XJ1 LIFE OF WALTON. 



1631, Sir Henry Wotton (of whom mention will be made hereafter) 

 requested Walton to collect materials for a Life of the Doctor, which 

 it seems Sir Henry had undertaken to write ;i but Sir Henry dying 

 before he had completed the life, Walton undertook it himself; and 

 in the year 1640 finished, and published it with a Collection of the 

 Doctors Sermon*, in folio. As soon as the book came out, a com- 

 plete 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 ho- 

 nour done to the memory of his father. 



Doctor King, afterwards bishop of Chichester, in a letter to the 

 author, thus expresses himself concerning this Life : " I am glad that 

 the general demonstration of his [Doctor 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, beside others, the best critic 

 of our later time, Mr. John Hales, of Eaton, affirmed to me, he had 

 not seen a life written with more advantage to the subject, or reputa- 

 tion to the writer, than that of Doctor Donne." 3 



Sir Henry Wotton dying in 1639, Walton was importuned by 

 bishop King to undertake the writing his Life also ; and, as it should 

 by a circumstance mentioned in the margin, it was finished 



about 1644.4 Notwithstanding which, the earliest copy I have yet 

 been able to meet with is that prefixed to a Collection of Sir Henry's 

 Remains, undoubtedly made by Walton himself, intitled AV//<////V/- 

 H'oftommur, and by him, in 1651, dedicated to Lady Mary Wotton 

 and her three daughters; though in a subsequent edition, in 1685, he 

 has recommended them to the patronage of a more remote relation 

 of the author, namely, Philip carl of Chesterfield. 



The Precepts of Angling meaning thereby the Rules and Direc- 

 lions for taking Fish with a Hook and Line till Walton's time, 

 having hardly ever been reduced to writing, were propagated from 

 age to age chiefly by tradition : but Walton, whose benevolent and 

 communicative temper appears in almost every line of his writings, 

 unwilling to conceal from the world those assistances which his long 

 practice and experience enabled him, perhaps the best of any man of 

 his time, to give, in the year 1653 published, in a very elegant manner, 

 his Complete Angler, or Contempt ai it e Man's Recreation, in small 

 duodecimo, adorned with exquisite cuts of most of the fish mentioned 

 in it. The artist who engraved them has been so modest as to con- 

 ceal his name : but there is great reason to suppose they are the 



(1) See Rtliquiff U'attoniame, octavo, 1085. p. 360. 



(*) In Peck's Desiderata Curiosa, Vol. I. lib. VI. p. 24. In the year 

 1714, the very book, with the original manuscript letter, was in the hands 

 nt the Rev. Mr. Borradale, rector of Market-Deeping, in the county of 



(3) Bishop King's Letter to Gallon before the Collection of the Lives, in 

 1070. 



(4) It is certain that Hooker's Life was written about 1664; and Walton 

 says, in his Epistle before the Lives, that " there was an interval of 

 " twenty years between the writing of Hooker's Life and Wotton's, which 

 fixes the date of the latter to 1644." 



