Do you think John Donne wrote this poem?

Date: Fri Mar 16 9:51 AM, 2007

Do you think John Donne wrote this poem?

Date: Mon Mar 19 11:58 AM, 2007

Greg, could you please fill us in regarding where you found the poem? I couldn't find anything in the 1914 Keynes.

Mitch Harris

Date: Mon Mar 19 3:32 PM, 2007

Okay, if you want to get scientific/bibliographical about it.

It is a dedicatory poem from Robert Anton, The philosophers satyrs (London, 1616), sig. b2r.

In the copy available via EEBO, someone has jotted down "onne" (or what looks to me like "onne") after the initials I. D.

But what were your first impressions? Donne-esque?

Date: Tue Mar 20 11:43 AM, 2007

First impressions? Donne-esque, but not Donne. The date seems fishy to me, and I would suspect it to be by another imitator of Donne (perhaps trying to increase Anton's sales). By the way, do we know of any connection between the two? I'm unfamiliar with the name, but would certainly like to learn more about this.

Date: Tue Mar 20 3:24 PM, 2007

Just this, Colin Burrow's entry in the new DNB. Seems plausible that Donne could have known him via Lincoln Inn. Ordained around the same time.

Robert (fl. 1606–1618), satirist, is believed to have been the son of George Anton, recorder of Lincoln. He matriculated as a pensioner at Magdalene College, Cambridge, at Easter 1606 and graduated BA in 1609. He was ordained deacon in London on 23 December 1610, when he is said to have been twenty-five, and was ordained priest in Gloucester on 31 May 1618.

Anton's Moriomachia (1613) is one of the earliest English responses to Don Quixote. Its hero, a bull turned to a man, visits the court of Moropolis where he engages in a mock-heroic battle over the ownership of his armour, in the course of which lawyers, courtiers, and fashions at court are satirized. Moriomachia acknowledges its debt, if not its inferiority, to Cervantes with ‘the like hath not been heard of, save only that of Don Quishotte and the Barbor, about Mambrines inchanted helmet’ (sig. E2b).

Anton's cycle of Seven Satires Alluding to the Seven Planets, dedicated in 1616 to the earl of Pembroke, attacks women, make-up, corruption at court, Catholics, and puritans. The poems echo Shakespeare, despite deploring the way ‘Comedies of errors swell the stage’ (p. 51). They praise ‘judicious’ Beaumont, ‘moral’ Daniel, the ‘silke-worme stile’ of Jonson, ‘sound-searching’ Spenser, and ‘Greeke-thundring’ Chapman (p. 64), with whose style Anton's has some affinity. The verse drama Caradoc (by R. A.) is sometimes erroneously attributed to Anton. It displays none of the harshly intricate style of his known works.

There is no record of Anton's death, and his will has not been located.

Colin Burrow

Date: Mon Mar 3 6:45 PM, 2008

I haven't been on the forum site for ages, so this is awfully late to be replying, but I can't resist doing so now that I've seen it.

It doesn't sound like Donne to me. While there are some Donnean features (the use of twins as the vehicle of a metaphor and the speculation -- a la "Good Morrow" -- about the conditions under which something will live or die), as well as the image of the sun begetting stuff (as in "To E. of D." ), plenty of other aspects of the style say, "NO!"

First, it's lousy. Just has no kick to it. But even the master winks at times, so that's no proof . . .

Second, neither in the sermons nor in his poems does Donne ever use the word "balladrie" or employ "footed" (or "foot" or "footing") as a verb.

Finally, no other Donne sonnet (I'm pretty sure?) uses the rhyme scheme of this sonnet, which is abab abab cdcd ee, or close to that, given that -icke and -ickes are so close. The closest Donne comes is the sonnet to Magdalen Herbert, which has a standard English rhyme scheme and is (I believe, without checking rigorously), his only sonnet using alternate (as opposed to envelope) rhyme.

Date: Thu Feb 17 8:32 AM, 2011

this style islike Alexander pope,s style . i do,nt think this Donne,s poem.