Donne's text, but also assist in determining the canon of his work and in discovering the nature of his contemporary reputation. Among the contents of Harvard MS. Eng. 686, a commonplace book compiled between 1623 and 1635, occur fifteen items of interest to the student of Donne's text, canon, and reputation. For purposes of discussion the items may be divided into three groups: complete texts of poems by Donne, fragmentary texts of poems by Donne, and complete and fragmentary texts of poems not written by Donne, so far as can be determined, but assigned to him in various early manuscripts.

It must be admitted at the outset that MS. Eng. 686 has no authority except its relatively early date. Who the compilers were—two different hands made the entries under consideration—and whether they could have had access to reliable texts of Donne are matters of conjecture. The contents of the manuscript suggest that they were Oxford undergraduates, since many of the poems are concerned with events at Oxford, and several poets who attended Oxford are represented: Strode, Corbet, Wotton, Carew, Heylyn, Morley, Duppa, Barnfield, Freeman, Bastard, Davies, Hoskyns, and others. Whoever the compilers, their tastes were broad; they mingle the sacred and the profane, the local and the national, the salacious and the moral, the naïve and the sophisticated. Their completely "unified" sensibilities show that they were at least capable of appreciating metaphysical verse, and the neatness with which they transcribe even long pieces presupposes some concern for accuracy.

Three complete poems of Donne appear in the manuscript: those titled in Sir Herbert Grierson's edition "Elegie XIX. Going to Bed," "Elegie VII," and "To Mr S. B."[1] The manuscript attributes only the last to Donne. The other two are signed "John Dean" and "J. Deane" respectively, apparently a confusion of Dean John Donne with a certain John Dean who was a fellow of New College from 1617 to his death in 1626, a contributor to the Queen Anne memorial volume, Academiae Oxoniensis funebria sacra in

1619, and the subject of epitaphs by Robert Gomersall and William Browne.[2] Such a confusion is not uncommon in manuscripts; one between Donne and Dowland is mentioned below.

The most interesting of the three complete poems is the untitled copy (pp. 70-72 of the manuscript) of "Going to Bed," for the textual problems of this elegy are greater than those of any other poem by Donne. No single satisfactory text seems to exist. Grierson reproduced the earliest printed copy, that in Donne's Poems (1669), which he, evidently feeling that there was nothing sacred about a text added so late to the canon, emended freely from manuscript versions. The present text differs verbally from his as follows (the Grierson reading is given first):

The variants are of three kinds. First, those in lines 5, 10, and 36 are shared by all the manuscripts, and it is therefore not unlikely that they are what Donne actually wrote. Second, those in lines 8, 17, and 22 occur in a few manuscripts, but not in a majority, and those in 17 and 28 have the authority of the 1669 text. Grierson knew, but did not adopt, the readings in 8, 17, 22, and 28; yet he adopted others with as little objective justification. Without the help of some such system as Sir Walter Greg's calculus of variants, an editor is left, in a case like this, at the mercy of his own personal taste and judgment. It can be argued, for instance, that the reference in the rejected reading of line 8 to the lover's "Shrine" is as Donnean as, and adumbrates the theological imagery coming later better than, the reference to the outside world and its "busie fooles" in Grierson's reading. Again, "all" seems to go better in line 22 than "Ill" since the distinction between good and evil spirits is made specifically in the next line. All spirits, Donne is saying, appear dressed in white, but the woman in her nightgown and the phantom can be distinguished by their different effects on the man. The same joke turns up later in Robert Baron's Pocula Castalia (1650, p. 132) and in an epigram in John Cotgrave's Wits Interpreter (1655, sig. 2A8v). The third class of variants, those in lines 3, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 23, 24, 26, 27, 31, 32, 33, 35, 38, 39, 41, 44, are unique to the present text. In

dealing with them, one is on less certain ground. Their very number might hint that we are confronting a copy of a version of the poem much earlier than the others, but it might equally well suggest that what we have are merely the results of the carelessness, not to mention the misguided prunings and polishings, of successive scribes. And perhaps every variant in this group is not unique; all the copies have not been collated, nor can they be until a complete census of Donne manuscripts is available.[3] It seems useless to pursue these melancholy reflections further.

