fulness in making requests, so I find myself (pardon the parallel) so like him in this, that if I had not more reasons than I have yet exprest, these alone had not been powerful enough to have created a confidence in me to have attempted it. Two of my unexprest reasons are (give me leave to tell them to your lordship and the world) that Sir Henry Wotton, whose many merits made him an ornament to your family, was yet so humble, as to acknowledge me to be his friend; and died in a belief that I was so : since which time, I have made him the best return of my gratitude for his condescension, that I have been able to express, or he capable of receiving : and am pleased with myself for so doing.

"My other reason of this boldness, is an encouragement (very like a command) from your worthy cousin, and my friend, Mr Charles Cotton, who hath assured me, that you are such a lover of the memory of your generous uncle, Sir Henry Wotton, that if there were no other reason than my endeavours to preserve it, yet, that that alone would secure this dedication from being unacceptable.

"I wish that not he nor I be mistaken; and that I were able to make you a more worthy present.-My Lord, I am and will be your humble and most affectionate servant, IZAAK WALTON.

"Feb. 27, 1672."

Walton says, in the advertisement to the reader of that edition, "You may be pleased to take notice that in this last relation of Sir Henry Wotton's Life, 'tis both enlarged, and some small errors rectified, so that I may now be confident, there is no material mistakes in it; and adds that "there is in this impression an addition of many letters; in which the spirit with which they were writ will assure them to be Sir Henry Wotton's."

A very interesting letter from Walton to his publisher, Marriott, dated at Winchester on the 24th August 1673, which is now for the first time printed, proves that the weight of eighty years had had slight effect upon his mental or bodily powers. He was then, it appears, employed in collecting particulars of the Life of the celebrated John Hales of Eton; and purposed visiting London in the ensuing October. The information about Hales was intended for William Fulman, the author of the "Notitia Oxoniensis Academiæ," who was one of Gale's assistants in the "Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores."

;

"MR MARRIOTT,-I have received Bentevolio, and in it Mr Hers life I thank you for both. I have since I saw you received from Mr Milington so much of Mr Hales his life as Mr Faringdon had writ; and have made many inquiries concerning him of many that knew him, namely of Mrs Powny, of Windsor (at whose house he died), and as I have heard, so have set them down, that my memory might not lose them. Mr Montague did at my being in Windsor promise me to summon his memory, and set down what he knew of him. This I desired him to do at his best leisure, and write it down, and he that knew him and all his affairs best of any

man is like to do it very well, because I think he will do it affectionately, so that if Mr Fulman makes his queries concerning that part of his life spent in Oxford, he will have many, and good, I mean true informations from Mr Faringdon, till he came thither, and by me and my means since he came to Eton.

"This I write that you may inform Mr Fulman of it, and I pray let him know I will not yet give over my queries; and let him know that I hope to meet him and the Parliament in health and in London in October, and then and there deliver up my collections to him. In the meantime I wish him and you health; and pray let him know it either by your writing to him, or sending him this of mine.-God keep us all in His favour, his and your friend to serve you, IZAAK WALTON,8

'Winchester, 24th August 1673.”

Walton's memoranda respecting Hales, which will be found in the notes, are dated on the 28th of October following, when, it may be inferred from his letter, he was in London. Some of the facts there stated are new and curious, especially the account of the portrait of Hales, painted after his death by Anne Lady Howe, who was the sister of Henry King, Bishop of Chichester, and married, first, John Dutton, of Sherborne, Esq., and secondly, Sir Richard Howe, Bart. Walton describes her as 66 a most generous and ingenious lady;" he mentions her in his will; and she was probably one of his oldest friends.

9

The tenth edition of Herbert's poem entitled "The Temple," of which Walton stated in 1670 that more than twenty thousand copies had been sold, was published in 1674; and his "Life of Herbert" was then, for the first time, prefixed to it. In the following year, the Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, and Herbert, were reprinted, 1 upon which occasion Charles Cotton wrote a poem dated on the 17th of January 1672–3, addressed "To my old and most worthy friend, Mr Izaak Walton, on his Life of Dr Donne, &c.," which contains so many allusions to Walton, and is so pleasing a composition, that it could not, with propriety, be either omitted or abridged.

"TO MY OLD AND MOST WORTHY FRIEND MR IZAAK WALTON, ON HIS LIFE OF DR DONNE, &C.

When, to a nation's loss, the virtuous die,
There's justly due, from every hand and eye,
That can or write, or weep, an elegy.

8 Fulman's MSS. vol. xii. in Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

9 Walton's Lives, ed. Zouch ii. 119.

1 The edition of 1675 is called, in the title-page, "the Fourth;" but it was only the second collected edition of the Lives; the intermediate editions being respectively prefixed to Donne's Sermons, Reliquia Wottoniana, Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, and Herbert's Temple.

Which though it be the poorest, cheapest way,
The debt we owe, great merits to defray,
Yet it is almost all that most men pay.

And these are monuments of so short date,
That, with their birth, they oft receive their fate;
Dying with those whom they would celebrate.

And though to verse great reverence is due,
Yet what most poets write, proves so untrue,
It renders truth in verse suspected too.

Something more sacred then, or more entire,
The memories of virtuous men require,
Than what may with their funeral torch expire:
This History can give; to which alone
The privilege to mate oblivion

Is granted, when denied to brass and stone.

