Volume 1 — ELEGIES UPON THE AUTHOR.

The first and third of these Elegies, those by King and Hyde, were affixed, without any signature, to Deaths Duell, or A Consolation to the Soule, against the dying Life, and living Death of the Body.... By that late learned and Reverend Divine John Donne, D^r in Divinity, and Deane of S. Pauls, London. Being his last Sermon, and called by his Maiesties houshold The Doctors owne Fvnerall Sermon. London, Printed by Thomas Harper, for Richard Redmer and Beniamin Fisher, and are to be sold at the signe of the Talbot in Alders-gate street. 1632. The book was entered in the Stationers' Register to Beniamin Fisher and Richard Redmer on the 30th of September, 1631, and was issued with a dedicatory letter by Redmer to his sister 'M^rs Elizabeth Francis of Brumsted in Norff' and a note 'To the Reader' signed 'R'. Now we know from his own statement that King was Donne's executor and had been entrusted with his sermons which at King's 'restless importunity' Donne had prepared for the press. (Letter, dated 1664, prefixed to Walton's Lives, 1670.) The sermons and papers thus consigned to King were taken from him later at the instance apparently of Donne's son. But the presence of King's epitaph in this edition of Deaths Duell seems to show that he was responsible for, or at any rate permitted, the issue of the sermon by Redmer and Fisher. The reappearance of these Elegies signed, and accompanied by a number of others, suggests in like manner that King may have been the editor behind Marriot of the Poems in 1633. This would help to account for the general excellence of the text of that edition, for King, a poet himself as well as an intimate friend, was better fitted to edit Donne's poems than the gentle and pious Walton, who was less in sympathy with the side of Donne which his poetry reveals.

Of Henry King (1591-1669) poet, 'florid preacher', canon of Christ Church, dean of Rochester, and in 1641 Bishop of Chichester it is unnecessary to say more here. A fresh edition of his poems by Professor Saintsbury is in preparation and will show how worthy a disciple he was of Donne as love-poet, eulogist, and religious poet. Probably the finest of his poems is The Surrender.

It was to King also that Redmer was indebted for the frontispiece to Deaths Duell, the picture of Donne in his shroud, reproduced in the first volume. 'It was given', Walton says, 'to his dearest friend and Executor D^r King, who caused him to be thus carved in one entire piece of white Marble, as it now stands in the Cathedral Church of St. Pauls.'

The second of the Elegies in 1633 was apparently by the author of the Religio Medici and must be his earliest published work, written probably just after his return from the Continent. The lines were withdrawn after the first edition.

The Edw. Hyde responsible for the third Elegy, 'On the death of Dr. Donne,' is said by Professor Norton to be Edward Hyde, D.D. (1607-59), son of Sir Lawrence Hyde of Salisbury. Educated at Westminster School and Cambridge he became a notable Royalist divine; had trouble with Parliament; and wrote various sermons and treatises (see D.N.B.). 'A Latin poem by Hyde is prefixed to Dean Duport's translation of Job into Greek verse (1637) and he contributed to the "Cambridge Poems" some verses in celebration of the birth of Princess Elizabeth.'

It would be interesting to think that the author of the lines on Donne was not the divine but his kinsman the subsequent Lord Chancellor. There is this to be said for the hypothesis, that among those who contribute to the collection of complimentary verses are some of Clarendon's most intimate friends about this time, viz. Thomas Carew, Sir Lucius Carie or Lord Falkland, and (but his elegy appears first in 1635) Sidney Godolphin. The John Vaughan also, whose MS. lines to Donne I have printed in the introduction (Text and Canon, &c., p. lxiv, note (9)), is enrolled by Clarendon among his intimates at this time. If his friends, legal and literary, were thus eulogizing Donne, why should Hyde not have tried his hand too? However, we know of no other poetical effusions by the historian, and as these verses were first affixed with King's to Deaths Duell it is most probable that their author was a divine.

The author of the fourth elegy, Dr. C. B. of O., is Dr. Corbet, Bishop of Oxford (1582-1635). Walton reprinted the poem in the Lives (1670) as 'by Dr. Corbet ... on his Friend Dr. Donne'. We have no particulars regarding this friendship, but they were both 'wits' and their poems figure together in MS. collections. Ben Jonson was an intimate of Corbet's, who was on familiar terms with all the Jacobean wits and poets. For Corbet's life see D.N.B. His poems are in Chalmers' collection.

