IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 173 



devoted one. He wrote many plays, some of 

 which were written in conjunction with his fellow- 

 dramatists, and published some poems. Hallam 

 says he had no originality, no force in conceiving 

 or delineating character, little of pathos, and less, 

 perhaps, of wit. This great authority admits his 

 mind " was poetical, his better characters, especially 

 females, express pure thoughts in pure language." 

 From time to time he appears to have been a school- 

 master. He married twice and had a family. 

 He was saved, it is said, from the workhouse by 

 the kindness of Thomas Stanley, the author of the 

 History of Philosophy, who survived him. On his 

 return from a lengthened stay in Ireland he resided 

 in Fleet Street, near to the Temple. Being driven 

 from there by the great fire, he and his wife found 

 an asylum in some lodgings in St Giles-in-the- 

 Fields. 



The destruction of their home, however, com- 

 bined with the awful scene of which they had been 

 witnesses, seems to have been more than their 

 constitutions could endure. Shirley survived his 

 flight, some authorities inform us, scarcely twenty- 

 four hours, and the same day died his inconsolable 

 wife. Their remains were interred in the same 

 grave in St Giles's churchyard,^ which contains 

 the bodies of various celebrities. There is a 

 portrait of Shirley in the Bodleian Library. 



^ Wood's AtheaoE Oxonienses. 



