Add MS 89136

The whole collection is printed from this manuscript in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers in the Possession of Henry A. Bright (London, Roxburghe Club, 1877), with notes by George F. Warner. Many of the items show signs of folding, either for enclosure or filing. Several of the poems are copied, possibly from the present manuscript, in BL Add MS 30259, a collection of the elegies for Venetia Digby, made by or for Sir Kenelm Digby.

Contents as follows:

1. ff 1-3. Sir Kenelm Digby, translation of Guarini’s Il Pastor Fido, Act 2 Scene 5, beg. ‘Oh deare and blessed woods’, with a dedicatory epistle to Venetia Stanley, ‘To the fairest, and most generous lady Mrs V.S.’ Author’s holograph, with corrections. Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 1-5.

2. f. 4. Sir Kenelm Digby, untitled poem, beg. ‘My thoughts and holy meditations’. Author’s holograph. Watermark of flag with initials GB, resembling Heawood 1380, also found in BL Add MS 45865 (the anonymous comedy Witts Triumvirate, 1635). Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, p. 5.

3. ff 5-6. Sir Kenelm Digby, untitled poem, beg. ‘Buri’d in the shades of horrid night’. Author’s holograph, endorsed for filing. Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 6-9, with a facsimile of the first page.

4. ff 7-8. Sir Kenelm Digby, two untitled poems, beg. ‘Lowe in a vaile there sate a shepheardesse’ and ‘Like as smelles or odors of delight’. Author’s holograph, with one correction, endorsed for filing. Watermark of flag, as (2). Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 10-11.

5. f. 9. ‘To the most faire and virtuous Gentlewoman Mrs V.S.’ Acrostic verses, beg. ‘Vnmach’t for beuty, chaster then the ayre’. Pot watermark with initials RB. Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, p. 12.

6. ff 10-11. [Sir Robert Ayton], untitled sonnet, beg.‘To vew thy beautie well if thou be wise’. Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, p. 13. Printed in Charles P. Gullans (ed.), The English and Latin Poems of Sir Robert Ayton (1963), p. 162, from the copies in BL Add MS 10308, f. 18v, and Add MS 28622, f. 30v.

7. ff 12-13. G.K., ‘A breef, and mysticall description of the fayre and statelye Venetia’, beg. ‘Though faire Venetia stand-ley by the shoare’, endorsed: ‘G.K. to V.S.’ Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 14-16, where the author G.K. is tentatively identified as George Kirke, groom of the bedchamber to Charles I.

8. ff 14-15. Aurelian Townshend, ‘An Elegie in remembrance of the Lady Venetia Digby’, beg. ‘What Trauelers of machles Venice say’, with address panel ‘For the Rightly Honorable Knight Sir Kenelme Digby’. Comparison with a letter from Townshend to William Trumbull, 13 March 1621, BL Add MS 72360, ff 129-30, suggests that this is the author’s holograph. Copied in BL Add MS 30259, f. 23, and printed from that copy in E.K. Chambers (ed.), Aurelian Townshend’s Poems and Masks (Oxford, 1912), pp 38-40, and Cedric Brown (ed.), The Poems and Masques of Aurelian Townshend (Reading, 1983), pp 52-3, with the last two lines supplied from Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 17-20.

9. ff 16-17. Ben Jonson, ‘To the picture of the body of the Lady Venetia Digby’, beg. ‘Sitting and ready to be drawne’. Scribal copy. Watermarks of eagle and obelisk in roundels. Copied in BL Add MS 30259, ff 1-2, which, like the present manuscript, has the reading ‘What make’ in line 2. Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 21-2. See David Bevington, Martin Butler and Ian Donaldson (eds), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson (Cambridge, 2012), I: cxcix and VII: 261-3, where this manuscript is referred to as JnB 193 (‘untraced’).

10. ff 18-19. Ben Jonson, ‘The picture of the minde of the Lady Digby’, beg. ‘Paynter you are come, but may be gone’. Scribal copy. Watermarks of eagle and obelisk, as (9). Copied in BL Add MS 30259, ff 2-4. Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 23-5.

11. f. 20. Thomas Randolph, ‘An Elegie on the most beauteous and virtuous Lady the Lady Venetia Digby’, beg. ‘Death! Who’ld not change prerogatiues with thee’, and ‘Epitaph’, beg. ‘Beauty it selfe Lyes heere, in whome alone’. One line is corrected in a different hand. Copied in BL Add MS 30259, ff 18-19. Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 26-8, where it is suggested that the correction may be in Randolph’s hand.

12. ff 21-2. Elegy on Lady Markham (d. 1609), beg. ‘You wormes (my riualls) whiles she was aliue’, written on one bifolium with [Ben Jonson], ‘The houreglasse’, beg. ‘Doe but consider this small dust running in this glasse’. Watermarks of eagle and obelisk, as (9) and (10). Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 29-30.

13. f. 23. [Sir Walter Raleigh?], ‘Shall I like an Hermett dwell’, in the hand of Sir Henry Goodere. For the attribution of the hand to Goodere, see Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 32-6, and Daniel Starza Smith, John Donne and the Conway Papers (Oxford, 2014), pp 211-12.

14. ff 24-5. Henry Gower, ‘To the right Worshipfull and truly noble Sir Kenelm Digby Knight’, beg. ‘Thie Courtly eare lend to my Rustique straine’. Possibly author’s holograph, with signature, endorsed for filing: ‘H. Gower to K.D.’ Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 37-40.

15. ff 26-7. Copy of a letter by George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, headed ‘The Lord Marques Buckingham to his Lady from Spaine’, with a poem on Prince Charles’s voyage to Spain, beg. ‘What sodaine change hath dark’t of late’, subscribed ‘From London 31° Martij 1623.’ Printed in Poems from Sir Kenelm Digby’s Papers, pp 41-5. For other copies of the poem, see BL Add MS 28640, f. 128v, and Harley MS 837, f. 74.