94 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



for the good of his country!" Wotton was 

 generally impecunious. In a letter he wrote to 

 his very worthie friend Nicholas Pey at Court, 

 dated in March 1615, he says : "The substanciall 

 pointe is to have money, for without that bladder 

 we cannot swymme." In a letter written from 

 Venice to Sir Walter Aston, who was Ambassador 

 at Madrid, dated in February 1621, he says : "The 

 common man heere knowes no other rules of a 

 good Prince but bigg loaves." ^ 



111 health was often Wotton's lot, and he 

 suffered great pain. He writes that he in- 

 tended to visit "an excellent physician inhabitant 

 in St Edmund's Burie, whom I brought myself 

 from Venice, where (as eather I suppose or 

 surmise) I first contracted my infirmities of the 

 splene." 



Shortly before his death he wrote in Latin A 

 Panegyrick to King Cliarles ; "being Observations 

 upon the Inclination, Life and Government of our 

 late Sovereign." 



He wrote many books on all sorts of subjects ; 

 his treatise on the Elements of Architecture being 

 one of his best. It was published in 1624 and has 

 been translated into Latin. Some of his beautiful 

 verses are set out at the end of this volume. 

 When asked by a priest of the Church of Rome, 

 "Where was your religion to be found before 



1 See the Archceologia, Vol. XL. 



