Introduction 



written with more advantage to the subject, or more reputation to 

 the writer than that of Dr. Donne." A letter from Donne's son, 

 expressing his gratitude, is to be found in Nicholas's "Life," and, long 

 after, Dr. Johnson gave it as his opinion that Walton was " a great 

 panegyrist," and that Donne's was the best life he had written. 



Of the closeness of Walton's friendship with Donne, the fact that 

 Walton was among the three or four friends gathered round his 

 death-bed is evidence, and also that Donne left him the quaint 

 memorial seal which he ever afterwards used, and which will be found 

 engraved at the foot of his will. 



For the next ten years, Walton's literary work is confined to stray 

 verses and prefaces. In 1642 he is supposed to have published a 

 letter by George Cranmer to Hooker, concerning " the new Church 

 discipline ; " in 1 643 he wrote some lines on the death of his friend, 

 the poet William Cartwright, first published in the 1651 edition of 

 Cartwright's poems ;* in 1646 there is little doubt that he contri- 

 buted the charming address " To the Reader " (so much in his own 

 pretty style) in Francis Quarles's Shepherd's Eclogues,* its signature, 

 " John Marriott," being probably an innocent literary deception ; 

 for the year 1650 his literary output was a couplet found written in 

 his copy of Dr. Richard Sibbes's The Returning Backslider, preserved 

 at Salisbury.* But in 1651 he published another of his incompar- 

 able biographies, the charming life of Sir Henry Wotton prefixed to 

 the Reliquiae Wottoniante, of which also he was the editor. 



Sir Henry Wotton is one of the most fascinating figures of the 

 seventeenth century, and his " Reliquiae " are curiously illustrative 

 of his wandering life and his sensitive many-sided character ; for 

 never was such a quaint jumble of materials notes on Italian archi- 

 tecture, " characters " of contemporary statesmen, reminiscences of 

 diplomatic missions to Venice, " meditations " upon Christmas day, 

 and the twenty-second chapter of Genesis, delightful gay letters to 

 familiar friends, grave letters of business to " my Lord Zouch," and 

 in the midst, like a little bunch of myrrh, a handful of lyrics of a 

 rare meditative sweetness. In one of these, prettily entitled " On a 



* See Appendix. 

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