ABSTRACT
A certain 'G.O.', possibly the royalist divine and poet Giles Oldisworth (1619-78), alU10tated a copy of the 1639 edition of Donne' s poems. John Sampson, who found the copy, reported 'G.O.'s' markings as evidence of the attention contemporary readers gave to the poems. The following summarises Sampson's account of them in his essay 'A Contemporary Light Upon John Donne', in Essays mId Studies by Members of the English Association, vii, 1921, pp. 82-107.1
The book demonstrates its owner's close concern with particular readings of Donne's lines. 'G.O.' had collated his 1639 text with the first edition of 1633, correcting words, weighing the versions, and at times suggesting emendations of his own. He gives poems titles to bring out the situation, identifies some of the personages of the occasional pieces, puts pointing marks to show the metrical movement of a line. Thus he scans the tricky first line of 'Twicknam Garden' as a clear iambic pentameter:
Blasted with sighs, and surrounded with teares 'G.O.'s' marginal notes frequently show him turning Donne's lines to some interest of his own. He adds a date, 1646, Oct. 6th, to point a line quite arbitrarily to a black moment in royalist fortunes. He writes Court Ladyes against the reference to naked savages in the verse letter to the Countess of Huntingdon, Church of England against the lines from 'Twicknam Garden'
And that this place may thoroughly be thought True Paradise, I have the serpent brought
As in some Organ, Puppits dance above And bellows pant below, which them do move.