The Hen. Valentine of the next Elegy matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in December, 1616, and proceeded B.A. in 1620/1, M.A. 1624. He was incorporated at Oxford in 1628, where he took the degree of D.D. in 1636. On the 8th of December, 1630, he was appointed Rector of Deptford. He was either ejected under the Commonwealth or died, for Mallory, his successor, was deprived in 1662. For this information I am indebted to the Biographical Register of Christ's College, 1505-1905, &c., compiled by John Peile ... Master of the College, 1910. Of works by him the British Museum Catalogue contains Foure Sea-Sermons preached at the annual meeting of the Trinitie Companie in the Parish Church of Deptford, London, 1635, and Private devotions, digested into six litanies ... Seven and twentieth edition, London, 1706. The last was first published in 1651.

Izaak Walton's Elegie underwent a good deal of revision. Besides the variants which I have noted, 1635-69 add the following lines:

In 1658 and 1670, when the Elegie was transferred to the enlarged Life of Donne, it was again revised, and opens:

But the poem in its final form is included in the many reprints of Walton's Lives, and it is unnecessary to note the numerous verbal variations. The most interesting is in ll. 25-6.

Professor Norton notes that 'the name of the author of this' (the seventh) 'Elegy is given as Carie or Cary in all the early editions, by mistake for Carew'. But the spelling (common in the MSS.) simply represents the way in which the name was pronounced. Thomas Carew (1598?-1639?) was sewer-in-ordinary to King Charles in 1633, and in February 163¾ his most elaborate work, the Coelum Britannicum, was performed at Whitehall, on Shrove Tuesday. It was published immediately afterwards, 1634. His collected Poems were issued in 1640 and contained this Elegie. I note the following variants from the text of 1640 as reproduced by Arthur Vincent (Muses Library, 1899):

3. dare we not trust 1633: did we not trust 1640; 5. Churchman 1633: lecturer 1640; 8. thy Ashes 1633: the ashes 1640; 9. no voice, no tune? 1633: nor tune, nor voice? 1640; 17. our Will, 1633: the will, 1640; 44. dust 1633: dung 1640; rak'd 1633: search'd 1640; 50. stubborne language 1633: troublesome language 1640; 58. is purely thine 1633: was only thine 1640; 59. thy smallest worke 1633: their smallest work 1640; 63. repeale 1633: recall 1640; 65. Were banish'd 1633: Was banish'd 1640; 66. o'th'Metamorphoses 1633: i'th'Metamorphoses 1640;

68-9.

Surely 'in this last Age' goes with 'Turne ballad rime'; 73. awfull solemne 1633; solemn awful 1640; 74. faint lines 1633: rude lines 1640; 81. maintaine 1633: retain 1640; 88. our losse 1633: the loss 1640; 89. an Elegie, 1633: one Elegy, 1640;

91-2.

Some of these differences are trifling, but in several instances (3, 8, 50, 59, 66, 91-2) the 1633 text is so much better that it seems probable that the poem was printed in 1640 from an early, unrevised version. In 87. 'the' 1633, 1640 should be 'thee'.

Sir Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1610-1643), was a young man of twenty-one when Donne died, and succeeded his father in the year in which this poem was published. He had been educated at Trinity College, Dublin. 'His first years of reason', Wood says, 'were spent in poetry and polite learning, into the first of which he made divers plausible sallies, which caused him therefore to be admired by the poets of those times, particularly by Ben Jonson ... by Edm. Waller of Beaconsfield ... and by Sir John Suckling, who afterwards brought him into his poem called The Session of Poets thus,

But Falkland is best known through his friendship with Clarendon, whose account of him is classical: 'With these advantages' (of birth and fortune) 'he had one great disadvantage (which in the first entrance into the world is attended with too much prejudice) in his person and presence, which was in no degree attractive or promising. His stature was low, and smaller than most men; his motion not graceful; and his aspect so far from inviting, that it had somewhat in it of simplicity; and his voice the worst of the three, and so untuned, that instead of reconciling, it offended the ear, so that nobody would have expected music from that tongue; and sure no man was less beholden to nature for its recommendation into the world: but then no man sooner or more disappointed this general and customary prejudice: that little person and small stature was quickly found to contain a great heart, a courage so keen, and a nature so fearless, that no composition of the strongest limbs, and most harmonious and proportioned presence and strength, ever more disposed any man to the greatest enterprise; it being his greatest weakness to be too solicitous for such adventures: and that untuned voice and tongue easily discovered itself to be supplied and governed by a mind and understanding so excellent that the wit and weight of all he said carried another kind of lustre and admiration in it, and even another kind of acceptation from the persons present, than any ornament of delivery could reasonably promise itself, or is usually attended with; and his disposition and nature was so gentle and obliging, so much delighted in courtesy, kindness, and generosity, that all mankind could not but admire and love him.' The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon (Oxford, 1827) i. 42-50. Coming from him, Falkland's poem is an interesting testimony to the influence of Donne's poetry, presence, and character.

