Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/239

  carelessness. There are not twenty-six sermons; for the third and seventeenth are identical, as are the fifth and sixteenth. There is a preface ‘To the Reader’ by the younger Donne, who tells us the edition was limited to five hundred copies.

Under Miscellaneous Works may be classed the following: A small collection of his poems, till then unprinted, was issued to the Philobiblon Society in 1858 by Sir John Simeon. ‘The Works of John Donne, D.D., Dean of St. Paul's.…’ 6 vols. 8vo, edited by Henry Alford, M.A., afterwards dean of Canterbury, is not worthy of Donne or his editor. A folio volume containing several of Donne's manuscript sermons, belonging to the late J. Payne Collier, was in 1843 in the custody of Archdeacon Hannah. This may have been the same volume known to be in the possession of the Rev. W. Woolston of Adderbury, Oxfordshire, 1815.
 * 1) ‘Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, and several steps in my sickness.…’ 12mo, London, 1624, printed by A. M. for Thomas Jones. The edition was bought up at once, and a second—a reprint and not a mere reissue—appeared the same year. It has been frequently republished.
 * 2) ‘Poems, by J. D., with Elegies on the Author's Death. Printed by M. F. for J. Marriot.…’ 4to, 1633. At the end of this volume are eight letters to Sir Henry Goodere, and one to the Countess of Bedford, in prose. Copies of this quarto are sometimes found with the superb portrait of Donne, painted a short time before his ordination, and engraved by Lombard; the original, or a copy of the picture, is now in the Dyce and Foster library at South Kensington.
 * 3) ‘Poems, by J. D.… To which is added divers Copies under his own hand never before in print. London, printed for John Marriot.…’ 12mo, 1649. Copies may sometimes be found with his portrait taken in 1591, engraved by Marshall. This edition was issued by his son, with a dedication to Lord Craven, and was reprinted 1650, 1654, 1669, and lastly in 1719.
 * 4) ‘Juvenilia, or certain Paradoxes and Problems, written by Dr. Donne. The second Edition, corrected. London, printed by E. P. for Henry Seyle.…’ 4to, 1633.
 * 5) ‘Fasciculus Poematum & Epigrammatum Miscellaneorum. Translated into English by Jasp. Mayne, D.D.…’ London, 8vo, 1652. (This collection is almost wholly spurious.)
 * 6) ‘ΒΙΑθΑΝΑΤΟΣ. A Declaration of that Paradoxe or Thesis, That Self-homicide is not so naturally Sin, that it may never be otherwise. …’ The license to print this work is dated 20 Sept. 1644. It was published in 4to the same year, and issued with a different title in 1648.
 * 7) ‘Essayes in Divinity. By the late Dr. Donne, Dean of St. Paul's. Being Several Disquisitions interwoven with Meditations and Prayers: Before he entered into Holy Orders. Now made publick by his son J. D., Dr. of the Civil Law,’ London, 16mo, 1651. This was republished by the writer of this article in 1855 (London, John Tupling), with a life of the author and some notes. Copies of the original edition are very scarce; the same may be almost said of the reprint.
 * 8) ‘Letters to Several Persons of Honour. Written by John Donne, sometime Deane of St. Paul's. Published by John Donne, Dr. of the Civill Law,’ 4to, London, 1651. Reissued with a different title-page in 1654.
 * 9) ‘A Collection of Letters made by Sir Tobie Matthews [sic], Kt.…’ 12mo, 1660. There are between forty and fifty letters in this collection written by Donne or addressed to him. The collection was issued by John Donne the younger. The most complete collection of Donne's poems is that brought out by Mr. Grosart in 2 vols. post8vo, 1872, in the ‘Fuller's Worthies Library.’

A quarto volume of Donne's sermons, &c., apparently intended for the press, and written by his own hand, is in the possession of the writer of this article. It contains eighteen sermons which have never been printed, and eight which appear in his collected works. Two of the unprinted ones are rather treatises than sermons, and are of excessive length. We can thus account for at least 180 sermons, written and delivered in sixteen years. Considering their extraordinary elaboration, and the fact that they form but a portion of their writer's works, it may be doubted whether any other English divine has left behind him a more remarkable monument of his mere industry, not to speak of the intrinsic value of the works themselves. [Walton's Life of Donne (Walton lived in the parish of St. Dunstan and was on intimate terms with Donne). By far the best edition is that published with very careful and learned notes by H. K. Causton in 1855. Biographical Notice of Bishop Henry King, prefixed to his poems, by Rev. J. Hannah, 1843; Sir H. Nicolas's Life of Walton, App. A; Walton's Life of Herbert. Donne's Letters, published and unpublished. Of the latter there are a large number dispersed in public and private archives. Several were printed in the Losely MSS., edited by A. J. Kempe, 8vo, 1835, but there are others still unprinted at Losely Hall (Hist. MSS. Comm. 7th Rep. p. 659 et seq.) The Rev. T. R. O'fflahertie has a large collection of copies from Donne's unprinted letters; some of them, of great interest, belonged to Mr. J. H. Anderton. There is one letter printed in Miss Warner's Epistolary Curiosities (1818)