Page:The Poems of John Donne - 1896 - Volume 1.djvu/42

xxxviii ed. Laing, Shakespeare Society, p. 9), that Donne, “since he was made Doctor, repenteth highly and seeketh to destroy all his poems.” Walton perhaps in his Life (ed. 1640) represents Donne’s state of mind more accurately. He writes—

“The recreations of his youth were poetry, in which he was so happy as if Nature and all her varieties had been made only to exercise his sharp wit and high fancy; and in those pieces which were facetiously composed and carelessly scattered—most of them being written before the twentieth year of his age—it may appear by his choice metaphors that both Nature and all the arts joined to assist him with their utmost skill. It is a truth that in his penitential years, viewing some of those pieces that had been loosely—God knows, too loosely—scattered in his youth, he wished they had been abortive, or so short-lived that his own eyes had witnessed their funerals; but, though he was no friend to them, he was not so fallen out with heavenly poetry as to forsake that; no, not in his declining age, witnessed then by many divine sonnets, and other high, holy and harmonious composures.”

But if Donne’s poems were not printed, they had at any rate a wide circulation in MSS. among the wits and literary men of the age. This is evident, firstly, from his letters, many of which accompanied a copy of verses to some friend or patron; secondly, from the frequent and admiring mention of his contemporaries; and, thirdly, from the commonplace-books of the period, in which he figures very prominently. One result of this popularity appears to have been the ascription to him of a number of poems really by other men. If the author of a particular poem was unknown, it came very naturally to the compiler of a commonplace-book to append to it the initials J. D. (See the Appendices to this edition, passim.) There is an apparent allusion to this esoteric reputation, which Donne enjoyed, in Drayton’s Epistle to Henry Reynolds, Of Poets and Poesy (published in 1627, but perhaps written earlier). After giving a catalogue, which includes nearly all the writers of the day except Donne, Drayton continues—