ABSTRACT
Sanford (1796-1822), an ambitious young New Englander, brought out in the same year A History of the United States b~rore the Revolution, with SOllie Account oj the Aborigines, and the first twenty-two volumes of a fifty-two volume edition of the British poets, expurgated and with biographical prefaces. His health failed before he could tackle the remaining volumes and the project was completed by another editor. Volume iv of Sanford's edition contains select poems of Davies, Donne, Hall, Alexander, Corbet, and Carew. The selection from Donne takes up pages 139-95: there are thirteen Songs mId Sonnets, four Epigrams, six Elegies, seven verse letters (one of them not by Donne), one funeral poem, the poem on Coryate, 'Sonnet. The Token', the opening lines of the two epithalamions of 1613 (fourteen lines of one and twelve lines of the other), bits of Satyres i, iii, and iv, and some other poems not now ascribed to Donne. The arrangement of the poems is haphazard, showing little care or concern for the sense of the writing. Thus Elegie XIIi, 'On his Mistris', is given the title 'On His Wife' and put with the funeral poems. The life of Donne which precedes the selection of poems contains a few critical comments (The Works oJthe British Poets, with Lilies of the Authors, Philadelphia, 1819, iv, p. 137).
