By J. D.

WITH

ELEGIES

ON THE

AUTHORS DEATH.

TO WHICH

Is added divers Copies under his own hand
never before in print.

LONDON.

Printed for John Marriot, and are
to be sold by Richard Marriot at his shop
by Chancery lane end over against the Inner
Temple gate. 1650.

Title Page

The initials of the printer, M. F., disappear, and the name of John Marriot's son, partner, and successor, Richard, appears along with his own. There is no great distance between St. Dunstan's Churchyard and the end of Chancery Lane. With M. F. went the introductory Printer to the Understanders, its place being taken by a dedicatory letter in young Donne's most courtly style to William, Lord Craven, Baron of Hamsted-Marsham.

In the body of the volume as prepared in 1649 no alteration was made. The 'divers Copies ... never before in print', of which the new editor boasts, were inserted in a couple of sheets (or a sheet and a half, aa, bb incomplete) at the end. These are variously bound up in different copies, being sometimes before, sometimes at the end of the Elegies upon the Author, sometimes before and among them. They contain a quite miscellaneous assortment of writings, verse and prose, Latin and English, by, or presumably by, Donne, with a few complimentary verses on Donne taken from Jonson's Epigrams.

The text of Donne's own writings is carelessly printed. In short, Donne's son did nothing to fix either the text or the canon of his father's poems. The former, as it stands in the body of the volume in the editions of 1650-54, he took over from Marriot and M. F. As regards the latter, he speaks of the 'kindnesse of the Printer, ... adding something too much, lest any spark of this sacred fire might perish undiscerned'; but he does not condescend to tell us, if he knew, what these unauthentic poems are. He withdrew nothing.

In 1654 the poems were published once more, but printed from the same types as in 1650. The text of the poems (pp. 1-368) is identical in 1649, 1650, 1654; of the additional matter (pp. 369-392) in 1650, 1654. The only change made in the last is on the title-page, where a new publisher's name appears,¹¹ as in the following facsimile: