Page:The Poems of John Donne - 1896 - Volume 1.djvu/43

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I am afraid that Drayton was not allowed to have a copy.

The passage from Walton’s Life which I have quoted above is of service also in helping to determine the date of Donne’s work in the field of poetry. As here too Dr. Grosart has gone wrong, it is worth while to put together some additional testimony of Walton and others on the matter. It all points to the fact that on the whole, although they overlap considerably, the secular are earlier in date than the sacred poems.

(a) There are the lines by Walton, printed beneath the portrait frontispiece by Marshall to the Poems of 1635. The portrait is dated ‘‘Anno Dni 1591, aetatis suae 18.”

(b) There is the following passage in Walton’s Elegy, written April 7, 1631, first printed together with the Life in the LXXX Sermons of 1640.