moral reflection: whereas the former, besides the pastoral simplicity that distinguishes it, is replete with sentiments that edify, and precepts that recommend, in the most persuasive manner, the practice of religion, and the exercise of patience, humility, contentedness, and other moral virtues. In this view of it, the book might be said to be the only one of the kind, but that I find somewhat like an imitation of it extant in a tract entitled Angling improved to Spiritual Uses, part of an octavo volume written by that eminent person the Honourable Robert Boyle, an angler, as himself confesses, and published in 1665, with this title: "Occasional Reflections upon several Subjects; whereto is premised a Discourse about such Kind of Thoughts."

Great names are entitled to great respect. The character of Mr Boyle, as a devout Christian and deep philosopher, is deservedly in high estimation; and a comparison between his Reflections and those of Walton might seem an invidious labour. But see the irresistible impulse of wit! the book here referred to was written in the very younger years of the author; and Swift, who had but little learning himself, and was better skilled in party politics than in mathematics or physics, respected no man for his proficiency in either, and accordingly has not spared to turn the whole of it into ridicule.*

Walton was now in his eighty-third year, -an age which, to use his own words, "might have procured him a writ of ease,t and secured him from all farther trouble in that kind ;" when he undertook to write the Life of Doctor Robert Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln: which was published, together with several of the bishop's pieces, and a sermon of Hooker's, in octavo, 1677.

Such were the persons whose virtues Walton was so laudably employed in celebrating; and surely he has done but justice in saying that “ These were honourable men in their generations."- Ecclus. xliv. 7. And yet, so far was he from arrogating to himself any merit in this his labour, that in the instance of Dr Donne's Life, he compares himself to Pompey's See his Meditation on a Broomstick.

A discharge from the office of a judge, or the state and degree of a sergeant-at-law. Dugdale's Origines Juridiciales, 139. That good man and learned judge, Sir George Croke, had obtained it some time before the writing of Sanderson's Life.-Life of Sir George Croke, in the Preface to his Reports, vol. iii.

See the letter from Bishop Barlow to Walton, at the end of Sanderson's Life.

S Motto to the Collection of Lives.

bondman, who being found on the sea-shore, gathering up the scattered fragments of an old broken boat, in order to burn the body of his dead master, was asked, Who art thou that preparest the funerals of Pompey the Great?" hoping, as he says, that if a like question should be put to him, it would be thought to have in it more of wonder than disdain.

The above passage in Scripture, assumed by Walton as a motto to the Collection of Lives, may, with equal propriety, be applied to most of his friends and intimates; who were men of such distinguished characters for learning and piety, and so many in number,* that it is matter of wonder by what means a man in his station could obtain admittance among so illustrious a society; unless we will suppose, as doubtless was the case, that his integrity and amiable disposition attracted the notice, and conciliated the affections of all with whom he had any concern.

It is observable, that not only these, but the rest of Walton's friends, were eminent royalists; and that he himself was in great repute for his attachment to the royal cause, will appear by the relation taken from Ashmole's History of the Order of the Garter, p. 228; where the author, speaking of the ensigns of the order, says, " Nor will it be unfitly here remembered, by what good fortune the present sovereign's Lesser George, set with fair diamonds, was preserved after the defeat given to the Scotch forces at Worcester, ann. 4 Car. II. Among the rest of his attendants then dispersed, Colonel Blague was one; who taking shelter at Blore-pipe-house in Staffordshire, where one Mr George Barlow then dwelt, delivered his wife this George to secure. Within a week after, Mr Barlow himself carried it to Robert Milward, Esq.; he being then a prisoner to the Parliament, in the garrison of Stafford ; and by his means was it happily preserved and restored; for, not long after, he delivered it to Mr Isaac Walton (a man well known, and as well beloved of all good men; and will be better known to posterity, by his ingenious pen, in the Lives of Dr Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr Richard Hooker, and Mr George Herbert,) to be given to Colonel Blague, then a prisoner in the Tower; who, considering it had already passed so many dangers, was persuaded it could yet secure one hazardous attempt of his

* In the number of his intimate friends, we find Archbishop Usher, Archbishop Sheldon, Bishop Morton, Bishop King, Bishop Barlow, Dr Fuller, Dr Price, Dr Woodford, Dr Featly, Dr Holdsworth, Dr Hammond, Sir Edward Sandys, Sir Edward Bysh, Mr Cranmer, Mr Chillingworth, Michael Drayton, and that celebrated scholar and critic, Mr John Hales of Eton.

own; and thereupon, leaving the Tower without leave-taking, hasted the presentation of it to the present sovereign's hand."

:

The religious opinions of good men are of little importance to others, any farther than they necessarily conduce to virtuous practice; since we see, that as well the different persuasions of Papist and Protestant, as the several no less differing parties into which the Reformed Religion is unhappily subdivided, have produced men equally remarkable for their endowments, sincere in their professions, and exemplary in their lives but were it necessary, after what has been above remarked of him, to be particular on this head, with respect to our author we should say, that he was a very dutiful son of the Church of England; nay, farther, that he was a friend to a hierarchy, or, as we should now call such a one, a high churchman; for which propensity of his, if it needs an apology, it may be said, that he had lived to see hypocrisy and fanaticism triumph in the subversion of both our ecclesiastical and civil constitution; the important question of toleration had not been discussed; the extent of regal prerogative, and the bounds of civil and religious liberty, had never been ascertained; and he, like many other good men, might look on the interests of the church, and those of religion, as inseparable.