In addition to the verbal differences, the present copy of the elegy places the couplet beginning "To enter in these bonds" differently from all copies seen by Grierson, where it comes at the end of the geographical passage. Grierson's text reads:

In the manuscript the lines in question occur as the penultimate couplet of the poem: Thus the couplet is moved from a passage in which the imagery is otherwise primarily geographical and in which it comes as an anticlimax to a position in which it can reinforce the quasi-legal suggestions of "penance" and "innocence." This arrangement helps to overcome the charge of a recent critic that "the poem never quite assumes shape as an artistic whole."[4] Moreover, the awkwardness of the piling up of the same rhyme, which is uncharacteristic of Donne's elegies, is lessened if the couplet is removed, but is by no means eliminated, for the occurrence of "thee" at the end of two successive lines creates a new awkwardness. Copies of the elegy in Folger MS. 1.27, p. 69, and in Folger MS. 46.2, fol. 30, agree with Eng. 686 in the placing of the couplet, and Folger 46.2 is of further interest in that it avoids the repetition of "thee." It reads: If other copies which support the order of these three manuscripts are discovered, editors of Donne will have to consider moving the couplet.

As texts, the other complete poems are not so eccentric as the nineteenth elegy. "Vppon a woman whom the Author taught to Love & Complement" (pp. 73-74), a copy of the seventh elegy, has the following verbal variants from Grierson's text:

Except for the reading in line 10, which also appears in two other manuscripts, these variants have been hitherto unrecorded. They are probably due to carelessness, though those in lines 24 and 30 may represent attempts to make the meter smoother.

"Epigrammes of Dr Donnes makinge to Mrs S. P." (p. 104) differs verbally from Grierson's text of "To Mr S[amuel]. B[rooke]." as follows:

Both variants are unrecorded. There is justification in contemporary practice for calling the poem an epigram; for instance, Jonson's little verse-letters to or about Donne prefixed to the 1650, 1654, and 1669 editions of Donne had earlier appeared in Jonson's Epigrammes (1616).

The second group of texts, the fragmentary pieces, includes a version of lines 27-28 of "Elegie XI. The Bracelet," two copies of a version of lines 35-36 of "Elegie II. The Anagram," and the first stanza of "A Ieat Ring sent" (Grierson, I, 97, 81, 65). The couplet quoted from "The Bracelet" appears (p. 27) as an epigram on clipped French coins, a popular subject of mirth in England:[5]

The lines from "The Anagram" (pp. 122, 156) were perhaps valued because they are an expansion of the proverb "Good land, evil way": Like these couplets, the first stanza of "A Ieat Ring" (p. 102) was probably esteemed for its epigrammatic quality. The presence of these fragments in the manuscript provides further support for the conclusion of W. Milgate, who examined dozens of early references to Donne, that "it was the epigrammatic, the satiric, the rhetorical and the 'witty' in Donne that most appealed to his contemporaries."[6]

A final fragment of a poem by Donne is a paraphrase of lines 3-6 of "Breake of day" (Grierson, I, 23) which is added to an unsigned lyric of twelve lines beginning "Stay, sweet, awhile, why doest thou rise" (p. 188):

The foregoing lines are not so much a corruption of Donne as a conscious attempt to remove his characteristically rough rhythms so that the lyric preceding, which is probably by John Dowland, may flow smoothly into them. Dowland's lyric—if it may be so assigned[7] —was first published in 1612: twelve lines with a setting for solo voice in A Pilgrimes Solace, and a slightly different version of the first six lines with a setting for five voices by Orlando Gibbons in The First Set of Madrigals and Mottets; Donne's was first printed in 1633. When the two lyrics merged cannot be determined exactly, but the present amalgam is earlier than any of the several combinations in print. It is also unique in joining the entire Dowland poem with only four lines of the Donne. In 1650 a blend made up of the first stanza of Dowland's poem followed by the first stanza of Donne's and concluding with lines 7-8 of Dowland's was printed in The Academy of Complements,[8] and in 1655 two different versions of the same combination, but without the final couplet, appeared in Wits Interpreter (sigs. O7v, P5). Perhaps taking his cue from the anthologists, the editor of Donne's Poems in 1669 printed a version of Dowland's first stanza at the head of "Breake of day," where it remained in the Donne canon until Sir Edmund Chambers, editing Donne in 1896, disentangled the two poems. In 1686 an eighteen-line piece entitled "A Love Song" appeared in The Loyal Garland;[9] it consisted of the first stanza of Dowland's poem, the first stanza of Donne's, and the second stanza of Dowland's. The compiler of the Garland was outdone by whoever entered a version containing two stanzas from each poem in MS. Ashmole 47, fol. 73. Grierson (II, cxlviii) enumerates other manuscript copies.

