20 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



" Where first I caught the rays divine, 

 And drank the Eternal Word." 



Cardinal Newman. 



This semi- delirious sectary was probably one 

 of those of whom Sydney Smith, the witty Canon of 

 St Paul's Cathedral, sarcastically said : " He could 

 gesticulate away the congregation of the most 

 profound and learned divine of the Established 

 Church, and in two Sundays preach him bare to 

 the very sexton." In the introduction to Walton's 

 Lims, written by Henry Morley (George Routledge 

 & Sons, 18S8), he states that Vv'^alton "went to 

 church " at St Paul's, where Donne had been made 

 dean, and that he had "from the pulpit of St 

 Paul's first stirred in him the depths of spiritual 

 life." He never refers to St Dunstan's Church 

 and appears ignorant of the fact that it was the 

 church Walton attended. 



Sir Leslie Stephen can imagine Walton "gaz- 

 ing reverently from his seat at the dean in the 

 pulpit, dazzled by a vast learning and a majestic 

 flow of elaborate rhetoric which seemed to the 

 worthy tradesman to come as from an ' angel in 

 the clouds,' and offering a posthumous homage as 

 sincere and touching as that which, no doubt, 

 engaged the condescending kindness of the great 

 man in life." How radically false this view is 

 Canon Beeching well points out. 



Some of Walton's views of the nonconformists 



i 



