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-The following instances of the mistakes committed in these posthumous Collections are of later date than the Miscellanies last mentioned; but they are chosen from their connection with each other, and with some of the poems reprinted in this volume.

The Collection of Poems published in 1660 by Dr. John Donne the younger,* under the names of LORD PEMBROKE and SIR B. RUDYARD, supplies us with several examples. Four of those pieces are contained in this volume; and there is evidence enough in every case to shew that the younger Donne's account is incorrect.+ Two others were printed in 1657 among the Poems of Bishop Henry King; and as they are also found in two MS. Collections of his pieces which are still in existence, there is every reason to

For this person, of whom Wood said that, by reason of his manifold failings, his memory was even then by many " condemn'd to utter oblivion," it is sufficient to refer to Wood's Fasti, i. 503, compared with A. O. ii. 504, iv. 724; Zouch's Walton, pp. xv-vi. 115-6; and Nicolas's Life of Walton, pp. Ixvi-vii, cxlix-l.—Mr. Hallam (Introd. to Lit. &c. iii. 44, ed. 1843) assumes that the editor was his father, the Dean of St. Paul's, who is always understood when only "Dr. Donne" is mentioned; and therefore, as the Dean died in 1631, he argues that there must have been an earlier edition than that of 1660. He adds, in corroboration," the Countess of Devonshire is not called Dowager; her husband died in 1643." Then the copies differ. In that which I have used, the word is plain enough;-"To the Right Honorable Christiana, Countess of Devonshire, Dowager." (That copy is among Malone's books in the Bodleian, 460. The following note-worthy pames are written in the beginning: "Izaak Walton"-[his own writing]; "Elibris Mri Fulman"; "T. Warton, Coll. Trin. Oxon. 1759." It was afterwards Park's, and then Malone's. The most objectionable leaf has been torn out, which was probably honest Izaak's doing; but it has been restored in MS. The address "To the Reader," in which it is acknowledged that some poems may be wrongly ascribed, is in modern type; but there is the original Dedication, which contains some of the very expressions used by the same Donne in the letter to Lord Craven, which he prefixed to the later editions of his father's Poems.-I have not seen the reprint.)Mr. Lodge (see below, p. 131, note) does not seem to have observed the chronological difficulty involved in making the Dr. Donne the editor. The younger Donne died in 1662.

+ They are, Wotton's Poem written in his Youth, I. i. p. 3; Dr. Brooke of Tears, II. iii. p. 63; The Lie, III. i. p. 89; and the poem sometimes entitled The Silent Lover, III. ix. p. 130.

believe that he really wrote them.* The credit of another (such as it is) must be surrendered to Sir Edward Dyer.† Here then we have seven poems which were all inserted on mistaken grounds in one small volume. But the list of contradictions is not yet exhausted. I have already mentioned (above, p. xiii) that an eighth has also been ascribed to Carew and Wotton. A ninth occurs among the Poems of Dr. Donne himself, the father of the editor; but in this case there is some little evidence in Pembroke's favour. A tenth is Ben Jonson's famous Epitaph on the Countess of Pembroke, to which a very inferior second part is added, which Gifford was willing to ascribe to the filial affection of her son.§ It is not necessary to seek for any further proofs of the unauthorized character of this publication; but I may add, that the name of "Strode" (or, more briefly, "Str.") is appended, in Fulman's copy, and apparently in his small neat writing, to three other poems which I have not mentioned. Upon the whole, it must be confessed that this

* See Biogr. Not. of Bp. Henry King, p. lxii.

+ See this vol. p. 114, note; Pembroke, p. 29. In that publication, the pun by which Dyer's claim is supported is ruthlessly demolished by the printer, who lets the line stand, innocently enough, " Dye ere thou let his Name be known"-.

It is the song beginning "Soul's joy, when [al. now] I am gone”— Pembroke, p. 24; Donne, p. 57, ed. 1669. But it was not in the first edition of Donne (1633); and it is ascribed to Pembroke in the MS. from which Brydges printed some of Browne's Poems. Pref. p. 6.