The merger of the two poems in so many different combinations is perhaps unusual even in that age of reckless disregard for texts. Chambers suggested that the initials "J. D." in a manuscript may have brought them

together, and Grierson pointed out the similarity of their themes: both differ from the usual Renaissance aubade in having a lady as the speaker and in urging the desirability of staying in bed. The similarity of the subjects and the authors' initials are cogent reasons, but they would have been inoperative had not the two poems been singable to the same tune. Perhaps four lines of Donne's poem were first added to Dowland's in order to provide words for a passage repeated in the music, and this arrangement later suggested incorporating an entire stanza in a new setting. The fact that Donne's first stanza is self-contained and that both Dowland's stanzas are so different from each other that they can stand alone as separate poems[10] may have contributed to their mobility. Few people can remember the order of the stanzas of a popular song. At any rate, music suitable for both poems is abundant. In addition to the settings by Gibbons and Dowland, others are preserved in British Museum MS. Additional 29481, fol. 9, in "Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book," and in "Elizabeth Rogers, hir Virginal Book."[11] Those who reproduced the words seem to have relied for the most part on their faulty memories. Although numerous, the verbal variants are so trivial and so lacking in pattern that close scrutiny of them seems useless. The blending of these two poems constitutes an interesting case history of the effect of music on seventeenth-century poetry. And, like the uses to which the other fragments of Donne's poems in the manuscript were put, it shows no awareness of the metaphysical qualities for which Donne is valued today.

The manuscript contains eight poems and fragments which have, in one place or another, been assigned to Donne. Since each of these apocryphal items presents its own individual problems, it has seemed best merely to list them by first line and page in the manuscript and to give them only such annotation as has not before been printed.

• A sylly John surprizd with joy (p. 74). A doggerel quatrain signed "J Dean," another version of which is preserved among Donne's epigrams in the Carnaby MS. at Harvard, fol. 48v, with the signature "J. D." Grierson (II, cii) inaccurately reproduced the Carnaby text and rejected the possibility of Donne's authorship. His refusal to assign it to Donne would have been firmer had he known that the quatrain is merely a fragment of the second song in a song-cycle preserved in two manuscript music books, altus and bassus, dated 1637 and once the property of a certain Thomas Smith (J. W. Brown, "An Elizabethan Song-Cycle," The Cornhill Magazine, XLVII [1920], 572-579). The music is assigned

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  to R[ichard]. Nicholson, organist at Magdalen College, 1595-1639; Dean, who is mentioned above, seems to have the best claim to the words.
• Cach me a star thats fallinge from the sky (p. 106). An unsigned version of an eight-line poem of uncertain authorship modeled on the first stanza of Donne's song beginning "Goe, and catche a fallinge starre." It is incorrectly assigned to Donne himself in Harleian MS. 6057, from which Grierson (II, 12) reproduced it. The present copy is older than any in print. It was first published in two different versions in 1640, with the title "Womans Mutability" in Poems: By Francis Beaumont Gent. (sig. I1v), and with the title "On womens inconstancy" in Wits Recreations (sig. E3). Other copies not mentioned by Grierson appear in John Fry's Pieces of Ancient Poetry (1814, p. 7) and in MS. Ashmole 47, fol. 36. They all differ. These redactions were more popular than Donne's original lyric.
• Cruell, since thou dost [not] feare the curse (p. 102). An unsigned copy of a poem attributed to Donne in the O'Flahertie manuscript (Harvard MS. Norton 4504, p. 52), from which it was printed by Grierson (I, 466). Another anonymous copy which Grierson did not see appears in the Parnell-Thomas Burton manuscript at Harvard, fols. 17-19. There are many verbal variants. Grierson did not weigh Donne's claim, which is admittedly slight; the parallels to his elegies could as readily indicate imitation as his own authorship.
• If shaddowes be a pictures excellence (pp. 182-183, 189). The manuscript contains two anonymous copies (the second fragmentary) of this witty poem which was first included in the Donne canon by Sir John Simeon, Unpublished Poems of John Donne (1856, pp. 19-21). It was rejected by Grierson (II, 268-269), who, however, printed in his appendix (I, 460-461) a manuscript copy assigned to Donne. Other claimants include Rudyerd (Poems, ed. John Donne, Jr., 1660, pp. 61-62), Walton Poole (A. H. Bullen, Speculum Amantis, 1902, pp. 30-31), and Jonson (W. D. Briggs, "Studies in Ben Jonson," Anglia, XXXIX [1915], 231-232). Wits Interpreter (1655, sig. R3) and Parnassus Biceps (1656, pp. 75-77) published it anonymously. Whoever the author, he was a close imitator of Donne. The various copies differ greatly from each other.
• O Love whose force and might (pp. 72-73). An unsigned, seven-stanza version of a popular nonsense song which appears in the manuscript in the midst of pieces attributed to John Dean. Grierson (II, c-ci) found it among Donne's poems in a manuscript collection owned by Captain C. Shirley Harris. Though it is certainly unlike Donne, its presence among his poems can be explained

