liv BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



respect of a literary friend for his judgment and talent, as 

 there exists in the British Museum a copy of a poem en- 

 titled " The Love of Amos and Laura," 1C19, which has 

 this dedication ; 



" TO MY APPROVED AND MUCH RESPECTED FRIEND, IZ : WA : 



" To thee, my more than thrice beloved friend, 



I too unworthy of so great a bliss ; 

 These harsh-turned lines I here to thee commend. 



Thou being the cause it is now as it is : 

 For hadst thou held thy tongue, by silence might 

 These have been buried in oblivious night. 



'* If they were pleasing, I would call them thine 

 And disavow my title to the verse; 

 But being bad I needs must call them mine, 

 No ill thing can be clothed in thy verse : 

 Accept thou them, and where I have offended 

 Rase thou it out and let it be amended. S. P.* 



Walton always expresses him very modestly with regard 

 to his own attainments, professing himself " artless," as in 

 his introduction to the life of Donne. 



Notwithstanding "the tradition" (according to Dr. Zouch) 

 still preserved in his family, that he was "a wholesale linen- 

 draper and Hamburgh merchant," a " business (according to 

 Major) not requiring the pubHc exposure of his goods," his 

 circumstances must have been moderate ; for, besides that he 

 first occupied a shop " only seven and a half feet long by 

 five wide in the Royal Burse, Cornhill," and from 1624 

 " shared a house with John Mason, a hosier," we find him, 

 in 1632, described as by occupation a sempster or milliner; 

 " the former of which might be his own proper trade," 

 says Hawkins, " and the latter, being a feminine occupa- 



• Conjectured, without sufficient reason, to have been Samuel Purchas,* 

 the author of The Pilgrimage, " who is known to have written various 

 miscellaneous pieces." Sir Harris A^icholas. 



