Note 27 — POEMS

H40 and RP31, i.e. Harleian MS. 4064 in the British Museum, and Rawlinson Poetical MS. 31, in the Bodleian Library, are two manuscripts containing a fairly large number of Donne's poems intermingled with poems by other and contemporary authors. A note on the fly-leaf of RP31 declares that the manuscript contains 'Sir John Harringtons poems written in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth', which is certainly not an accurate description.27 Some of the poems must have been written as late as 1610, and they are by various authors, Wotton, Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, Sir John Roe, Donne, Beaumont, and probably others, but names of authors are only occasionally given. Each manuscript starts with the words 'Prolegomena Quaedam', and the poem, 'Paynter while there thou sit'st.' The poems follow the same order in the two manuscripts, but of poems not by Donne RP31 contains several which are not in H40, and, on the other hand, of poems by Donne H40 inserts at various places quite a number, especially of songs, which are not in RP31. The latter is, in short, a miscellaneous collection of Elizabethan and early Jacobean poems, including several of Donne's; the former, the same collection in which Donne's poems have become by insertion the principal feature. I have cited the readings of H40 throughout; those of RP31 only when they differ from H40, or when I wish to emphasize their agreement. Wherever derived from, the poems are generally carefully and intelligently transcribed. They contain some unpublished poems of Jonson, Sir Edward Herbert, and probably Daniel.