Note 37 — POEMS

The Poems of John Donne From The Text of The Edition of 1633 Revised By James Russell Lowell With The Various Readings of The Other Editions Of The Seventeenth Century, And With A Preface, An Introduction, And Notes By Charles Eliot Norton. New York. 1895. In preparing the text from Lowell's copy of 1633, emended in pencil by him, Professor Norton was assisted by Mrs. Burnett, the daughter of Mr. Lowell. As I could not apportion the responsibility for the text I have spoken throughout my textual notes and remarks of 'the Grolier Club editor' (Grolier for short). I have accepted Professor Norton as the sole author of the commentary. For instances where the punctuation has been altered, and the meaning, in my opinion, obscured, I may refer to the textual notes on The Legacie (p. 20), The Dreame (p. 37), A nocturnall upon S. Lucies day (p. 44). But I have cited and discussed most of the cases in which I disagree with the Grolier Club editors. It is for readers to judge whether at times they may not be right, and I have gone astray. The Grolier Club edition only came into my hands when I had completed my first collation of the printed texts. Had I known it sooner, or had the edition been more accessible, I should probably not have ventured on the arduous task of editing Donne. It is based on the best text, and the editors have been happier than most in their interpretation and punctuation of the more difficult passages.

Professor Norton made no use of the manuscripts in preparing the text, but he added in an appendix an account of the manuscript which, following him, I have called N, and he gave a list of variants which seemed to him possible emendations. Later, in the Child Memorial Volume of Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature (1896), he gave a somewhat fuller description of N and descriptions of S (the Stephens MS.) and Cy (the Carnaby MS.). Of the readings which Professor Norton noted, several have passed into my edition on the authority of a wider collation of the manuscripts.