LIFE OF WALTON. 81 



philosopher, is deservedly in high estimation ; and a, 

 comparison between his Reflections and those of Wal- 

 ton, might seem an invidious labour but see the 



irresistible impulse of wit! the book here referred to, 

 was written in the very younger years of the author ; 

 and Swift, who had but little learning himself, and 

 was better skilled in party-politics than in mathematics 

 or phy sicks, respected no man for his proficiency in 

 either, and accordingly has not spared to turn the 

 whole of it into ridicule*. 



Walton was now in his eighty-third year, an age, 

 which to use his own words, " might have procured 

 <c him a writ of easet, and secured him from all fur* 

 f c ther trouble in that kind;' 1 when he undertook to 

 write the Life of Doctor Robert Sanderson, bishop of 

 Lincoln J: which was published together with Seve- 

 ral of the bishop's pieces, and a Sermon of Hooker's 

 in Octavo, 1677. 



And, since little has been said of the subjects of these 

 several lives, it may not be amiss just to mention what 

 kind of men they were whom Walton, and indeed man* 



See his Meditation on a Broomstitl. 



f A discharge from the office of a judge, or the state and degree of a 

 erjeant at law. Dugdale's Origines Juridicialesy 139. That good man, 

 and learned judge, Sir George Croke, had obtained it some time before 

 the writing of Sanderson's Life. Life of Sir George Croke, in the Preface 

 to his Reportiy Vol. III. 



| See the Letter from Bishop Barlow to Walton, at the end of San- 

 dtrsons Life. 



The following curious particular, relating to King Charles the First, 

 s mentioned in this Lift of Sanderson; which, as none of our historians 

 have taken notice of it, is here given in Walton's own words: " And 

 let me here take occasion to tell the reader this truth, not commonly 

 known, that in one of these conferences this conscientious king told 

 Dr. Sanderson, or one of them that then waited with him, that the 

 remembrance of two errors did much afflict him; which were, his 

 assent to the earl of Strafford's death, and the abolishing episcopacy 

 in Scotland : and that, if God ever restored him to be in a peaceable 

 possession of his crown, he would demonstrate his repentance by a 

 publick confession, and a voluntary penance (I think barefoot) from 

 the Tower of London, or Whitehall, to St. Paul's church, and desire 

 the people to intercede with God for his pardon. I arn sure one of 

 them told it me, lives still, and will witness it." Life of Sanderson* 



