The Poems of John Donne, Volume 2 (of 2): Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous ManuscriptsDonne, John
General
The Poems of John Donne, Volume 2 (of 2): Edited from the Old Editions and Numerous Manuscripts
Donne, John
English poetry -- Early modern, 1500-1700
The manuscript is dated, at the end, '19th July 1620,' and contains
no poems which are demonstrably later than this date, or indeed
than 1610. As, however, it contains several of the _Divine Poems_,
including _La Corona_, but _not_ the _Holy Sonnets_, it affords a
valuable clue to the date of these poems,--of which more elsewhere.
The collection is an ambitious one, and an attempt has been made at
classification. Six Satires are followed by twenty-seven Elegies (one
is torn out) under which head love and funeral elegies are included,
and these by a long series of songs with the _Divine Poems_
interspersed. Some of the songs, as of the elegies, are not by
Donne.[29]
_S96._ Stowe MS. 961 is a small folio volume in the British Museum,
containing a collection of Donne's poems very neatly and prettily
transcribed. It cannot have been made before 1630 as it contains all
the three hymns written during the poet's last illnesses. Indeed it is
the only manuscript which I have found containing a copy of the _Hymne
to God, my God in my Sicknes_. It is a very miscellaneous collection.
Three satires are followed by the long obsequies to the Lord
Harington, and these by a sequence of Letters, Funeral Elegies,
Elegies, and Songs intermingled. It is regrettable that so
well-written a manuscript is not more reliable, but its text is poor,
its titles sometimes erroneous, and its ascriptions inaccurate.[30]
(3) In the third class I place manuscripts which are not primarily
collections of Donne's poems but collections of seventeenth-century
poems among which Donne's are included. It is not easy to draw a hard
and fast line between this class and the last because, as has been
seen, most of the manuscripts at the end of the last list contain
poems which are not, or probably are not, by Donne. Still, in these
collections Donne's work predominates, and the tendency of the
collector is to bring the other poems under his aegis. Initials like
J. R., F. B., J. H. disappear, or J. D. takes their place. In the case
of these last collections this is not so. Poems by Donne are included
with poems which the collector assigns to other wits. Obviously this
class could be made to include many different kinds of collections,
ranging from those in which Donne is a prominent figure to those
which include only one or two of his poems. But such manuscripts have
comparatively little value and no authority for the textual critic,
though they are not without importance for the student of the canon
of Donne's poetry. I shall mention only one or two, though I have
examined a good many more.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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