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(b) Manuscript Sources

In a few instances, the transcripts in Manningham's Diary are based on
manuscript sources. These notes are significant in part because they sometimes
offer tantalizing glimpses of his access to lines of manuscript traditions
that are no longer extant. That they have vanished makes it difficult to assess
Manningham's handling of them, obliging us to be cautious when judging
these particular notes. One text that existed only in manuscript when Manningham
copied directly from it in 1602 is Sir John Davies's The Lottery (fol.
95-95b). Because Davies had been at the Middle Temple about a decade before
the diarist, Manningham's ability to gain access to this document, like
those containing works by Donne, points to a circle of friends associated with
the legal profession who shared manuscripts that were indirectly transmitted

from authorial sources. Extant in Francis Davison's 1608 edition of A Poetical
Rhapsodie and in a manuscript in the Conway Papers, Davies's Lottery is
made up of introductory matter in verse and prose followed by a series of
couplets, each of which accompanied one of the "lots," small gifts distributed
during an entertainment given by the Lord Keeper, Sir Thomas Egerton,
when Queen Elizabeth visited Harefield House in the summer of 1602.[31] Many
of the sixteen couplets that Manningham copies reproduce readings found in
A Poetical Rhapsodie or the Conway Papers Manuscript or both. When the
printed text and that manuscript present different readings, however, Manningham
never agrees with A Poetical Rhapsodie; he sides with the Conway
Papers Manuscript on about six occasions; on another handful of occasions,
the Diary provides independent readings that agree with neither text and
probably represent minor errors.[32] One example will suffice to illustrate the
relationship among these texts:

Because Manningham reproduces both his source's wording and its iambic
pentameter couplet form throughout an extensive excerpt, the transcript
avoids the characteristic signs of relying on medium- or long-term memory.
Rather, it appears that he was consulting his source when he made an accurate
transcript of a lost manuscript that is closely related to the one contained
in the Conway Papers rather than the one that Francis Davison used as the
source for A Poetical Rhapsodie.

Manningham takes more extensive notes on the manuscript of another
text with a murky textual history, The Legend of Mary, Queen of Scots, attributed
to Thomas Wenman (fols. 91b-94b). The poem's nineteenth-century
editor, Jon Fry, writes that the manuscript is dated 1601 but provides no information

about its location.[34] Since I have been unable to trace this manuscript
and I can therefore compare Manningham's notes only with Fry's
nineteenth-century edition, it is difficult to measure their accuracy. Not only
do the two texts' numerous substantive variants indicate that Manningham's
source is a different manuscript but they are also generally unhelpful in determining
which, if either, might be accurate and which in error. The following
quotations are from the Diary; italics identify the substantive differences
with Fry's edition, whose readings appear in brackets. In terms of syntax,
diction, and meter, some of Manningham's excerpts are clumsy:

(fol. 91b)

But other excerpts are somewhat superior and may more faithfully represent
the source:

(fol. 91b)[35]

While these excerpts from the Diary do not appear to be based on memory,
they may suggest either that Manningham smoothed out material that he
found awkward (a practice he does not engage in elsewhere) or more likely
that he copied directly from his source and followed it with care.

Manningham's Diary contains material from John Donne's Paradoxes,
yet another text with a confused history of transmission, beginning when it
was written in the 1590s and continuing beyond its first publication in his
Juvenilia in 1633. Many manuscripts of the Paradoxes were circulated, particularly
in the early seventeenth century,[36] making it difficult to determine
where the one that Manningham consulted is located in the various lines of
transmission. As a result, we must exercise caution when gauging the accuracy
of his transcript. Manningham and Donne had many mutual friends who
probably exchanged manuscripts,[37] and most of the readings in Manningham's
transcript of Paradoxes 2 and 10 (fol. 101-101b) are supported by their
appearance in other manuscripts of these texts, as well as in the 1633 printed
edition.[38] In the following entry from the Diary, I have used italics to identify

the substantive variants with Donne's Juvenilia, whose readings appear
in brackets:

As Helen Peter's extensive collation indicates, few of these variants are
unique to Manningham's Diary; instead, most appear in one or more manuscripts.
The close connections among various manuscripts provide corroborating
evidence that, without relying on his memory, for no tell-tale signs point
to this means of transmission, Manningham's direct copying produces a faithful
transcript from a manuscript carrying some contemporary authority because
it circulated among mutual friends after being transmitted, however
indirectly, from an authorial source (even if some of the manuscript's readings
were later judged inferior by printers and editors). This conclusion is
reinforced on the same pages that contain Paradoxes 2 and 10 by the appearance
of two other Paradoxes that were not included in the Juvenilia—"Hee
that weepeth is most wise" and "To keepe sheepe the best lyfe"—but that have
received serious consideration as authentic compositions by Donne.[40] Although
the uncertain nature of the transmission of these manuscripts means
that my conclusions are necessarily tentative, a comparison of the Diary with
three manuscript sources that Manningham consults—Davies's Lottery, Wenman's
Legend of Mary, Queen of Scots, and Donne's Paradoxes—suggests that
he had access to texts that carried some authority and made extensive, generally
reliable transcripts by copying directly from them.

Manningham's transcript of another manuscript text by Donne attempts
to reproduce its iambic pentameter couplet form. The results, which stand
in sharp contrast to the transcript of William Warner's couplet beginning "A
Womans love is river-like," do not follow the source with care or present a
condensed version that might be termed a précis. Rather, this entry reveals
numerous misrememberings and clumsy approximations that point to the use
of memory after a lapse of some time. After reading the manuscript of one of
Donne's Epigrams, Manningham writes the following title, attribution, and
couplet:

(fol. 118)

Besides beginning with an alexandrine, Manningham's version presents other
clear differences from anything contained in this epigram's manuscript tradition,
whose extant documents include only one substantive variation—the
title (other early manuscripts have no title or refer to the poem by such titles
as "A beggar," "On a Beggar," or "On a Cripple")—from the 1633 printed
text:

Referring to Manningham's entry as "obviously from memory," W. Milgate,
the editor of Donne's Satires, Epigrams and Verse Letters, observes that
"Those who find epigrams memorable often have faulty memories, and many
variations in the manuscripts can be ascribed to this cause."[42] That Manningham's
entry begins with a title that weakly attempts to summarize the couplet
while merely restating it and identifying a setting ("on the ground") suggests
that his memory is at work, providing an approximation to fulfill the expectation
that a title should precede the couplet. Further evidence of memorial
intervention appears in the misremembering of some key verbs, as "stand"
and "move" are transformed into "sitt" and "stand," and switched to the
couplet's opening line. This conclusion about the role of Manningham's
memory may be strengthened by the fact that the Diary's version is entirely
in the third person, so it lacks the dramatic first-person opening and subsequent
shift to the third person that appear in the printed text and all other
manuscript versions. Yet Manningham's reproducing of the couplet's rhyme
and word-play indicates that this manuscript is connected in some way to an
authoritative line of transmission. However, the substantive differences between
the epigram contained in the Diary and the one contained in all extant
manuscripts[43] demonstrate that Manningham, rather than writing a summary
or transcribing the complete couplet directly from a manuscript (even an inferior
one), uses his memory to attempt to reproduce the poem's form and to
convey a loose sense of its contents, focusing on the final word's pun.