E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, Lesley Halamek, Stephen Rowland, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the sheet music illustrations as well as audio music files. See 48772-h.htm or 48772-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48772/48772-h/48772-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48772/48772-h.zip) Transcriber's note: Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_). Text enclosed by equal signs is in bold face (=bold=). Text enclosed by plus signs is in Old English script (+Old English script+). A carat character is used to denote superscription. A character or characters following the carat is/are superscripted (examples: S^t, Pe^tr). In some instances the superscripted characters are enclosed by curly brackets (examples: S^{r}, w^{th}). Some characters might not display in this UTF-8 text version or in the html version. If so, the reader should consult the iso-8859-1 (Latin-1) text file 48772-8.txt or 48772.zip: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48772/48772-8.txt or http://www.gutenberg.org/files/48772/48772-8.zip THE POEMS OF JOHN DONNE Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts with Introductions & Commentary by HERBERT J. C. GRIERSON M.A. Chalmers Professor of English Literature in the University Of Aberdeen VOL. II Introduction and Commentary Oxford At the Clarendon Press 1912 Henry Frowde, M.A. Publisher to the University of Oxford London, Edinburgh, New York Toronto and Melbourne CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION v I. THE POETRY OF DONNE v II. THE TEXT AND CANON OF DONNE'S POEMS lvi COMMENTARY 1 INDEX OF FIRST LINES 276 INTRODUCTION I THE POETRY OF DONNE Donne's position among English poets, regarded from the historical and what we like to call scientific point of view, has been defined with learning and discrimination by Mr. Courthope in his _History of English Poetry_. As a phenomenon of curious interest for the student of the history of thought and literary fashions, there it is. Mr. Courthope is far too well-informed and judicious a critic to explain Donne's subtle thought and erudite conceits by a reference to 'Marini and his followers'. Gongora and Du Bartas are alike passed over in silence. What we are shown is the connexion of 'metaphysical wit' with the complex and far-reaching changes in men's conception of Nature which make the seventeenth century perhaps the greatest epoch in human thought since human thinking began.