Note 18 — POEMS (continued 2)

'Absence heare my protestation' was printed in Donne's lifetime in Davison's A Poetical Rhapsody (1602, 1608, 1621), but with no reference to Donne's authorship, although his name was yearly growing a more popular hostel for wandering, unclaimed poems.18 It was not printed in any edition of his poems from 1633 to 1719. It is not found in either of the most trustworthy manuscript collections, D, H49, Lec, or A18, N, TC. It is found in B, Cy, L74, O'F, P, S96, but none of these can be counted an authority. In 1711 it was for the first time ascribed to Donne in The Grove, a miscellaneous collection of poems, on the authority of 'an old Manuscript of Sir John Cotton's of Stratton in Huntington-Shire'. On the other hand, in one well authenticated manuscript, HN, it is transcribed by William Drummond of Hawthornden from what he describes as a collection of poems 'belonging to John Don' (not 'by Donne'), and, with another poem, is initialled 'J. H.' That other poem called