Besides the works of Walton above-mentioned, there are extant of his writing, Verses on the Death of Dr Donne, beginning, Our Donne is dead;' Verses to his reverend friend the Author of the Synagogue, printed together with Herbert's Temple ; Verses before Alexander Brome's Poems, octavo, 1646; and before Shirley's Poems, octavo, 1646,—and before Cartwright's Plays and Poems, 1651. He wrote also the following Lines under an engraving of Dr Donne, before his Poems, published in 1635.

This was-for youth, strength, mirth, and wit - that time
Most count their golden age; § but was not thine:

Thine was thy later years, so much refined

From youth's dross, mirth, and wit, as thy pure mind

* See also Dr Plott's Staffordshire, 311.

If the intelligent reader doubts the truth of this position, let him reflect on, and compare with each other, the characters of Hooker, Father Paul, and Mr Richard Baxter.

Vide infra, the signature to the second copy of Commendatory Verses, and chap. v. note.

SAlluding to his age, viz. eighteen, when the picture was painted from which the print was taken.

Thought (like the angels) nothing but the praise
Of thy Creator, in those last, best days.

Witness this book (thy emblem) which begins

With love; but ends with sighs and tears for sins.

Dr Henry King, bishop of Chichester, in a letter to Walton, dated in November, 1664, and in which is contained the judgment (herein before inserted) of Hales of Eaton, on the Life of Dr Donne, says, that Walton had, in the Life of Hooker, given a more short and significant account of the character of this time, and also of Archbishop Whitgift, than he had received from any other pen, and that he had also done much for Sir Henry Savile, his contemporary and familiar friend; which fact does very well connect with what the late Mr Des Maizeaux some years since related to a gentleman now deceased, from whom myself had it, viz. that there were then several letters of Walton extant, in the Ashmolean Museum, relating to a Life of Sir Henry Savile, which Walton had entertained thoughts of writing.

I also find that he undertook to collect materials for a Life of Hales. It seems that Mr Anthony Farringdon, minister of St Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, London, had begun to write the Life of this memorable person; but dying before he had completed it, his papers were sent to Walton, with a request from Mr Fulman, who had proposed to himself to continue and finish it, that Walton would furnish him with such information as was to his purpose. Mr Fulman did not live to complete his design; but a Life of Mr Hales, from other materials, was compiled by the late Mr Des Maizeaux, and published by him in 1719, as a specimen of a new Biographical Dictionary.

A Letter of Walton, to Marriot, his bookseller, upon this occasion, was sent me by the late Rev. Dr Birch, soon after the publication of my first edition of the Complete Angler, containing the above facts; to which the doctor added, that

"To

* William Oldys, Esq. Norroy king-at-arms, author of the Life of Mr Cotton, prefixed to the Second Part, in the former editions of this work. + Mr William Fulman, amanuensis to Dr Henry Hammond. cee him in Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. 823. Some specious arguments have been urged to prove that this person was the author of The Whole Duty of Man, and I once thought they had finally settled that long agitated question, whom is the world obliged for that excellent work?" but I find a full and ample refutation of them, in a book entitled Memoirs of several Ladies of Great Britain, by George Ballard, quarto, 1752, p. 318, and that the weight of evidence is greatly in favour of a lady deservedly celebrated by him, viz. Dorothy, the wife of Sir John Packington, Bart. and daughter of Thomas Lord Coventry, lord-keeper of the Great Seal, temp. Car. I.

after the year 1719, Mr Fulman's papers came to the hands of Mr Des Maizeaux, who intended in some way or other to avail himself of them; but he never published a second edition of his Life of Hales; nor, for aught that I can hear, have they ever yet found their way into the world.

In 1683, when he was ninety years old, Walton published "Thealma and Clearchus; a pastoral history, in smooth and easy verse, written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq. an acquaintance and friend of Edmund Spenser." To this poem he wrote a preface, containing a very amiable character of the author.

He lived but a very little time after the publication of this poem; for, as Wood says, he ended his days on the fifteenth day of December, 1683, in the great frost, at Winchester, in the house of Dr William Hawkins, a prebendary of the church there, where he lies buried.*

In the cathedral of Winchester, viz. in a chapel in the south aisle, called Prior Silksteed's Chapel, on a large black flat marble stone, is this inscription to his memory; the poetry whereof has very little to recommend it :

HERE RESTETH THE BODY OF

MR ISAAC WALTON,

WHO DYED THE FIFTEENTH OF DECEMBER,
1683.

Alas! he's gone before,
Gone to return no more.
Our panting breasts aspire
After their aged sire,

Whose well spent life did last
Full ninety years and past:
But now he hath begun

That which will ne'er be done.
Crown'd with eternal bliss,
We wish our souls with his.

Votis modestis sic flerunt liberi.

The issue of Walton's marriage were,- a son, named Isaac, and a daughter, named, after her mother, Anne. This son was placed in Christ Church College, Oxford; † and, having taken his degree of bachelor of arts, travelled, together with his uncle, Mr (afterward bishop) Ken, in the year 1674, being the year of the jubilee, into France and Italy; and, as Cotton says, visited Rome and Venice. Of this son, mention is made

• Athen. Oron. vol. i. col. 305.

+ Vide part ii. chap. vi. Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. 989; Biogr. Brit. art. Ken.