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TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE AND REVEREND

FATHER IN GOD, GEORGE,

LORD BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, AND PRELATE OF THE MOST NOBLE ORDER OF THE GARTER.

MY LORD,

I Die fome years prefenter, that humble man, to

DID fome years paft, prefent you with a plain relation of

the life of Mr. Richard Hooker, that humble man, to whose memory princes, and the most learned of this nation, have paid a reverence at the mention of his name.---And now, with Mr. Hooker's, I prefent you also the life of that pattern of primitive piety, Mr. George Herbert; and, with his, the life of Dr. Donne, and your friend Sir Henry Wotton, all reprinted.---The two firft were written under your roof; for which

a Dr. George Morley, diftinguifhed by his unfhaken loyalty and attachment to Charles I. was, at the Restoration, first made Dean of Christ-church, and then Bishop of Worcester. In 1662 he was tranflated to the fee of Winchefter. Though nominated one of the Affembly of Divines, he never did them the honour, nor himself the injury, to fit among them. During his abfence from his native country, he endeared himself to feveral learned foreigners,, particularly to Andrew Rivettus, Heinfius, Salmafius, and Bochart.. He conftantly attended the young exiled King; but not being permitted to follow him into Scotland, he retired to Antwerp, where for about three or four years he read the fervice of the Church of England twice every day, catechized once a week, and administered the communion once a month to all the English in the town who could come to it, regularly and ftrictly observing all the parochial duties of a clergyman, as he did afterwards at Breda for four years together. Walker, in his Hiftory of the Sufferings of the Clergy, having quoted Anthony Wood's character of this prelate, concludes with this exclamation: "O that but a fingle portion of "his spirit might always reft on the established clergy!" He died in 1684.

(Le Neve, Fuller, and Wood.)

which reason, if they were worth it, you might justly challenge a Dedication: And indeed, fo you might of Dr. Donne's and Sir Henry Wotton's; becaufe, if I had been fit for this undertaking, it would not have been by acquired learning or study, but by the advantage of forty years friendship, and thereby with hearing and difcourfing with your Lordship, that hath enabled me to make the relation of these Lives paffable (if they prove fo) in an eloquent and captious age.

And indeed, my Lord, though these relations be wellmeant facrifices to the memory of these worthy men, yet I have fo little confidence in my performance, that I beg pardon for fuperfcribing your name to them, and defire all that know your Lordship, to apprehend this not as a Dedication (at least by which you receive any addition of honour), but rather as an humble, and a more public acknowledgment of your long continued, and your now daily favours to,

-My Lord,

Your most affectionate

And most humble fervant,

IZAAK WALTON.

TO THE READER.

THO

HOUGH the feveral introductions to these several lives have partly declared the reasons how, and why I undertook them, yet since they are come to be reviewed, and augmented, and reprinted, and the four are now become one book, I defire leave to inform you that shall become my reader, that when I fometime look back upon my education and mean abilities, it is not without fome little wonder at myself, that I am come to be publicly in print. And though I have in those introductions declared fome of the accidental reasons that occafioned me to be fo, yet let me add this to what is there faid, that by my undertaking to collect fome notes for Sir Henry Wotton's writing the Life of Dr. Donne, and by Sir Henry's dying before he performed it, I became like those men that enter easily into a law-fuit or a quarrel, and having begun, cannot make a fair retreat and be quiet,

He had not then written the life of Bishop Sanderson.

In the preceding Epiftle Dedicatory, our author modeftly refigns all claim to "acquired learning or ftudy."

d Sir Henry Wotton addressed the following letter to Mr. Ifaac Walton, who had requested him to perform his promife of writing the life of Dr. Donne.

"MY WORTHY FRIEND,

"I am not able to yield any reason, no not fo much as may fatisfie myfelf, why a most " ingenuous letter of yours hath lain fo long by me (as it were in lavender) without an answer, "fave this only, the pleasure I have taken in your ftyle and conceptions, together with a "meditation of the subject you propound, may seem to have caft me into a gentle flumber. "But, being now awaked, I do herein return you most hearty thanks for the kind profecu❝tion of your first motion, touching a just office due to the memory of our ever-memorable "friend; to whofe good fame, though it be needlefs to add any thing (and, my age con"fidered, almoft hopeless from my pen), yet I will endeavour to perform my promife, if it

were

quiet, when they defire it.-And really, after fuch a manner, I became engaged into a neceffity of writing the life of Dr. Donne, contrary to my first intentions; and that begot a like neceffity of writing the life of his and my ever honoured friend, Sir Henry Wotton.