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  if we posit a manuscript copy signed "J. D." The fullest discussion of the poem is that of Louise Brown Osborn, who reproduces a manuscript version attributed to Hoskyns in The Life, Letters, and Writings of John Hoskyns (1937, p. 301). She lists several other manuscripts, one of which identifies the author as Robert Polden of New College, Oxford. It also appears anonymously in six different seventeenth-century anthologies. The textual problems are exceedingly complex, since it exists in a great variety of forms.
• What is our life? A play of Passion (pp. 33, 134). Two unsigned copies of a sententious epigram probably by Ralegh, both differing from each other and from those described by Agnes Latham, The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh (1929, pp. 161-162). For a discussion of Donne's very feeble claim, see Grierson (I, 441; II, 268).
• Whosoe tearmes loue a fier may licke a poet (p. 104). This poem, which precedes a copy of Donne's verse letter to Brooke, has been printed only once, by Grierson (II, 52), in a note to Donne's elegy "The Paradox." Grierson reproduced the copy in a manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge, and noted three other manuscript occurrences. It is also preserved in two Harvard manuscripts of Donne, Norton 4503, fol. 71v, and Parnell-Thomas Burton, pp. 13-15, and in MS. Ashmole 47, fol. 34. The present copy is headed as follows:
  A paradox of Dr Donne Makinge: O my soule, my harte doth bourne to be soe neare & louse soe good a turne
  Whether the couplet at the right of the title is meant to be taken as Donne's is difficult to decide. At any rate, it is the final couplet of a lewd poem referred to by Hippolita in John Day's The Isle of Guls (1602, sig. D3), versions of which may be seen in Oxford Drollery (1671, sig. 18v) and in W. Tod Ritchie's edition of The Bannatyne Manuscript (1930, IV, 279). As for the poem itself, there seems to be no claimant other than Donne, though one hesitates to assign it to him because its theme, that the marine origin of Venus is a paradox, is so commonplace; it occurs, for instance in epigrams by Muretus (Delitiae delitiarum, ed. Abraham Wright, 1632, p. 28), by Timothy Kendall (Flowers of Epigrammes, 1577, sig. F8v), by John Owen (Epigrammatum . . . libri tres, 1612, sig. A7v), and by Edward May (Epigrams Divine and Moral, 1633, sig. C2v). There is certainly nothing metaphysical about the poem, and if it is by Donne, it must be an early work.
• You say I lie, I say you lie (p. 122). An indecorous trifle, here unsigned, but in MS. Ashmole 47, fol. 36, headed "Dr. Dunn to a gentlewoman." The present copy, interestingly enough, directly

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  precedes the couplet from "The Anagram" discussed above; perhaps in the source used by the scribe both pieces were assigned to Donne. Since there is no evidence that Donne wrote "You say I lie" —though he was as capable of punning on "lie" as any Elizabethan—its ascription to him illustrates the practice of attaching his name to any floating scrap of bawdry. In this respect Donne's reputation in the earlier seventeenth century is similar to Rochester's in the later. This rhyme sometimes appears as part of a little dialogue in verse, different versions of which appear anonymously in Wits Recreations (1640, sig. F5) and in The Academy of Complements (1663, sig. G9), and as the work of Ralegh in W. C. Hazlitt and Henry Huth's Inedited Poetical Miscellanies (1870, sig. M4). Miss Latham, The Poems of Sir Walter Ralegh (1951, p. 174), calls attention to the Donne ascription but makes no decision.

The preceding list comes so far from exhausting the entire Donne apocrypha that no valid generalizations can be drawn from it. But if all the items misassigned to Donne were to be collected and examined, we would discover much more about his contemporary reputation than we are told by the scattered, perfunctory references to him that have so far been gathered.

Notes