CHARMS OF HIS STYLE. 89 



has occasioned some excellent persons to depreci- 

 ate his character. 



We have already endeavoured to point out in 

 what the charm of Walton's writings consists. In 

 perusing them we are led to wonder how a man, 

 who was apprenticed to the unsentimental trade of 

 a sempster and haberdasher, and lived in the 

 midst of a crowded city, should have cultivated his 

 taste for nature, and described her beauties in such 

 truthful colours. His love of literature appears to 

 have commenced at an early period of his life, and 

 never to have deserted him, although he resigned 

 all claim to " acquired learning or study.' 5 His 

 acquaintance with the celebrated Dr. Donne, whose 

 parishioner he was, probably had much influence 

 on his future character, and caused his introduc- 

 tion to Sir Henry Wotton, Dr. Henry King, John 

 Hales of Eton, and other eminent persons, some 

 of whose lives he afterwards wrote. He was also 

 known to Ben Jonson, and calls Dray ton the poet, 

 his " honest old friend." He appears, indeed, to 

 have lived on terms of intimacy with many of the 

 most distinguished literary men of his age, and his 

 amiable and placid temper, his agreeable conversa- 

 tion and unaffected benevolence, seem to have 

 procured for him their friendship and regard. 



Walton is supposed to have sought seclusion, 

 during the civil wars, in a cottage of his own near 

 his native town of Stafford, and where he probably 



