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pher, 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,† and secured him from all further 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. §

And, since little has been said of the subjects of these several Lives, it may not be amiss just to mention what kind of men they were whom Walton, and indeed mankind in general, thought so well worthy to be signalized by him.

* See his Meditation on a Broomstick.

† A discharge from the office of a judge, or the state and degree of a serjeant-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.

§ The following curious particular, relating to King Charles the First, is mentioned in this Life of Sanderson; which, as none of our historians have taken notice of it, is here given in Walton's own words: "And let me here take occasion to tell the reader this truth, not commonly known, that in one of these conferences this conscientious king told Dr. Sanderson, or one of them that then waited with him, that the remembrance of two errors did much afflict him; which were, his assent to the Earl of Strafford's death, and the abolishing episcopacy in Scotland: and that, if God ever restored him to be in a peaceable possession of his crown, he would demonstrate his repentance by a public confession, and a voluntary penance (I think barefoot) from the Tower of London, or Whitehall, to St. Paul's church, and desire the people to intercede with God for his pardon. I am sure one of them told it me, lives still, and will witness it."

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Doctor JOHN DONNE was born in London, in the year 1573. At the age of eleven he was sent to Oxford; thence he was transplanted to Cambridge; where he applied himself very assiduously to the study of divinity. At seventeen he was admitted of Lincoln's Inn; but not having determined what profession to follow, and being besides not thoroughly settled in his notions of religion, he made himself master of the Romish controversy, and became deeply skilled in the civil and canon law. He was one of the many young gentlemen that attended the Earl of Essex on the Cales expedition; at his return from which, he became secretary to the Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. Being very young, he was betrayed into some irregularities, the reflection on which gave him frequent uneasiness during the whole of his future life: but a violent passion which he entertained for a beautiful young woman, a niece of Lady Ellesmere, cured him of these, though it was for a time the ruin of his fortunes; for he privately married her, and by so imprudent a conduct brought on himself and his wife the most pungent affliction that two young persons could possibly experience; he being, upon the representation of Sir George Moor, the lady's father, dismissed from his attendance on the Lord Chancellor, and in consequence

thereof involved in extreme distress and poverty;* in which he continued till about 1614, when having been persuaded to enter into holy orders, he was chosen preacher to the Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn, and soon after appointed a king's chaplain. His attachment to the above Society, and his love of a town residence among his friends, were so strong, that although, as Walton assures us, he had within the first year after his ordination, offers of no fewer than fourteen country benefices, he declined them all. In his station of chaplain he drew on him the eyes of the king, who, with some peculiar marks of favour, preferred him to the deanery of St. Paul's; and shortly after he was, on the presentation of his friend the Earl of Dorset, inducted into the vicarage of St. Dunstan's in the West: but the misfortunes attending his marriage had not only broken his spirit, but so impaired his constitution, that he fell into a lingering consumption, of which he died in 1631. Besides a great number of Sermons, and a Discourse on Suicide, he has left, of his writing, Letters to several persons of honour, in quarto, 1651; and a volume of Poems-first published, and as there is reason to suppose by Walton himself, in 1635, but last in 1719,-among which are six most spirited Satires, several whereof Mr. Pope has modernised. Walton compares him to St. Austin, as having, like him, been converted to a life of piety and holiness; and adds, that for the greatness of his natural endowments, he had been said to resemble Picus of Mirandula, of whom story says, that he was rather born than made WISE by study.

* In a letter of his to an intimate friend, is the following most affecting passage: "There is not one person, but myself, well of my family: I have already lost half a child; and with that mischance of hers, my wife is fallen into such a discomposure, as would afflict her too extremely, but that the sickness of all her other children stupifies her; of one of which, in good faith, I have not much hope: and these meet with a fortune so ill provided, for physic, and such relief, that if God should ease us with burials, I know not how to perform even that. But I flatter myself with this hope, that I am dying too; for I cannot waste faster than by such griefs."-Life of Donne, in the Collection of Lives, edit. 1670, page 29.

Sir HENRY WOTTON was born 1568. After he had finished his studies at Oxford, he resided in France, Germany, and Italy; and at his return attended the Earl of Essex. He was employed by King James the First in several foreign negotiations, and went ambassador to Venice. Towards the end of his life, he was made (having first been admitted to deacon's orders) provost of Eton College, a dignity well suited to a mind like his, that had withdrawn itself from the world for the purpose of religious contemplation. He was skilled in painting, sculpture, music, architecture, medals, chemistry, and languages. In the arts of negotiation he had few equals ;* and in the propensities and attainments of a well-bred gentleman, no superior. To which character, it may be added,—that he possessed a rich vein of poetry; which he occasionally exercised in compositions of the descriptive and elegiac kind, specimens whereof occur in the course of this book. There is extant, of his writing, the volume of Remains heretofore mentioned; collected and published, as the Dedication tells us, by Walton himself; containing, among other valuable tracts, his Elements of Architecture:† but the author's long residence abroad had in some degree corrupted his style, which, though in many particulars original and elegant, is, like Sir William Temple's, overcharged with Gallicisms, and other foreign modes of expression. was a lover of angling, and such a proficient in the art, that, as he once told Walton, he intended to write a dis

He

To a person intended for a foreign embassy that came to him for instruc. tion, he gave this shrewd advice: "Ever," said he, "speak truth; for if you do, you shall never be believed, and 'twill put your adversaries (who will still hunt counter) to a loss in all their disquisitions and undertakings." See also his advice to Milton, concerning travel, in his Letter prefixed to Milton's

Comus.

This treatise of Sir Henry's is, undoubtedly, the best on the subject of any in the modern languages: a few years after his death it was translated into Latin, and printed at the end of Vitruvius, with an eulogium on the author.

As where he says, "At Augusta I took language that the princes and states of the union had deferred that assembly."-Reliqu. Wotton. edit. 1635.

course on it but death prevented him. His reasons for the choice of this recreation were, that it was, "after tedious study, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness; and begat habits of peace and patience."

These sentiments of Sir Henry Wotton, which are given in his very words, bespeak a mind habituated to reflection, and at ease in the enjoyment of his faculties: but they fall short of that lovely portrait of human happiness, doubtless taken from the image in his own breast, which he has exhibited in the following beautiful stanzas; and which I here publish without those variations from the original, that in some copies have greatly iujured the sense, and abated the energy of them:

How happy is he born, or taught,

That serveth not another's will!
Whose armour is his honest thought,
And simple truth his utmost skill;

Whose passions not his masters are ;
Whose soul is still prepar'd for death;
Unty'd unto the world, with care

Of public fame, or private breath:

Who envies none that chance doth raise,
Nor vice who never understood
How deepest wounds are given-by praise;
Nor rules of state, but rules of good;

Who hath his life from rumours freed;
Whose conscience is his strong retreat;
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruin make oppressors great;

Who God doth, late and early, pray
More of his grace than gifts to lend ;

And entertains the harmless day,
With a religious book or friend.

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or fear to fall;
Lord of himself, though not of lands;
And having nothing, yet hath all.

* Vide Walton's Epistle Dedicatory; et infra, cap.

i.

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