XXIV LIFE OF WALTON. 



former, besides the pastoral simplicity that distinguishes it, is replete 

 with sentiments that edify ,-^and precepts that recommend, in du 

 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 tind somewhat like an imitation of it extant in a tract entitled 

 Angling improved to Spiritual Utes, part of an octavo volume written 

 by that eminent person the Hon. Robert Boyle, an angler, as him- 

 self 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 ma- 

 thematics or physic*, 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, and secured 

 him from all further trouble in that kind;" when he undertook to 

 write the Life of Doctor Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln: 

 which was published together with Several of the bishop's pieces, 

 and a Sermon of Hooker't in octavo, 1677. < 



And, since little has been said of the subjects of these several Lives, 

 it may not be amiss just to mention what kind of men they were 

 whom Walton, and indeed mankind in general, thought so well wor- 

 thy to be signalized by him. 



Doctor JOHN DONNE was born in London, about the year 

 1573. At the age of eleven he was sent to Oxford; thence he was 



(1) See his Meditation on a Broomstick. 



(1) A discharge from tho ollice of a judge, or the state and degree of a 

 serjeant-al law. Dusdale's Ori^lne* Juridiciatts, 130. That HOIK! man, 

 and learned judge, Sir George Croke, had obtained ii some time before the 

 writing of Sander. ton's Life. Life of Sir George Croke, in the Preface to 

 hi, Report*, Vol. III. 



(3) See the Letter from Bishop Barlow to Walton, at the end of Sander- 

 to*'* Life. 



(4) The following carious particular, relating to King Charles the First, 

 is mentioned in this Life of Sanderson ; \vhich,as none of our historians 

 have taken notice of it, inhere given in Walton's own words: " And let 

 me here take occasion to tell the reader this truth, not commonly known, 

 that in one of these conferences this conscientious king told Dr. Sanderson, 

 or one of them that then wailed with him, that the remembrance of two 

 errors did much afflict him ; which were, his assent to the Earl of Straf- 

 ford's death, and the abolishing episcopacy in Scotland : and that, if God 

 ever restored him to be in a peaceable possession of his crown, he would 

 demonstrate his repentance by a public confession, and a voluntary pe- 

 nance, (I think barefoot) from the Tower of London, or Whitehall, to St. 

 Paul's church, and desire the people to intercede with God for his pardon. 

 I am sure one of them told it me, lives still, and will witness it. " Life 

 of Sanderson." 



