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PREFACE. 



extraordinary. There are cogent arguments then 

 on both fides of the queftion, and there is very 

 little pofitlve proof on either: fo we muft be 

 content to leave the matter in fome doubt and 

 obfcurity. 



The firft produdlion to which our author 

 attached the well-known fignature of " Iz. Wa." 

 was an Elegy on the Death of Dr. Donne, the 

 Dean of St. Paul's, prefixed to a colledion of 

 Donne's Poems. Walton was then forty years 

 of age. From this time forward we find him 

 more or lefs engaged, at not very long intervals, 

 on literary labours, till the very year of his 

 death. 



The care which Walton fpent on his produc- 

 tions feems to have been very great. He wrote 

 and re- wrote, corredled, amended, refcinded, and 

 added. This very poem — the Elegy on Donne 

 — he completely remodelled in his old age, when 

 he inferted it in the colledtion of his Lives. 



But 



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