And having writ thefe two lives, I lay quiet twenty years, without a thought of either troubling myself or others, by any new engagement in this kind; for I thought I knew my unfitnefs. But, about that time, Dr. Gauden (then Lord Bishop of Exeter) published the life of Mr. Richard Hooker (fo he called it), with fo many dangerous mistakes, both of him and

"were but even for this caufe, that in saying somewhat of the life of so deserving a man, L "may perchance over-live mine own.

"That which you add of Dr. King (now made Dean of Rochester, and by that translated "into my native foil) is a great fpur unto me; with whom I hope fhortly to confer about "it in my paffage towards Boughton Malherb (which was my genial air), and invite him to "a friendship with that family, where his predeceffor was familiarly acquainted. I fhall "write to you at large by the next meffenger (being at prefent a little in business), and then "I fhall fet down certain general heads, wherein I defire information by your loving dili"gence, hoping fhortly to have your own ever-welcome company in this approaching time "of the fly and the cork. And fo I reft your very hearty poor friend to serve you.

e

"H. WOTTON." (Reliquia Wottonianæ, p. 360. edit. 3.)

Dr. John Gauden, born at Mayland in Effex, educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, was Dean of Bocking, and Master of the Temple, in the beginning of the reign of Charles I. In 1660 he was made Bishop of Exeter, and from thence promoted to Worcester in 1662, in which year he died, aged 57 years. "Cum Gilbertus Cantuarienfis Majeftatem ejus certiorem "feciffet Gaudenum vitâ functum effe, "non dubito" regerit Rex, "quin facile erit reperire "hominem co longe digniorem, qui in ejus locum fufficiatur."

(Vita Johannis Barwick, p. 251.) Whatever credit may be due to the animadverfions of feveral writers on the conduct of Dr. Gauden, it will be only an act of juftice to intimate, that the editor of the works of Mr. Richard Hooker, and the author of the Memoirs of the Life of Bishop Brownrigg, and of many other very valuable writings, deferves much of pofterity. His way of preaching is faid to have been most admirable and edifying. The King, when he nominated him to the fee of Exeter, bore this teftimony to his merit, by obferving, "That he upon all occafions had

"taken

and his books, that difcourfing of them with his Grace Gilbert, that now is Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, he enjoined me to examine some circumstances, and then rectify the Bishop's mistakes, by giving the world a fuller and truer account of Mr. Hooker and his books than that bishop had done; and I know I have done fo. And let me tell the reader, that till his Grace had laid this injunction upon me, I could not admit a thought of any fitness in me to undertake it; but when he twice enjoined me to it, I then declined my own, and trufted his, judgment, and fubmitted to his commands; concluding, that if I did not, I could not forbear accusing myself of difobedience, and indeed of ingratitude, for his many favours. Thus I became engaged into the third life.

For the life of that great example of holinefs, Mr. George Herbert, I profess it to be so far a free-will offering, that it was writ chiefly to please myself, but yet not without some respect to pofterity: For though he was not a man that the next age can forget, yet many of his particular acts and virtues might have been neglected, or loft, if I had not collected and prefented them to the imitation of thofe that fhall fucceed us: For I humbly conceive writing to be both a safer and truer preferver of men's virtuous actions than tradition; especially as it is managed in this age. And I am alfo to tell the reader, that though this life of Mr. Herbert was not by me writ in hafte, yet I intended it a review before it should be made public; but that was not allowed me, by reason of my absence from London when it was printing: fo that the reader may find in it fome miftakes, fome double expreffions, and fome not very proper, and fome that might have been contracted, and fome faults that are not justly chargeable

upon

"taken worthy pains in the pulpit and at the prefs to rescue his Majefty and the church of "England from all the mistakes and heterodox opinions of feveral and different factions; "as alfo from the facrilegious hands of thofe falfe brethren, whofe fcandalous converfation. "was confummate in devouring church-lands, and then with impudence to make facrilege "lawful." (Wood's Ath. Ox. vol. ii. col. 208.)-It must be owned, that he was one of the Assembly of Divines in 1643, and that he took the covenant; to which, however, he made fome fcruples and objections, fo that his name was foon ftruck out of the lift. He aban doned the cause of the Parliament as foon as they relinquished their first avowed principles of reforming only, instead of extirpating monarchy and epifcopacy.

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