could he be deficient in urbanity of manners, or elegance of taste, who was the companion of Sir Henry Wotton, the most accomplished gentleman of his age. The singular circumspection which

7 This is deducible from his own words :-"My next and last example shall be that under-valuer of money, the late Provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton, a man with whom I have often fished and conversed; a man, whom foreign employments in the service of this nation, and whose experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness, made his company to be esteemed one of the delights of mankind."-Complete Angler, edit. 1653.

In Sir Henry Wotton's verses, written by him as he sate fishing on the bank of a river, he probably alludes to Walton: "There stood my friend, with patient skill,

66 Attending of his trembling quill.”

Reliquia Wottonianæ, 1651, p. 524.

That this amiable and excellent person set a high value on the conversation of his humble friend, appears from the following letter:—

"My worthy Friend,

"Since I last saw you, I have been confined to my chamber by a quotidian fever, I thank God of more contumacy than malignity. It had once left me, as I thought, but it was only to fetch more company, returning with a surcrew of those splenetic vapours, that are called hypochondriacal, of which most say the cure is good company, and I desire no better physician than yourself. I have in one of those fits endeavoured to make it more easie by composing a short hymn; and since I have apparelled my best thoughts so lightly as in verse, I hope I shall be pardoned a second vanity, if I communicate it

he observed in the choice of his acquaintance has not escaped the notice of Cotton. "My Father Walton," says he, " will be seen twice in no man's company he does not like, and likes none but such as he believes to be very honest men; which is one of the best arguments, or at least one of the best testimonies I have, that I either am, or that he thinks me one of those, seeing I have not yet found him weary of me."

Before his retirement into the country, he published the Life of Dr. Donne. It was originally appended to "Eighty Sermons, preached by that learned and reverend Divine, John Donne, late Dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul's, London," printed in 1640, in folio. He had been solicited by Sir Henry Wotton, to supply him with materials for writing that life, but Sir Henry dying in 1639, before he had made any progress in the work, Walton engaged in it. This, his first essay in biography, was by more accurate revisals

with such a friend as yourself; to whom I wish a cheerful spirit, and a thankful heart, to value it, as one of the greatest blessings of our good God; in whose dear love I leave you, remaining

"Your poor friend to serve you,

H. WOTTON."

Reliquia Wottonianæ, 1651, p. 513-15, where the hymn mentioned in this letter is also subjoined.

8 Complete Angler, edit. 1676, part ii. p. 7.

corrected, and considerably enlarged in subsequent editions. Donne has been principally commended as a poet-Walton, who, as it has been already remarked, was a constant hearer of his sermons, makes him known to us as a preacher, eloquent, animated, and affecting. His poems, like the sky bespangled with small stars, are occasionally interspersed with the ornaments of fine imagery; but they must, however, be pronounced generally devoid of harmony of numbers, or beauty of versification. Involved in the language of metaphysical obscurity, they cannot be read but with disgust:

9 Whatever praise may be due to the poems of Dr. Donne, they are certainly deficient in the beauties of versification. To remedy this defect, his Satires have been translated into English verse by Pope, and his Latin epigrams by Dr. Jasper Mayne, who published them under the title of A Sheaf of Miscellany Epigrams, in 1652. Hume has observed, that in Donne's satires, and indeed in all his poetical compositions, there appear some flashes of wit and ingenuity, but that these are totally suffocated and buried by the harshest and most uncouth expression which is any where to be met with. Ben Jonson, however, in an epigram to him, calls him, “the delight of Phoebus and each Muse." Dr. Joseph Warton has some interesting remarks on Donne's poetry, in his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, vol. ii. p. 353. His imitation of Kit Marlow's inimitable pastoral ballad has nothing of that elegance of simplicity which characterizes the original, glowing with poetical beauties. Donne, as Dr. Zouch observes, may be entitled to be ranked in the first class of meta