my protestation.' I hope to show elsewhere that this is the work, not of Donne, but of another young wit of the day, John Hoskins, whose few extant poems are a not uninteresting link between the manner of Sidney and the Elizabethans and of Donne and the 'Metaphysicals'. The first collected edition of Donne's poems was issued in 1633, two years after his death. This is a small quarto, the title-page of which is here reproduced. POEMS, _By_ J. D. WITH ELEGIES ON THE AUTHORS DEATH. LONDON. Printed by _M. F._ for IOHN MARRIOT, and are to be sold at his shop in S^t '_Dunstans_ Church-yard in _Fleet-street_. 1633. The first eight pages (Sheet A) are numbered, and contain (1) _The Printer to the Understanders_,[4] (2) the _Hexastichon Bibliopolae_, (3) the dedication of, and introductory epistle to, _The Progresse of the Soule_, with which poem the volume opens. The poems themselves, with some prose letters and the _Elegies upon the Author_, fill pages 1-406. The numbers on some of the pages are misprinted. The order of the poems is generally chaotic, but in batches the poems follow the order preserved in the later editions. Of the significance of this, and of the source and character of this edition, I shall speak later. As regards text and canon it is the most trustworthy of all the old editions. The publisher, John Marriot, was a well-known bookseller at the sign of the Flower de Luce, and issued the poems of Breton, Drayton, Massinger, Quarles, and Wither. The printer was probably Miles Fletcher, or Flesher, a printer of considerable importance in Little Britain from 1611 to 1664. It would almost seem, from the heading of the introductory letter, that the printer was more responsible for the issue than the bookseller Marriot, and it is perhaps noteworthy that when in 1650 the younger Donne succeeded in getting the publication of the poems into his own hand, John Marriot's name remained on the title-page (1650) as publisher, but the printer's initials disappeared, and his prefatory letter made way for a dedication by the younger Donne. (See page 4.) It should be added that copies of the 1633 edition differ considerably from one another. In some a portrait has been inserted. Occasionally _The Printer to the Understanders_ is omitted, the _Infinitati Sacrum &c._ following immediately on the title-page. In some poems, notably _The Progresse of the Soule_, and certain of the _Letters_ to noble ladies, the text underwent considerable alteration as the volume passed through the press. Some copies are more correct than others. A few of the errors of the 1635 edition are traceable to the use by the printer of a comparatively imperfect copy of the 1633 edition. POEMS, _By_ J. D. WITH ELEGIES ON THE AUTHORS DEATH. _LONDON_ Printed by _M. F._ for JOHN MARRIOT, and are to be sold at his Shop in S^t _Dunstans_ Church-yard in _Fleet-street_. 1635.