We have thus three collections, each of which has kept its canon pure or very nearly so, and in which any mistake by one is checked by the absence of the poem in the other two. It cannot be by accident that these collections are so free from the unauthentic poems which other manuscripts associate with Donne's. Those who prepared them must have known what they were about. Marriot must have had some help in securing a text on the whole so accurate as that of _1633_, and in avoiding spurious poems on the whole so well. When that guidance was withdrawn he was only too willing to go a-gathering what would swell the compass of his volume. If then a poem does not occur in any of these collections it is not necessarily unauthentic, but as no such poem has anything like the wide support of the manuscripts that these have, it should present its credentials, and approve its authenticity on internal grounds if external are not available.
We start then with a strong presumption, coming as close to demonstration as the circumstances of the case will permit, in favour of the absolute genuineness of all the poems in _1633_ (a glance down the list headed 'Source' in the 'Contents' will show what these are) except the two mentioned, and of all the poems added in _1635_, or later editions, which are also in _D_, _H49_, _Lec_ and _A18_, _N_, _TC_.[4] These last (to which I prefix the date of first publication) are--
_1635._ A Lecture upon the Shadow. _1635._ Elegie XI. The Bracelet. _1635._ Elegie XVI. On his Mistris. _1669._ Elegie XVIII. Love's Progresse. _1669._ Elegie XIX. Going to Bed. _1802._[5] Elegie XX. Love's Warr.
(These are the five _Elegies_ suppressed in _1633_--at such long intervals did they find their way into print.)
We may add to these, without lengthy investigation, the four _Holy Sonnets_ added in _1635_:--
I. 'Thou hast made me.' III. 'O might those sighs and tears.' V. 'I am a little world.' VIII. 'If faithfull soules.'
For these (though in none of the three collections) we have, besides internal probability, the evidence of _W_, clearly an unexceptionable manuscript witness. Walton, too, vouches for the authenticity of the _Hymne to God my God, in my sicknesse_, which indeed no one but Donne could have written.