82 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



point is simply to make him a liar. In 1621 

 Donne became Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, and 

 in 1624 Vicar of St Dunstan's in the West, and 

 soon after became the greatest preacher in England.^ 

 St Dunstan, to whom the church is dedicated, was 

 Abbot of Glastonbury, and rose successively to be 

 Bishop of Worcester and London (holding both in 

 conjunction for about a year) and Archbishop of 

 Canterbury, dying in 987. The first mention of the 

 church in Fleet Street is in 1237. The great fire 

 of London was arrested within three doors of the 

 church. The present church was built about the 

 year 1830. In 1630 Donne began to " die daily." 

 Walton gives an interesting account of how Donne 

 in his illness caused a figure to be drawn of the 

 body of Christ extended upon an anchor — the 

 emblem of hope ; many of these figures thus drawn 

 he had engraved very small in heliotropium or 

 blood-stone,^ and set in gold. He sent them to 

 several of his dearest friends to be used as seals 

 or rings, and kept as memorials of him. Walton 



and they, witli the addition of his sighs and tears, expressed in his 

 sermon, did so work upon the affections of his hearers, as melted and 

 moulded them into a companionable sadness." 



1 " The greatest preacher of the seventeenth century ; the admired 

 of all hearers " (Coleridge). 



- " The helotropium is a very beautiful species of jasper, and has 

 been long known to the world as a gem. Its colour is a fine and 

 strong green, sometimes pure and simple, but more frequently with 

 an admixture of blue in it. It is moderately transparent in thin 

 pieces, and is always veined, clouded and spotted with a blood-red. 

 From this, its most obvious character, it has obtained among our 

 jewellers the name of the bloodstone" (Lewis's Materia Medico). 



