II.

Begin, my verfe, and where the doleful mother fat
(As it in vifion was to Efdras fhown)
Lamenting, with the reft, her dearest fon,
Blefs'd Charles, who his forefathers has outgone,
And to the royal join'd the martyr's brighter crown,
Let a new city rife with beauteous ftate,

And beauteous let its temple be, and beautiful the gate!
Lo! how the facred fabric up does rife!

The architects fo fkilful all,

So grave, fo humble, and fo wife;

The axe's and the hammer's noife

Is drown'd in filence or in numbers musical":
'Tis up, and at the altar ftand

The reverend fathers as of old,

With harps and incense in their hand.
Nor let the pious fervice grow or stiff or cold;
Th' inferior priests, the while,
To praise continually employ'd or pray,
Need not the weary hours beguile,
Enough's the fingle duty of each day.

Thou thyfelf, Woodford, on thy humbler pipe may'ft play,

And tho' but lately enter'd there*,

So gracious those thou honour'ft all appear,

So ready and attent to hear

An easy part, proportioned to thy skill, may'st bear.

But

See 2 Efdras, from chap. ix. 38, to the end of the tenth chapter.

See 1 Kings vi. 7.

d Dr. Woodford, the author of this poem, was ordained by Bishop Morley in the year in which thefe verfes were written,

VERSES TO MR. IZAAK WALTON.

III.

But where, alas? where wilt thou fix thy choice?
The fubjects are so noble all,

So great their beauties and thy art fo fmall,

They'll judge, I fear, themselves difparag'd by thy voice:
Yet try, and fince thou canst not take

A name so despicably low,

But 'twill exceed what thou canst do,

Tho' thy whole mite thou away at once shouldst throw,
Thy poverty a virtue make:

And, that thou may'ft immortal live,

(Since immortality thou canst not give)·

From one who has enough to fpare be ambitious to receive..
Of reverend and judicious Hooker fing;
Hooker does to the church belong,

The church and Hooker claim thy fong,
And inexhaufted riches to thy verfe will bring;
So far beyond itself will make it grow,

That life, his gift to thee, thou fhalt again on him bestow..

IV..

How great, blefs'd foul, muft needs thy glories be!
Thy joys how perfect, and thy, crown how fair!
Who mad'ft the church thy chiefeft care;
This church which owes fo much to thee,
That all her fons are ftudious of thy memory.
'Twas a bold work the captiv'd to redeem,
And not fo-only, but th' oppress'd to raise
(Our aged mother) to that due esteem

She had and merited in her younger days..
When primitive zeal and piety

Were all her laws and policy,

And decent worship kept the mean;

Its too wide stretch'd extremes between,

197

The rudely fcrupulous and extravagantly vain-
This was the work of Hooker's pen.

With judgment, candor, and fuch learning writ,
Matter and words fo exactly fit

That were it to be done agen,

Expected 'twould be as its answer hitherto has been.

RITORNATA.

To Chelsea, fong; there tell thy master's friend
The church is Hooker's debtor-Hooker his;
And ftrange 'twould be if he fhould glory miss
For whom two fuch moft powerfully contend:
Bid him cheer up, the day's his own,

And he shall never die,

Who, after fev'nty's past and gone,

Can all th' affaults of age defy;

Is mafter still of fo much youthful heat,

A child fo perfect and so sprightly to beget.

BENSTEAD, HANTS, }

March 10, 16%.

SAM. WOODFORD,

e The refidence of Morley Bishop of Winchester, whofe liberality appropriated to the use of his fucceffors a magnificent houfe at Chelsea, which he had purchased for four thousand pounds. He obtained an act of Parliament, by which that house was declared to be within the diocese of Winchefter. Such was his known beneficence, that on his promotion to the fee of Winchester, Charles II. faid of him, "That notwithstanding its vaft revenue he would "be never the richer for it."

f The author of these verses, Dr. Samuel Woodford, was born in 1636, and having been a commoner of Wadham College, in Oxford, he took his first degree in arts, and afterward removed to the Inner Temple, where he was chamber-fellow with Mr. Flatman, the poet. In 1669, he was ordained by Morley Bishop of Winchester, and being created Doctor of Divinity by a diploma from Archbishop Sancroft, was preferred to a prebend in the church at Winchester. He compofed a Paraphrafe on the Pfalms, commended by Mr. Richard Baxter, as alfo on the Canticles, with many original poems, and tranflations from the Greek, Latin, Spanish, and Italian writers. He died in 1700. (Wood's Athen. Ox.)

TO THE READER.

I

THI

THINK it neceffary to inform my reader, that Dr. Gauden (the late Bishop of Worcester) hath alfo lately wrote and published the life of Mr. Hooker. And though this be not writ by defign to oppose what he hath truly written; yet I am put upon a neceffity to say, that in it there be many material mistakes, and more omiffions. I conceive fome of his mistakes did proceed from a belief in Mr. Thomas Fuller, who had too haftily published what he hath fince most ingenuously retracted. And for the Bishop's omiffions, I fuppofe his more weighty business and want of time made him pafs over many things without that due examination, which my better leifure, my diligence, and my accidental advantages have made known unto me.

And now for myself, I can fay, I hope, or rather know, there are no material mistakes in what I here prefent to you that shall become my reader. Little things that I have received by tradition (to which there may be too much and too little faith given) I will not at this distance of time undertake to justify: for, though I have used great diligence, and compared relations and circumftances, and probable refults and expreffions,

yet

8 Dr. Thomas Fuller, celebrated as a biographer and an hiftorian, was educated at Cambridge, having been first admitted of Queen's College, from whence, being incapacitated by the ftatutes from fucceeding to a fellowship, he removed to Sidney College. He died in 1661. He was a general scholar, had a prodigious memory, a quick wit, a luxuriant fancy and invention, but not the most exact judgment. Such was his moderation during the time of the civil. wars, that by one party, before whom he preached, he was called "a hot Royalist;" while, for his difcourfes before the King and Court at Oxford, he was blamed as being too lukewarm. Soon after the restoration he was made Chaplain in Ordinary to the King, being alfo in a wellgrounded expectation of fome prefent farther advancement; but here death stepped in, and drew the curtain between him and the ecclefiaftical dignities that awaited him. His laborious but imperfect "History of the Worthies of England" is confidered as the most valuable of his works. See his account of Mr. Hooker in "The Church Hiftory of Britain," B. IX. p. 214, 217, 235. (Echard's Hiftory of England, vol. III. p. 71.-Life of Dr. Thomas Fuller, p. 5, 53.)

.

yet I fhall not impofe my belief upon my reader, I fhall rather leave him at liberty: But if there fhall appear any material omiffion, I defire every lover of truth and the memory of Mr. Hooker, that it may be made known unto me. And to incline him to it, I here promise to acknowledge and rectify any fuch mistake in a fecond impreffion, which the printer fays he hopes for; and by this means my weak, but faithful, endeavours may become a better monument, and, in fome degree, more worthy the memory of this venerable man.

I confefs, that when I confider the great learning and virtue of Mr. Hooker, and what fatisfaction and advantages many eminent scholars and admirers of him have had by his labours; I do not a little wonder that in fixty years no man did undertake to tell pofterity of the excellencies of his life and learning, and the accidents of both; and fometimes wonder more at myself that I have been perfuaded to it; and indeed I do not easily pronounce my own pardon, nor expect that my: reader fhall, unless my introduction fhall prove my apology, to which I refer him.

THE