Gifford's Jonson, viii. 337; Pembroke, p. 66 (mispr. 96). See too Park's Walpole, ii. 203, note. As to Gifford's remarks, it should be observed, that both parts are found in many ancient copies,-e. g. in Sancroft's Collection, MS. Tann. 465, fol. 62; and in MS. Ashm. 781, p. 152. (Both those copies are anonymous.) So also in a copy printed by Brydges (as above, p. 5), who claims it for William Browne.

|| Dr. Bliss has printed one of these as Strode's on the authority of Lawes. A. O. iii. 152. It begins," Keep on your veile [Mask-Pembr. corrected in MS.] and hide your eye"-Pembroke, p. 109. There is an anonymous copy of it in Clifford's Tixall Poetry, p. 203.-Another of the three, beginning "Like to a hand which hath been us'd to play" (Pembr. p. 108) is given by Dr. Bliss to Carew, on the authority of an Ashm. MS. A. O. ii. 659.

"monument" to Pembroke's memory is an egregious failure. It is in the noble, though qualified, eulogy of Clarendon that his best monument" is found; and the fame of Rudyard's "learned muse" will live in the pages of Ben Jonson, when this poor volume is again forgotten.

The poem which is ascribed to Wotton and Pembroke, as well as to Carew, is not the only doubtful piece inserted in the posthumous Collection of CAREW's Poems (1640). In that case he may have been the injured party, as he certainly was when his Masque entitled "Cœlum Britannicum" was ascribed to Sir William Davenant. But in other cases, his editor was the aggressor; as in regard to three poems which were reclaimed by Shirley in 1646,* and probably to two others which Herrick inserted in his Hesperides in 1648.†

Nor again is Pembroke the only person who can lay claim to compositions which were printed in the various editions (all posthumous) of the Poems of Dr. Donne. Basse's Epitaph on Shakespeare, which was inserted in the first of those editions (1633, p. 165, mispr. 149), was afterwards withdrawn; but the later impressions retained a Translation of Psalm cxxxvii which undoubtedly belongs to Francis Davison, and an Elegy which is found also in Ben Jonson's

Carew, pp. 130-3, repr. of 1824; Dyce's Shirley, vi. 409-11. See ib. p. 461. There are many variations.-One of them was also stolen by Picke, in 1639. See Restit. iv. 350.

+ Carew, pp. 122, 134; Herrick, pp. 120, 243. Herrick's copies are, however, much less perfect than those in Carew. Mr. Hallam (Introd. to Lit. iii. 43) appears to think this circumstance in Herrick's favour; but surely it tells the other way, for stolen poems were more likely to be mutilated than mended. The best argument for Herrick is found in the dates and characters of the two publications.

Donne, p. 157, ed. 1633-p. 322, ed. 1669; Davison's Psalms, p. 27, Lee Priory ed. p. 358, ed. Nicolas, who mentions the circumstance, p. cxx. It is marked as Davison's in a copy of Donne, ed. 1633, belonging to the Library of C. C. C., Oxford, in contemporary handwriting. Even Dr. Cotton enters it in his "List" as Donne's (p. 65); and Mr. Todd avails himself of it to rebut Donne's attack on Sternhold (Observations on the Old Version, p. 90).

Works.* Mr. Laing's recent edition of the Conversations of Jonson and Drummond throws still further doubts on the good faith of that Collection.+

Instances of the same nature might be multiplied to almost any extent; but these are enough to shew, that the insertion of a poem among a writer's collected Works does not always prove him to be the author of it, unless (as in the case of Rel. Wotton.) we have good assurance of the editor's honesty and knowledge. Several subordinate circumstances might be also mentioned, which contribute to weaken our confidence in what we might have hoped to find the surest proof of authorship. Thus at times, a facile writer would help a less ready friend upon occasion, by inditing verses for him; and the borrower and lender would be easily confounded. A favourite poem, again, often called forth many imitations; and it is not always possible to distinguish be-tween the original and the copy,-still less to distribute different variations on the same original among their respective owners.§ Indeed it cannot be doubted that a few altera

* Donne, p. 300, ed. 1633=p. 92, ed. 1669; Gifford's Jonson, viii. 406. Perhaps this is not the only instance.

