LIFE OF JZAAC WALTON. 



for honest men to be there," and lived sometimes at his 

 native town, "but mostly in the families of the eminent 

 clergymen of England, of whom he was much beloved." 



Angling was, of course, his recreation at all convenient 

 times, and he appears to have chiefly fished in the river Lea. 



In the year 1662 his wife died, and was buried at Wor- 

 cester. 



Living while in London in the parish of St. Dunstan's 

 in the West, of which Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's, 

 was vicar, he became a frequent hearer of that excellent 

 preacher, and at length, as he himself says in some verses at 

 the end of his Life of Dr. Donne, his convert. Upon his 

 decease in 1631, Sir Henry Wotton (of whom more here- 

 after) requested Walton to collect materials for a Life of the 

 doctor, which, it seems, Sir Henry had undertaken to write; 

 but Sir Henry dying before he had completed the Life, 

 Walton undertook it himself, and in the year 1640 printed 

 and published it, with a collection of the doctor's sermons, 

 in folio. As soon as the book came out, a complete copy 

 was sent as a present to Walton by Mr. John Donne, the 

 doctor's son, afterwards doctor of laws, and one of the 

 blank leaves contained his letter to Mr. Walton. The letter 

 is yet extant and in print, and is a handsome and grateful 

 acknowledgment of the honour done to the memory of his 

 father. 



Dr. King, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, in a letter to 

 Walton, thus expresses himself concerning this Life : " I am 

 glad that the general demonstration of his (Dr. Donne's) 

 worth was so fairly preserved and represented to the world 

 by your pen, in the history of his life ; indeed so well, that, 

 besides others, Mr. John Hales, of Eaton, affirmed to me he 



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