Note 6 — POEMS
Reading edition
Seven of the twenty-three (3, 6, 11, 12, 15, 16, 17) I have gathered together in my Appendix A, with two ('Shall I goe force' and 'True love finds witt', the first of which6 was printed in Le Prince d'Amour, 1660, and reprinted by Simeon, 1856, and Grosart, 1872), as the work not of Donne but of Sir John Roe. The reasons which have led me to do so are not perhaps singly conclusive, but taken together they form a converging and fairly convincing demonstration. The argument starts from Ben Jonson's statement to Drummond of Hawthornden regarding the Epistle at p. 408 (15 above): 'That Sir John Roe loved him; and that when they two were ushered by my Lord Suffolk from a Mask, Roe writt a moral Epistle to him, which began. That next to playes the Court and the State were the best. God threatneth Kings, Kings Lords [as] Lords do us.' (Drummond's Conversations with Jonson), ed. Laing.