[Footnote 2: Gaspary: _History of Italian Literature_ (Oelsner's translation), 1904. Consult also Karl Vossler: _Die philosophischen Grundlagen des 'süssen neuen Stils'_, Heidelberg, 1904, and _La Poesia giovanile &c. di Guido Cavalcanti: Studi di Giulio Salvadori_, Roma, 1895.] [Footnote 3: Gaspary: _Op. Cit._] * * * * * II THE TEXT AND CANON OF DONNE'S POEMS TEXT Both the text and the canon of Donne's poems present problems which have never been frankly faced by any of his editors--problems which, considering the greatness of his reputation in the seventeenth century, and the very considerable revival of his reputation which began with Coleridge and De Quincey and has advanced uninterruptedly since, are of a rather surprising character. An attempt to define and, as far as may be, to solve these problems will begin most simply with a brief account of the form in which Donne's poems have come down to us. Three of Donne's poems were printed in his lifetime--the Anniversaries (i.e. _The Anatomy of the World_ with _A Funerall Elegie_ and _The Progresse of the Soule_) in 1611 and 1612, with later editions in 1621 and 1625; the _Elegie upon the untimely death of the incomparable Prince Henry_, in Sylvester's _Lachrymae Lachrymarum_, 1613; and the lines prefixed to _Coryats Crudities_ in 1611. We know nothing of any other poem by Donne being printed prior to 1633. It is noteworthy, as Mr. Gosse has pointed out, that none of the _Miscellanies_ which appeared towards the end of the sixteenth century, as _Englands Parnassus_[1] (1600), or at the beginning of the seventeenth century, as Davison's _Poetical Rhapsody_,[2] contained poems by Donne. The first of these is a collection of witty and elegant passages from different authors on various general themes (Dissimulation, Faith, Learning, &c.) and is just the kind of book for which Donne's poems would have been made abundant use of at a somewhat later period. There are in our libraries manuscript collections of 'Donne's choicest conceits', and extracts long or short from his poems, dating from the second quarter of the seventeenth century.[3] The editor of the second of the anthologies mentioned, Francis Davison, became later much interested in Donne's poems. In notes which he made at some date after 1608, we find him inquiring for 'Satyres, Elegies, Epigrams etc., by John Don', and querying whether they might be obtained 'from Eleaz. 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