The Variorum Edition of the Poetry of John Donne, Volume 7, Part 1: The Holy Sonnets

HSSpit

HSSpit Textual Introduction As is shown on Figure 2 in the General Textual Introduction (p. lxii), HSSpit is the thirteenth item in NY3'S collection of "Holy Sonnets," the first of the replace... ment sonnets that NY3 appends to its replication of Group Ill's earlier sequence of "Diuine Meditations."I In the restructuring that gives rise to the subsequent Group... 1/11 arrangement, however, the poem moves to the seventh position in the sequence and appears there in its first print appearance in A. In B, when the four discarded Group...III sonnets are recovered from H6 and reinstalled in the sequence, HSSpit is relocated to eleventh place and remains so positioned in all subsequent editions save those of Alford (L), who reproduces the 1633 sequence; Lowell (M), who com... bines the Holy Sonnets with Corona in a continuously numbered series; Gardner (U), who prints the 1633 sequence; and Shawcross (Z), who essentially follows Gardner (see Figure 6 on p. lxxvi). The original, NY3 version of HSSpit contains four readings that do not survive the transition to the later Group...I/II state of the text-"humbly [for the later only] hee" in line 3, "Wch [for Who] could do" in line 4, "no iniquity" (for "none iniq... uity") in line 4, and "inglorious" (for "inglorious man") in line 7. There is no reason to doubt that "humbly," "wch," and "no" are authorial\ and perhaps "inglorious" is as well. "[I]nglorious" (without "man") gives a metrically regular line, and Donne may have coined the usage by analogy to "glorioso," defined in the OED as "a boaster, a braggart" and illustrated by a citation from 1589. Further, his use of similar locu... tions elsewhere (e.g., in Calm 44: "A desperate may live") markedly strengthens this possibility. If "inglorious" was Donne's initial choice, however, he apparently later opted for greater clarity at the expense of rendering the line hypermetrical. Bearing the revisions "only hee," "Who could doe," "none iniquitie," and "inglo... rious man," the poem next appears in the Group...I artifacts, where it also evinces two scribal innovations-the modernized "you" (for the "yee" found in all other manuscripts) in line 1 and the blunder "Iniquitye" (for "impietee") in line 6. The subsequent Group...II text not only retains the Group...I revisions mentioned above, but also restores the correct "yee" and "impietie" in lines 1 and 6, the only anoma... lies being H4'S "noe" (for "none") in line 4 and B7'S "white [for vile] harsh attire" in line 1 I. As the Historical Collation shows, the snippet of the sonnet in IU2 (11. 11-14) lAs is shown on Figure 3 and noted in the General Textual Introduction (pp. lxiv, lxiii), yl's "Other Meditations"-of which HSSpit is the first-were obtained from a Group,II source at some point after the original collection was entered into the artifact. zH4'S "noe" bespeaks the scribe's failure to reproduce the "none" in DTI (see Figure 3), and the "no" in C9 and H6 almost certainly reflects the yl scribe's modernization of his Group,II source text. HSSpit Textual Introduction As is shown on Figure 2 in the General Textual Introduction (p. lxii), HSSpit is the thirteenth item in NY3'S collection of "Holy Sonnets," the first of the replacement sonnets that NY3 appends to its replication of Group Ill's earlier sequence of "Diuine Meditations.'" In the restructuring that gives rise to the subsequent GroupIIII arrangement, however, the poem moves to the seventh position in the sequence and appears there in its first print appearance in A. In B, when the four discarded Group-III sonnets are recovered from H6 and reinstalled in the sequence, HSSpit is relocated to eleventh place and remains so positioned in all subsequent editions save those of Alford (L), who reproduces the 1633 sequence; Lowell (M), who combines the Holy Sonnets with Corona in a continuously numbered series; Gardner (U), who prints the 1633 sequence; and Shawcross (Z), who essentially follows Gardner (see Figure 6 on p. lxxvi). The original, NY3 version of HSSpit contains four readings that do not survive the transition to the later Group-I/II state of the text-"humbly [for the later only] hee" in line 3, "wch [for Who] could do" in line 4, "no iniquity" (for "none iniquity ") in line 4, and "inglorious" (for "inglorious man") in line 7. There is no reason to doubt that "humbly," "Wch," and "no" are...