18 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



Macaulay has said " that the school of divinity 

 of which Hooker was the chief occupies a middle 

 place between the school of Cranmer and the 

 school of Laud." Walton, in my opinion, must be 

 placed in Hooker's school, and must certainly be 

 classed as a "High Churchman." That he re- 

 ceived his knowledge of Christ from Donne's 

 teaching we can have no doubt at all. 



He thus describes Donne's preaching : "Preach- 

 ing the Word so, as shewed his own heart was 

 possessed with those very thoughts and joys that 

 he laboured to distil into others ; a preacher in 

 earnest; weeping sometimes for his auditory, 

 sometimes with them ; always preaching to him- 

 self, like an angel from a cloud ^ but in none ; 

 carrying some, as St Paul was, to heaven in holy 

 raptures, and enticing others by a sacred art and 

 courtship to amend their lives ; here picturing a 

 vice so as to make it ugly to those that practised 

 it : and a virtue so as to make it beloved, even by 

 those that loved it not ; and all this with a most 

 particular grace and an unexpressible addition of 

 comeliness."^ 



^ This is a phrase in a poem of Donne's. 



2 Dean Milman said Donne's sermons " held the congregation en- 

 thralled, unwearied, unsatiated." " It is my full conviction " (says 

 Coleridge), " that in any half-dozen sermons of Donne or Taylor there 

 are more thoughts, more facts and images, more excitement to inquiry 

 and intellectual eflFort, than are presented to the congregations of the 

 present day in as many churches or meetings during twice as many 

 months." 