Wherein, my friend, you have a hand so sure,
Your truths so candid are, your style so pure,
That what you write may envy's search endure.

Your pen, disdaining to be brib'd or prest,
Flows without vanity or interest;

A virtue with which few good pens are blest.

How happy was my father, then, to see
Those men he lov'd, by him he lov'd, to be
Rescued from frailties and mortality.

Wotton and Donne, to whom his soul was knit:
Those twins of virtue, eloquence, and wit,
He saw in fame's eternal annals writ;

Where one has fortunately found a place,
More faithful to him than his marble was: 2
Which eating age, nor fire, shall e'er deface.

A monument, that, as it has, shall last,
And prove a monument to that defac'd;
Itself, but with the world not to be raz'd.

And even, in their flowery characters,

My father's grave part of your friendship shares ;
For you have honour'd his in strewing theirs.

Thus, by an office, though particular,
Virtue's whole common weal obliged are;
For in a virtuous act all good men share.

And by this act the world is taught to know,
That the true friendship we to merit owe
Is not discharg'd by compliment and show.

But your's is friendship of so pure a kind,
For all mean ends and interest so refined,
It ought to be a pattern to mankind:

For whereas most men's friendships here beneath,
Do perish with their friend's expiring breath,,
Yours proves a friendship living after death;

By which the generous Wotton, reverend Donne,
Soft Herbert, and the Church's champion,
Hooker, are rescued from oblivion..

2 His monument in St Paul's Church, before the late dreadful fire, 1665.

For though they each of them his time so spent,
As rais'd unto himself a monument,

With which ambition might rest well content;

Yet their great works, though they can never die,
And are in truth superlatively high,

Are no just scale to take their virtues by;

Because they show not how the Almighty's grace,
By various and more admirable ways,
Brought them to be the organs of his praise.

But what their humble modesty would hide,
And was by any other means denied,
Is by your love and diligence supplied.

Wotton-a nobler soul was never bred!-
You, by your narrative's most even thread,
Through all his labyrinths of life have led;

Through his degrees of honour, and of arts,
Brought him secure from envy's venom'd darts,
Which are still levell'd at the greatest parts;

Through all the employments of his wit and spirit,
Whose great effects these kingdoms still inherit;
The trials then, now trophies of his merit.

Nay, through disgrace, which oft the worthiest have;
Through all state tempests, through each wind and wave,
And laid him in an honourable grave.

And yours, and the whole world's beloved Donne,
When he a long and wild career had run

To the meridian of his glorious sun;

And being then an object of much ruth,
Led on by vanities, error and youth,
Was long ere he did find the way of truth;

By the same clue, after his youthful swing,
To serve at his God's altar here you bring,
Where once a wanton muse doth anthems sing.

And though by God's most powerful grace alone
His heart was settled in religion:
Yet 'tis by you we know how it was done;

And know, that having crucified vanities,
And fix'd his hope, he clos'd up his own eyes,
And then your friend a saint and preacher dies.

The meek and learned Hooker too, almost
In the Church's ruins overwhelmed and lost,
Is, by your pen, recover'd from the dust.

And Herbert ;-he whose education,

Manners, and parts, by high applauses blown,
Was deeply tainted with ambition;

And fitted for a court, made that his aim ;
At last, without regard to birth or name,
For a poor country cure does all disclaim;

Where, with a soul, composed of harmonies,
Like a sweet swan, he warbles as he dies,
His Maker's praise, and his own obsequies.

Jan. 17, 1672.

All this you tell us, with so good success,
That our oblig'd posterity shall profess

To have been your friend, was a great happiness.

And now, when many worthier would be proud
To appear before you, if they were allow'd,

I take up room enough to serve a crowd:

Where, to commend what you have choicely writ,
Both my poor testimony and my wit
Are equally invalid and unfit:

Yet this, and much more, is most justly due:

Where what I write as elegant as true,

To the best friend I now or ever knew.

But, my dear friend, tis so, that you and I,

By a condition of mortality,

With all this great and more proud world, must die:

In which estate, I ask no more of fame,

Nor other monument of honour claim,

Than that of your true friend to advance my name.

And if your many merits shall have bred
An abler pen, to write your life when dead;
I think an honester can not be read.

CHARLES COTTON.

One of these verses show that Cotton's father was also a friend of Walton's; and the feeling manner in which the author mentions his own friendship for him, by calling him "the best friend I now or ever knew," is the more striking, from his having afterwards used nearly the same words in the second part of "The Complete Angler," where he says, "I have the happiness to know his person, and to be intimately acquainted with him; and in him to know the worthiest man, and to enjoy the best and the truest friend any man ever had.”

It is rather singular that Walton should nowhere allude to his only surviving son and daughter, during their childhood, for it might have been expected that he would have frequently spoken of their being with him, and of their education. His attachment to the Church of England, and the prospect of preferment which his intimacy with the Bishop of Winchester and other prelates afforded, naturally induced him to destine his son for holy orders; and his veneration for the sacred profession, added to the personal esteem which he felt for Dr William Hawkins, one of the prebends of Winchester, made him yield a ready assent to the marriage of his daughter Anne to that gentleman, which took place some time before the year 1678. Young Izaak Walton is supposed to have been educated by his maternal uncle, Thomas Ken, who obtained a stall in Winchester Cathedral, probably

3

Bowles's Life of Ken, i. 23.