The manuscripts fall into three main groups (1) _D_, _H49_, _Lec_. These with a portion of _1633_ come from a common source. (2) _A18_, _N_, _TCC_, _TCD_. These also come from a single stream and some parts of _1633_ follow them. _L74_ is closely connected with them, at least in parts. (3) _A25_, _B_, _Cy_, _JC_, _O'F_, _P_, _S_, _S96_, _W_. These cannot be traced in their entirety to a single head, but in certain groups of poems they tend to follow a common tradition which may or may not be that of one or other of the first two groups. Of the _Elegies_, for example, _A25_, _JC_, _O'F_ and _W_ transcribe twelve in the same order and with much the same text. Again, _B_, _O'F_, _S96_, and _W_ have taken the _Holy Sonnets_ from a common source, but _O'F_ has corrected or altered its readings by a reference to a manuscript resembling _D_, _H49_, _Lec_, while _W_ has a more correct version than the others of the common tradition, and three sonnets which none of these include. Generally, whenever _B_, _O'F_, _S96_, and _W_ derive from the same source, _W_ is much the most reliable witness. Indeed, our first two groups and _W_ have the appearance of being derived from some authoritative source, from manuscripts in the possession of members of Donne's circle. All the others suggest, by the headings they give to occasional poems, their misunderstanding of the true character of some poems, their erroneous ascriptions of poems, that they are the work of amateurs to whom Donne was not known, or who belonged to a generation that knew Donne as a divine, only vaguely as a wit. These being the materials at our command, the question is, how are we to use them to secure as accurate a text as possible of Donne's poems, to get back as close as may be to what the poet wrote himself. The answer is fairly obvious, though it could not be so until some effort had been made to survey the manuscript material as a whole. Of the three most recent editors--the first to attempt to obtain a true text--of Donne's poems, each has pursued a different plan. The late Dr. Grosart[36] proceeded on a principle which makes it exceedingly difficult to determine accurately what is the source of, or authority for, any particular reading he adopted. He printed now from one manuscript, now from another, but corrected the errors of the manuscript by one or other of the editions, most often by that of 1669. He made no estimate of the relative value of either manuscripts or editions, nor used them in any systematic fashion.