JET. 69.] LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. Ixxiii 



It has been inferred 4 from Bishop King's allusion to Sir Henry 

 Savile, that Walton intended to write the life of that learned per- 

 son ; but King evidently alluded only to what Walton says of 

 Savile in the Life of Hooker ; and as there is nothing else to 

 justify the opinion that he ever intended to be the biographer of 

 Savile, it is most probably without foundation. 5 



Several passages in the introduction to the Memoir of Hooker, 

 present information respecting many of Walton's early friends, and 

 explain his motives for writing it : "I have," he says, " been 

 persuaded by a friend, that I ought to obey, to write the Life of 

 Richard Hooker, the happy author of five (if not more) of the 

 eight learned Books of * The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.' And 

 though I have undertaken it, yet it hath been with some unwilling- 

 ness ; foreseeing that it must prove to me, and especially at this 

 time of my age, a work of much labour to inquire, consider, 

 research, and determine what is needful to be known concerning 

 him. For I knew him not in his life, and must therefore not only 

 look back to his death (now sixty-four years past), but almost fifty 

 years beyond that, even to his childhood and youth, and gather 

 thence such observations and prognostics, as may at least adorn, 

 if not prove necessary for the completing of what I have under- 

 taken." 6 



The friend there mentioned was, it is most likely, Bishop 

 Morley. Walton then alludes to his connection with the Cranmers, 

 which has been before noticed, and proceeds to say . " I had also 

 a friendship with the Reverend Dr Usher, the late learned Arch- 

 bishop of Armagh ; and with Dr Morton, the late learned and 

 charitable Bishop of Durham ; as also with the learned John 

 Hales of Eton College : and with them also (who loved the very 

 name of Mr Hooker) I have had many discourses concerning 

 him ; and from them and many others that have now put .off 

 mortality, I might have had more informations, if I could then 

 have admitted a thought of any fitness for what by persuasion 1 

 have now undertaken. But though that full harvest be irrecover- 

 ably lost, yet my memory hath preserved some gleanings, and my 



4 Athen. Oxon. by Bliss. 



5 Hawkins says that the supposition that Walton intended to write the Life of Savile, 

 "does very well connect with what the late Mr Des Maizeaux some years since related 

 to a gentleman now deceased (William Oldys, Norroy King of Arms), from whom myself 

 had it; viz., that there were then several Letters of Walton extant, in the Ashmolean 

 Museum, relating to a Life of Sir Henry Savile, which Walton had entertained thoushts 

 of writing." Upon inquiry it has, however, been found that there are no Letters of the 

 kind in the Ashmolean Museum. 



Life of Hooker, ed. 1665. 