Jaspar Mayne (1604-72), author of The City Match, was a student and graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, a poet, dramatist, and divine. He wrote complimentary verses on the Earl of Pembroke, Charles I, Queen Henrietta, Cartwright, and Ben Jonson—all, like those on Donne, very bad. He was the translator of the Epigrams ascribed to Donne and published with some of his Paradoxes, Problemes, Essays, Characters in 1651.

Arthur Wilson (1595-1652), historian and dramatist, author of The Inconstant Lady and The Swisser, had in 1633 just completed a rather belated course at Trinity College, Oxford, whither he had gone after leaving the service of the third Earl of Essex. For Wilson's Life see D.N.B. and Feuillerat: The Swisser ... avec une Introduction et des Notes, Paris, 1904.

The 'Mr. R. B.' who wrote these lines is said by Mr. Gosse to be the voluminous versifier Richard Brathwaite (1588-1673), author of A Strappado for the Divell and other works, satirical and pious. He is perhaps the most likely candidate for the initials, which are all we have to go by. At the same time it is a little surprising that a poet whose name was so well known should have concealed himself under initials, the device generally of a young man venturing among more experienced poets. If he had not been too young in 1633, I should have ventured to suggest that the author was Ralph Brideoak, who proceeded B.A. at Oxford 1634, and in 1638 contributed lines to Jonsonus Virbius. He was afterwards chaplain to Speaker Lenthall, and died Bishop of Chichester. In the lines on Jonson, Brideoak describes the reception of Jonson's plays with something of the vividness with which the poet here describes the reception of Donne's sermons. He also refers to Donne:

This last line echoes Donne (p. 204, l. 24). Most of Donne's eulogists were young men.

Brathwaite's wife died in 1633, and, perhaps following Donne, he for some years wrote Anniversaries upon his Panarete. W. C. Hazlitt suggests Brome as the author of the lines on Donne, which is not likely.

The Epitaph which follows R. B.'s poem is presumably by him also.

Endymion Porter (1587-1649) may have had a common interest with Donne in the Spanish language and literature, for the former owed his early success as an ambassador and courtier to his Spanish descent and upbringing. He owes his reputation now mainly to his patronage of art and poetry and to the songs of Herrick. For his life see D.N.B. and E. B. de Fonblanque's Lives of the Lords Strangford, 1877.

Daniel Darnelly, the author of the long Latin elegy added to the collection in 1635, was, according to Foster (Alumni Oxonienses, vol. i. 1891), the son of a Londoner, and matriculated at Oxford on Nov. 14, 1623, at the age of nineteen. He proceeded B.A. in 1627, M.A. 16²⁹⁄30, and was incorporated at Cambridge in 1634. He is described in Musgrave's Obituary as of Trinity Hall. In 1632 he was appointed rector of Curry Mallet, Somersetshire, and of Walden St. Paul, Herts., 1634. This would bring him into closer touch with London, and probably explains his writing an elegy for the forthcoming second edition of Donne's Poems. He was rector of Teversham, Cambridgeshire, from 1635 to 1645, when his living was sequestered. He died on the 23rd of November, 1659.

The heading of this poem shows that it was written at the request of some one, probably King. In l. 35 Nilusque minus strepuisset the reference is to the great cataract. See Macrobius, Somn. Scip. ii. 4.

Of Sidney Godolphin (1610-43) Clarendon says, 'There was never so great a mind and spirit contained in so little room; so large an understanding and so unrestrained a fancy in so very small a body: so that the Lord Falkland used to say merrily, that he was pleased to be found in his company, where he was the properer man; and it may be the very remarkableness of his little person made the sharpness of his wit, and the composed quickness of his judgement and understanding the more notable.' The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, i. 51-2. He was killed at Chagford in the civil war. Professor Saintsbury has not included this poem in his collection of Godolphin's poems, Caroline Poets, ii. pp. 227-61.

John Chudleigh's name appears in MSS. occasionally at the end of different poems. In the second collection in the Trinity College, Dublin MS. G. 2. 21 (TCD Second Collection) he is credited with the authorship of Donne's lyric A Feaver, but two other poems are also ascribed to him. He is the author of another in Addl. MS. 33998. f. 62 b. Who he was, I am not sure, but probably he may be identified with John Chudleigh described in 1620 (Visitation of Devonshire) as son and heir of George Chudley of Asheriston, or Ashton, in the county of Devon, and then aged fourteen. On the 1st of June, 1621, aged 15, he matriculated at Wadham College, Oxford. He proceeded B.A. 1623-4, being described as 'equ. aur. fil.' for his father, a member of Parliament, had been created a baronet on the 1st of August, 1622. He took his M.A. in 1626, and was incorporated at Cambridge in 1629 (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i. 276). Just before taking his M.A. he was elected to represent East Looe. He died, however, before May 10, 1634, which is difficult to reconcile with his being the author of these verses in 1635, unless they were written some time before.