LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 19 



moral reflection : whereas the former, besides the pastoral 

 simplicity that distinguishes it, is replete with sentiments that 

 edify, and precepts that recommend, in the most persuasive 

 manner, the practice of religion, and the exercise of patience, 

 humility, contentedness, and other moral virtues. In this 

 view of it, the book might be said to be the only one of the 

 kind, but that I find somewhat like an imitation of it extant in 

 a tract entitled Angling improved to Spiritual Uses, part of an 

 octavo volume written by that eminent person the Honourable 

 Robert Boyle, an angler, as himself confesses, and published 

 in 1665, with this title : " Occasional Reflections upon several 

 Subjects ; whereto is premised a Discourse about such Kind 

 of Thoughts." 



Great names are entitled to great respect. The character 

 of Mr Boyle, as a devout Christian and deep philosopher, is 

 deservedly in high estimation ; and a comparison between his 

 Reflections and those of Walton 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 

 physics, 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 him a writ of ease,-f- 

 and secured him from all farther trouble in that kind ;" when 

 he undertook to write the Life of Doctor Robert Sanderson, 

 Bishop of Lincoln : J which was published, together with 

 several of the bishop's pieces, and a sermon of Hooker's, in 

 octavo, 1677. 



Such were the persons whose virtues Walton was so laudably 

 employed in celebrating ; and surely he has done but justice 

 in saying that " These were honourable men in their genera- 

 tions." Ecchis. xliv. 7.$ And yet, so far was he from 

 arrogating to himself any merit in this his labour, tnat in the 

 instance of Dr Donne's Life, he compares himself to Pompey's 



* See his Meditation on a Broomstick. 



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

 sergeant-at-la\v. JDur/dale's Origines Juridiciahs, 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, ia 

 the Preface to hi* Reports, vol. iii. 



f See the letter from Bishop Barlow to Walton, at the end of Sanderson's. 

 Life, 



Motto to the Collection of Lives. 



