By J. D.
WITH
ELEGIES
ON THE AUTHORS
DEATH.
LONDON.
Printed by M. F. for Iohn Marriot,
and are to be sold at his shop in St 'Dunstans
Church-yard in Fleet-street. 1633.
Title Page
The first eight pages (Sheet A) are numbered, and contain (1) The Printer to the Understanders,4 (2) the Hexastichon Bibliopolae, (3) the dedication of, and introductory epistle to, The Progresse of the Soule, with which poem the volume opens. The poems themselves, with some prose letters and the Elegies upon the Author, fill pages 1-406. The numbers on some of the pages are misprinted. The order of the poems is generally chaotic, but in batches the poems follow the order preserved in the later editions. Of the significance of this, and of the source and character of this edition, I shall speak later. As regards text and canon it is the most trustworthy of all the old editions. The publisher, John Marriot, was a well-known bookseller at the sign of the Flower de Luce, and issued the poems of Breton, Drayton, Massinger, Quarles, and Wither. The printer was probably Miles Fletcher, or Flesher, a printer of considerable importance in Little Britain from 1611 to 1664. It would almost seem, from the heading of the introductory letter, that the printer was more responsible for the issue than the bookseller Marriot, and it is perhaps noteworthy that when in 1650 the younger Donne succeeded in getting the publication of the poems into his own hand, John Marriot's name remained on the title-page (1650) as publisher, but the printer's initials disappeared, and his prefatory letter made way for a dedication by the younger Donne. (See page 4.) It should be added that copies of the 1633 edition differ considerably from one another. In some a portrait has been inserted. Occasionally The Printer to the Understanders is omitted, the Infinitati Sacrum &c. following immediately on the title-page. In some poems, notably The Progresse of the Soule, and certain of the Letters to noble ladies, the text underwent considerable alteration as the volume passed through the press. Some copies are more correct than others. A few of the errors of the 1635 edition are traceable to the use by the printer of a comparatively imperfect copy of the 1633 edition.
