xcii LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. [1678, 



from all further trouble in this kind ; yet I met with such per- 

 suasions to undertake it, and so many willing informers since, and 

 from them and others, such helps and encouragements to proceed, 

 that when I found myself faint, and weary of the burthen with 

 which I had loaden myself, and sometime ready to lay it down ; 

 yet time and new strength hath at last brought it to be what it 

 now is, and here presented to the reader. 



" And lastly, the trouble being now past, I look back and am 

 glad that I have collected these memoirs of this humble man, 

 which lay scattered, and contracted them into a narrower compass ; 

 and, if I have, by the pleasant toil of doing so, either pleased or 

 profited any man, I have attained what I designed when I first 

 undertook it : but I seriously wish, both for the reader's, and Dr 

 Sanderson's sake, that posterity had known his great learning 

 and virtue by a better pen ; by such a pen, as could have made 

 his life as immortal as his learning and merits ought to be." 



Having stated that Sanderson had, during a period of distress, 

 received a sum of money from the learned Boyle through the 

 hands of Dr Barlow, then Bishop of Lincoln, Walton solicited 

 that prelate to relate the circumstance, and to give him any other 

 information in his power respecting Sanderson, with which request 

 he complied, in a letter to Walton, dated on the loth of May 

 1678, which is annexed to the memoir. Bishop Barlow, who 

 addressed him as " My worthy friend Mr Walton," expressed his 

 satisfaction that he had undertaken to write Sanderson's life, 

 " because," he said, " I know your ability to know, and integrity 

 to write truth," and he subscribed himself, " your affectionate 

 friend." 



When writing the account of Bishop Sanderson's death, Walton 

 seems to have been very deeply impressed with the close approach 

 of his own ; and he concluded the memoir with this allusion to 

 that event : " Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive inno- 

 cence changed this for a better life. 'Tis now too late to wish 

 that my life may be like his ; for I am in the eighty-fifth year of 

 my age ; but I humbly beseech Almighty God that my death 

 may ; and do as earnestly beg of every reader to say Amen. 

 ' Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile.' Ps. xxxii. 

 2." 



When the Life of Sanderson was reprinted and prefixed to the 

 Bishop's Sermons,'' Walton made those corrections which in the 



7 On that occasion the above passage was slightly altered, as it there stands : — 

 *'Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence changed this for a better 