+ See two cases mentioned on p. 11 of that vol. So on p. 36, "Joseph Hall [wrote] the harbenger to Done's Anniversarie."

No one can doubt that a mistake of this kind was committed when "The Lie" was inserted among the posthumous poems of Sylvester, unless his editor thought that the vile additions made it his. Others in that Collection are open to dispute; for two of them are printed as Campion's in Exc. Tudor. (i. 36; Sylvester, pp. 633-4) on the authority of one of the Harleian MSS.-Cleveland was so much disturbed by the insertion of one of his poems among Randolph's, that he wrote a second piece on the occasion (Randolph, p. 108, ed. 1668; Cleveland, pp. 25-30, ed. 1677). He ought to have been much obliged to Randolph's brother for taking it away. See Mr. Collier's Shakespeare, viii. 475; Nott's Surrey, p. 262. For one remarkable case of repeated imitation, I may refer to the collection of stanzas on the model of that beginning" Like to the falling of a Starre" in Appendix D to Biogr. Not, of Bp. H. King.-A second instance is the series on the model of "Come live with me and be my love." See this vol. p. 126, note.-A third is mentioned above, in the remarks on No. xxvi in the list of Raleigh's Poems.-A fourth is the set of variations on "My mind to me a Kingdom is"-which I will enumerate here, as I

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tions (often for the worse) sometimes sufficed to satisfy the conscience of a writer, who was willing to enrich his own stores by borrowing from his neighbour's superfluity.* All these things cause great perplexity, even to those who have the original volumes at command: and when we add, that from their rarity, one compiler is often forced to trust to information which has been supplied by another, and that several titles, such as The Farewell, The Invective, A Valediction, The Legacy, &c. were the common stock in trade of editors, who prefixed each of them to distinct poems, we shall be at no loss to understand how so much confusion has arisen.

If we turn from printed books to those old MS. Collec

think it is not generally known that Sir Edward Dyer has some claim to the original poem. There are three copies of verses on that model; two of which, viz. one of four stanzas and another of six, were printed by Byrd in 1588. They have been reprinted from his text in Cens. Lit. ii. 108-10, and Exc. Tudor. i. 100-3, Percy inserted them in the Reliques with some alterations and additions; but he changed his mind more than once as to whether they were two distinct poems, or only the dissevered parts of one (see i. 292-4, 303, ed. 1767; and i. 307.10, ed. 1839). The third (containing four stanzas) is among Sylvester's posthumous poems, p. 651; and Ellis reprinted it under his name. In Cens. Lit. ii. 102, another copy of it is given from a Music Book by Gibbons, 1612. Now the longest, and apparently the earliest, of these poems is signed " E. Dier" in MS. Rawl. Poet, 85, fol. 17. That copy contains eight stanzas, and one of the two which are not in Byrd corresponds with a stanza which Percy added. The following are the reasons which incline us to trust this MS. (1.) Because it is the very MS. to which reference is commonly made for several of Dyer's unprinted poems, as by Dr. Bliss, A. O. i. 743, and apparently by Mr. Dyce, ed. of Greene, i. p. xxxv, n. and by Park, note on Warton, iii. 230. Park is the only person I can recollect who has mentioned this particular poem in the MS.; and he cannot have read more than the first line, for he only says, "one of them bears the popular burden of My mind to me a Kingdom is.'" (2.) Because it is quite possible that Dyer wrote many extant poems of which he is not known to be the author; for, as Mr. Dyce says, none of his (acknowledged) productions “have descended to our times that seem to justify the contemporary applause which he received." (3.) Because I cannot discover that there is any other claimant to this poem.—One of Greene's poems ends with the line," A mind content both crown and kingdom is." (Works, ii. 288, ed. Dyce.)

* Sometimes even this poor apology was dispensed with; as when Wastell inserted one of Southwell's poems in his Microbiblion, 1629.

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