Poetry and Prose of John Donne - Paperback

Poetry and Prose of John Donne -- Introduction Poetry 25 Songs and Sonnets I 09 Elegies 123 Epithalamions 14 7 Diuine Poems I 69 Progress o j the Soule I97 Holy Sonnets 211 Satires 245 The Jirst and second Anniver. raries 299 Epicedes and Obsequies 307 Letters to seueral Per. tomge.. s Sermons 327 A Sermon oj-Valediction 355 He that will die with Christ . . . 390 Deaths Duel netters 431 Letters 437 I n d e x -- Foreword -- by AD AM FOX THE WORKS OF JOHN DONNE, both verse and prose, seem to gain more and more admiration, falsifying completely the prophecy of his friend Ben Jonson who thought them too obscure to survive. And this may have come about in pa rt because Donnes lines of thought were in advance of his age, and so what was strange to his contemporaries may be less strange to us. But partly no doubt it is because at the present time a large number of people have become habituated to reading poetry that they do not understand, though they do profess to enjoy it. They do not boggle at all therefore at what is merely a bit difficult. At any rate whatever the cause, there is an increasing demand for Donnes works, 1 and editors who wish to meet it have to ask themselves in what form it can best be met. In the not very distant past those who possessed a Donne were mostly scholars and literary men, and the editions they secured were often richly adorned with Donne scholarship if indeed they were not cumbered with it, for Donne has been in danger of being overwhelmed with learning almost as much as Dante. But now it is clear merely from the success of recent editions that the general reader is asking to be supplied with the Works. And the question is how they can be made most acceptableto the general reader. There are, of course, many ways of launching authors upon the sea of public approval. Robert Bridges got the very baffling Gerard Manley Hopkins widely accepted by first printing a few of his poems in an anthology, and then a few more here and there. The complete works, slender as is the volume that they make, would have been too big a mouthful all at once. R. H. Horne, when he had completed the 3,000 lines of his poem Orion, sold the first edition at one farthing a copy, a price which he estimated would ensure the readiest sale. With Donne the case is far less desperate, indeed most promising except in one particular, and that is the great bulk of his complete works. Not much of the considerable poetry and the many sermons went unpublished thanks to the piety of his son, who in addition collected more than a hundred letters. Few could afford to buy a reprint of them all, and not many would find time to read them all. So there must be some selection. And since there is nothing of Donne that is feeble, and very little that is without interest, yet not much that can honestly be called easy reading, it is difficult to know on what principle the selection is to proceed. It seems to me that Mr. Scott has gone about it the right way. He confesses to have made a personal choice. At least he designs to please himself, and wisely reckons this the best way to please the public. So here you have most of the poetry, a handful of sermons, and some samples of the letters. There is plenty to enjoy, or at least enough to enable you to discover preciseIy what joys Donnes writings can provide. In proportion to the whole amount there are probably more things here than in any authorwhich you would never have thought of atzd wish you had...