GONE AND DONNE IT
Bravo to the British Library who recently acquired the Melford Hall manuscript, a rare 17th-century volume of poetry by John Donne, thus saving the work for the nation. The 400-page volume encompasses the whole range of Donne’s works, including the famous To his Mistress Going to Bed, The Breake of Daye and Sunn Risinge.
Well, not quite his whole range. Back in 2017, the Keeper of the Muniments at Westminster Abbey, Matthew Payne, uncovered one of Donne’s early works in the abbey archives. Ostensibly a library catalogue written in Latin, the numbered book titles were in fact all invented and a ruse for a bit of fun.
As reported in The Guardian, some of the jokes remain puzzles, but others haven’t dated a jot. For example, book number 23, On the Nothingness of a Fart, was to be shelved near Book 10, which dealt with an important area of biblical scholarship, “Concerning the method of emptying the dung from Noah’s Ark”.
The Melford Hall manuscript is now available for everyone to view online at bl.uk/manuscripts.