xcii LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. [1678, 



from all further trouble in this kind ; yet I met with such per- 

 suasions to undertake it, and so many willing informers since, and 

 from them and others, such helps an'd encouragements to proceed, 

 that when I found myself faint, and weary of the burthen with 

 which I had loaden myself, and sometime ready to lay it down ; 

 yet time and new strength hath at last brought it to be what it 

 now is, and here presented to the reader. 



" And lastly, the trouble being now past, I look back a^nd am 

 glad that I have collected these memoirs of this humble man, 

 which lay scattered, and contracted them into a narrower compass ; 

 and, if I have, by the pleasant toil of doing so, either pleased or 

 profited any man, I have attained what I designed when I first 

 undertook it : but I seriously wish, both for the reader's, and Dr 

 Sanderson's sake, that posterity had known his great learning 

 and virtue by a better pen ; by such a pen, as could have made 

 his life as immortal as his learning and merits ought to be." 



Having stated that Sanderson had, during a period of distress, 

 received a sum of money from the learned Boyle through the 

 hands of Dr Barlow, then Bishop of . Lincoln, .Walton solicited' 

 that prelate to relate the circumstance, and to give him any other 

 information in his power respecting Sanderson, with which request 

 he complied, in a letter to Walton, dated on the loth of May 

 1678, which is annexed to the memoir. Bishop Barlow, who 

 addressed hkn as " My worthy friend Mr Walton/' expressed his 

 satisfaction that he had undertaken to write Sanderson's life, 

 " because," he said, " I know your ability to know, and integrity 

 to write truth," and he subscribed himself, " your affectionate 

 friend." 



When writing the account of Bishop Sanderson's death, Walton 

 seems to have been very deeply impressed with -the close approach 

 of his own ; and he concluded the memoir with this allusion to 

 that event : " Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive inno- 

 cence changed this for a better life. 'Tis now too late to wish 

 that my life may be like his ; for I am in the eighty-fifth year of 

 my age ; but I humbly beseech Almighty God that my death 

 may; and do as earnestly beg of every reader to say Amen. 

 ' Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile.' Ps. xxxii. 



2." 



When the Life of Sanderson was reprinted and prefixed to the 

 'Bishop's Sermons, 7 Walton made those corrections which in the 



7 On that occasion the above passage was slightly altered, as it there stands :* 

 "Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence changed this for a better 



