TO HIS VERY WORTHY FRIEND

MR. IZAAK WALTON, .

Upon his writing and publishing the LIFE of the venerable and judicious

MR. RICHARD HOOKER.

I..

HAIL, facred mother! British Church, all hail!

From whofe fruitful loins have sprung

Of pious fons fo great a throng

That Heav'n t'oppofe their force, of ftrength did fail,
And let the mighty conqu'rors o'er Almighty arms prevail;
How art thou chang'd from what thou wert a late!
When deftitute and quite forlorn,

And scarce a child of thoufands with thee left to mourn,
Thy veil all rent, and all thy garments torn :

With tears thou didst bewail thine own and children's fate.
Too much, alas! thou didst resemble then
Sion thy pattern-Sion in afhes laid,
Defpis'd, forfaken, and betray'd;

Sion thou doft refemble once agen,

And, rais'd like her, the glory of the world art made.
Threnes only to thee could that time belong,
But now thou art the lofty fubject of my fong.

a The church of England emerging from thofe dreadful calamities in which she had been involved by the artifices of those men, who, under the pretence of zeal for the cause of religion, meditated her entire deftruction, is here not unaptly pourtrayed under the figure of an afflicted parent

"Her veil all rent, and all her garments torn."

She was then the fubject of elegiac lamentation. The fcene is happily changed; and he is here addrefsed in the language of praife and exultation.

II.

Begin, my verfe, and where the doleful mother fat
(As it in vifion was to Efdras shown)
Lamenting, with the reft, her dearest son,
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 noise

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 incenfe in their hand.
Nor let the pious fervice grow or ftiff 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'st play,
And tho' but lately enter'd there",

So gracious those thou honour'ft all appear,

So ready and attent to hear

An eafy part, proportion'd to thy skill, may'st bear.

III.

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

So great their beauties and thy art so small,
They'll judge, I fear, themfelves difparag'd by thy voice:
Yet try, and fince thou canst not take

A name fo defpicably low,

But 'twill exceed what thou canst do,

Tho' thy whole mite thou away at once fhouldft 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.

b 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 these verses were written.

Of reverend and judicious Hooker fing;
Hooker does to the church belong,
The church and Hooker claim thy fong,
And inexhausted 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 chiefest 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' opprefs'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 ftretch'd extremes between,
The rudely fcrupulous and extravagantly vain-
This was the work of Hooker's pen.

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

That were it to be done agen,

Expected 'twould be as its anfwer 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 should glory miss
For whom two fuch moft powerfully contend:

e The refidence of Morley Bishop of Winchester, whofe liberality appropriated to the ufe of his fuccefsors a magnificent houfe at Chelsea, which he had purchased for four thousand pounds. He obtained an act of Parliament, by which that houfe 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 vast revenue he would be never the richer for it."

66

Bid him cheer up, the day's his own,
And he shall never die,

Who,after fev'nty's paft and gone,
Can all th' afsaults of age defy;

Is master still of fo much youthful heat,
A child fo perfect and fo fprightly to beget.

BENSTEAD, HANTS,
March 10, 16%.

SAM. WOODFORD.

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 Winchefter, and being created Doctor of Divinity by a diploma from Archbishop Sancroft, was preferred to a prebend in the church at Winchefter. He compofed a Paraphrafe on the Pfalms, commended by Mr. Richard Baxter, as alío 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 THINK it necessary to inform my reader, that Dr. Gauden

(the late Bishop of Worcester) hath alfo lately wrote and publifhed the life of Mr. Hooker. And though this be not writ by defign to oppofe what he hath truly written; yet I am put upon a neceffity to fay, that in it there be many material miftakes, 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 moft ingenuously retracted. And for the Bishop's omiflions, I fuppose his more weighty bufinefs 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 miftakes in what I here prefent to you that fhall 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 results and expreffions, 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

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

Dr. Thomas Fuller, p. 5, 53.)