Ixxvi LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. [1668, 



am not ; and am not pleased with myself that I must ; and profess 

 myself amazed when I consider how few of the clergy lived like 

 him then, and how many live so unlike him now : but it becomes 

 not me to censure : my design is rather to assure the reader, 

 that I have used very great diligence to inform myself, that I 

 might inform him of the truth of what follows ; and though I can- 

 not adorn it with eloquence, yet I will do it with sincerity." x 



For some of the facts respecting Herbert, Walton says he was 

 indebted to Dr Henchman, then Bishop of London, and to Mr 

 Oley's preface to Herbert's " Country Parson," which is " a book 

 so full of plain, prudent, and useful rules, that that country parson 

 that can spare izd. and yet wants it, is scarce excusable : because 

 it will both direct him what he ought to do, and convince him for 

 not having done it." 2 The concluding lines of the Memoir of 

 Herbert show Walton's admiration of his piety in a more forcible 

 manner than pages of laboured panegyric could have done, for 

 he observes, " I wish (if God shall be so pleased) that I may be 

 so happy as to die like him." 3 Some complimentary verses, 

 dated at Bensted in Hampshire, on the 3rd of April I 670, were 

 prefixed to it by Samuel Woodford, who had been ordained in the 

 preceding year by Bishop Morley, and afterwards became a 

 doctor of divinity and a prebendary of Winchester. They were 

 addressed " To his very worthy and much honoured friend Mr 

 Izaak Walton, upon his excellent Life of Mr George Herbert," but 

 they merit little praise ; the only point in them being that the lives 

 of Donne and Herbert occur in the same volume : 



1 Herbert and Donne again are joined, 

 Now here below as they're above ; 

 These friends are in their old embraces twined, 

 And since by you the interview's designed, 

 Too weak to part them Death does prove ; 

 For in this book they meet again, as in one heaven they love." 



About the time when the Life of Herbert was published, that 

 Memoir, together with the Lives of Dr Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, 

 and Richard Hooker, were collected and printed in one volume. 

 The work was dedicated to the Bishop of Winchester in very 

 nearly the same words, mutatis mutandis, as occur in the dedica- 

 tion of the Life of Hooker in 1664. The only material variation is, 

 that Walton states that the Life of Herbert, as well as that of 

 Hooker, was written under the bishop's roof; and as the words 

 " your now daily favours " are retained, it seems that he was then 



1 Walton's Lives, ed. Zouch, ii. 73. 2 Ibid. p. 82. 



3 Ibid. p. 126. 



