ABSTRACT
Dyce (1798-1869), a clergyman, was a prolific editor of old texts. He included Donne's Holy Sonnet x, 'Death be not proud', in his Specill/ens of English Sotmets, 1833, p. 108, and commented on the poem in the Notes, p. 214. Dyce owned a copy of the 1633 edition of Donne's poems, and some time later than 1833 he made several pages of notes in the endpapers. This copy is now in the Dyce Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, press mark D.2S·DIS·
(ii) One page of the notes Dyce made in his copy of Donne's poems, 1633, is taken up with a list of the unusual words and phrases which Donne uses. On another page Dyce records his observations as he read through the volume from beginning to end. He notes some words omitted or misprinted in the 1633 edition and supplies or corrects them from a later seventeenth-century text of the poems. He recalls W ordsworth's high opinion of Holy Sonnet x, 'Death be not proud' (see No. 151). He lists some phrases which Milton and Pope seem to have imitated from Donne, giving reference to Pope's Eloisa to Abelard and The Rape of the Lock. And he indicates passages he admired-' "her pure and eloquent blood," &c' (The second Anniversary, line 244), ' "And, though thou beest," &c. A grand passage' ('Elegie on Mris Boulstred', line 31).
