14 LIFE OF WALTON. 



profession to follow, and being besides not thoroughly settled in 

 his notions of religion, he made himself master of the Romish 

 controversy, and became deeply skilled in the civil and canon 

 law. He was one of the many young gentlemen who attended 

 the Earl of Essex on the Gales expedition ; at his return 

 from which he became secretary to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere. 

 Being very young, he was betrayed into some irregularities, the 

 reflection on which gave him frequent uneasiness during the 

 whole of his future life : but a violent passion which he enter- 

 tained for a beautiful young woman, a niece of Lady Ellesmere, 

 cured him of these, though it was for a time the ruin of his for- 

 tunes ; for he privately married her, and by so imprudent a 

 conduct brought on himself and his wife the most pungent afflic- 

 tion that two young persons could possibly experience ; he being, 

 upon the representation of Sir George Moor, the lady's father, 

 dismissed from his attendance on the Lord Chancellor, and in 

 consequence thereof involved in extreme distress and poverty ; l 

 in which he continued till about 1614, when having been per- 

 suaded to enter into holy orders, he was chosen preacher to the 

 honourable society of Lincoln's-inn, and soon after appointed a 

 King's chaplain. In his station of chaplain he drew on him the 

 eyes of the King, who, with marks of favour, preferred him to 

 the deanery of St. Paul's ; and shortly after, on the presenta- 

 tion of his friend, the Earl of Dorset, he was inducted into the 

 vicarage of St. Dunstan's in the West. But the misfortunes 

 attending his marriage had not only broken his spirit, but so 

 impaired his constitution, that he fell into a lingering consump- 

 tion, of which he died in 1631. Besides a great number of 

 Sermons, he left a volume of " Poems " first published, and as 

 there is reason to suppose, by Walton himself, in 1635 among 

 which are six most spirited satires, several whereof Pope 

 has modernised. Walton compares him to St. Austin, as having, 

 like him, been converted to a life of piety and holiness. 



SIR HENRY WOTTON was born 1568. After he had finished his 

 studies at Oxford, he resided in France, Germany, and Italy ; 



1 In a letter of his to an intimate friend, is the following most affecting 

 passage : ' ' There is not one person, but myself, well of my family : I have 

 already lost half a child; and with that mischance of hers, my wife 

 is fallen into such a discomposure, as would afflict her too extremely, 

 but that the sickness of all her other children stupifies her ; of one of 

 which, in good faith, I have not much hope : and these meet with a 

 fortune so ill provided, for physick, and such relief, that if Grod should 

 ease us with burials, I know not how to perform even that. But I flatter 

 myself with this hope, that I am dying too ; for I cannot waste faster than 

 by such griefs." < Life of Donne, " in the * ' Collection of Lives, " edit. 1670, 

 page 29. H. 



