IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 19 



In the most pathetic elegy Walton wrote on 

 Donne's death, beginning " Our Donne is dead," 

 he writes that Donne 



" Went to see 

 That blessed place of Christ's nativity 



Did he return and preach him ? preach him so 

 As since St Paul none did, none could I Those know 



(Such as were blest to hear him) this is truth." 



And his agony (we can use no other word) on 

 Donne's death is vividly shown by the haunting 

 wail : — 



" Oh ! do not call grief back, by thinking on his funeral." ' 



Walton probably adopted the direction to 

 "decline the company and society of known 

 schismatics, not conversing frequently or familiarly 

 with them, or more than the necessary affairs of 

 life and the rules of neighbourhood and common 

 civility will require, especially not to give counten- 

 ance unto their Church Assemblies by our pre- 

 sence among them, if we can avoid it."^ How- 

 ever, it appears from a letter of Walton's, dated 

 the 2nd of October 1651, that he attended a 

 " fanatical meeting called an Evening Lecture, in 

 St Dunstan's Church, where a brawling trooper 

 filled that pulpit which was once occupied by ye 

 learned and heavenly-minded Dr Donne " : — 



^ Jeremy Taylor, in his Holy Dying, writes : " I desire to die a dry 

 death, but am not very desirous to have a dry funeral." 



2 See Bishop Sanderson's Judgment Concerning Submission- to 

 Usurpers. 



