JET. 42.] LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. xxvii 



" ever-welcome company " in the approaching fishing season, does 

 not occur ; but the allusion to Dr King's appointment as Dean of 

 Rochester, in which office he was installed on the 6th of February 

 1638-9,2 fixes it to the early part of the year 1639 : 



" MY WORTHY FRIEND, T am not able to yield any reason, no, not so 

 much as may satisfy myself, why a most ingenuous letter of yours hath lain 

 so long by me (as it were in lavender) without an answer, save this only, 

 the pleasure I have taken in your style and conceptions, together with a 

 meditation of the subject you propound, may seem to have cast me into 

 a gentle slumber. But being now awaked, I do herein return you most 

 hearty thanks for the kind prosecution of your first motion, touching a just 

 office due to the memory of our ever-memorable friend, to whose good 

 fame, though it be needless to add anything (and my age considered, 

 almost hopeless from my pen) ; yet I will endeavour to perform my pro- 

 mise, if it were but even for this cause, that in saying somewhat of the life 

 of so deserving a man, I may perchance over-live mine own. That which 

 you add of Dr King (now made Dean of Rochester, and by that translated 

 into my native soil), is a great spur unto me : with whom I hope shortly to 

 confer about it in my passage towards Bough ton Malherb, which was my 

 genial air, and invite him to a friendship with that family where his prede- 

 cessor was familiarly acquainted. I shall write to you at large by the next 

 messenger (being at present a little in business), and then I shall set down 

 certain general heads, wherein I desire information by your loving dili- 

 gence ; hoping shortly to enjoy your own ever-welcome company in this 

 approaching time of the Fly and the Cork. And so I rest, your very 

 hearty poor friend to serve you, H. WoTTON." 3 



Sir Henry Wotton died in the ensuing December ; and on 

 Walton's hearing that Dr Donne's Sermons were about to be 

 published without a life of the author, he determined to supply the 

 deficiency. His motives for becoming Donne's biographer are 

 explained in so natural and pleasing a manner in his " Introduc- 

 tion/' dated on the I5th February 1639 (1640), that it ought 

 not to be omitted : 



" If that great master of lanurige and art, Sir Henry Wotton, the late 

 provost of Eton College, had lived to see the publication of these sermons, 

 he had presented the world with the author's life exactly written ; and it 

 was pity he did not ; for it was a work worthy his undertaking, and he fit 

 to undertake it : betwixt whom, and the author, there was so mutual a 

 knowledge, and such a friendship contracted in their youth, as nothing but 

 death could force a separation. And though their bodies were divided, 

 their affections were not : for that learned knight's love followed his 

 friend's fame beyond death and the forgetful grave : which he testified by 

 entreating me, whom he acquainted with his design, to inquire of some 

 particulars that concerned it, not doubting but my knowledge of the author, 

 and love to his memory, might make my diligence useful. I did most 



2 Le Neve's Fasti Ecclesiae Anglicans. s Reliquiae Wottonianae, ed. 1685, p. 360. 



