Note 10 — POEMS,
Reading edition
What assistance, if any, the printer and publisher had from others of Donne's friends and executors it is impossible now to say, though one can hardly imagine that without some assistance they could have got access to so many poems or been allowed to publish the elegies on his death, some of which refer to the publication of the poems.10 Walton, as we have seen, wrote verses to be prefixed to the second edition. At any rate in 1637 the younger John Donne made an effort to arrest the unauthorized issue of his father's works. Dr. Grosart first printed in his edition of the poems (Fuller Worthies' Library, 1873, ii, p. lii) the following petition and response preserved in the Record Office: