were plants so different from the fully-developed tree that they can with difficulty be identified "In the days of Walton,

with the genus. of course what we now call conscientious biography was unknown" (Mr Edmund Gosse in the Nineteenth Century and After for February 1902).

In a letter dated the 10th of May 1678, commencing, "My Worthy Friend, Mr Walton," the then Bishop of Lincoln, Thomas Barlow, says: “I am heartily glad that you have undertaken to write the life of that excellent person, and, both for learning and piety, eminent Prelate, Dr Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln, because I know your ability to know and integrity to write truth." This writer at least considers that what Walton wrote would be exact.

'Besides The Complete Angler," Miss Mitford writes, "Izaak Walton has left us a volume containing four or five lives of eminent men, quite as fine as that great Pastoral, although in a very different way. His Life of Dr Donne, the satirist and theologian, contains an account of a vision (the apparition of a beloved wife in England, passing before the waking eyes of her husband in Paris), which, both for the cleverness of the narration and the undoubted authenticity of the event, is amongst the most interesting that is to be found in the long catalogue of supernatural visitations." It is It is right here to

mention that this event as narrated has been the subject of a great deal of criticism. It is not narrated in the edition of 1670, but appears in the fourth edition of The Life of Donne (1674).

The history of the publication of the Lives is usually given as follows:-

In a letter (undated), written by Wotton to Walton as to the promise given by the former to write the life of Donne, Wotton says he will write again and set down certain general heads, "wherein I desire information by your loving diligence; hoping shortly to enjoy your own ever welcome company in this approaching time of the Fly and the Cork." Wotton dying before he could write the life, Walton published his Life of Donne in 1640, with a collection of his sermons. In 1651 he published the life of Sir Henry Wotton prefixed to the Reliquiæ Wottonianæ of which he was also the editor. In 1666 Walton published The Life of Richard Hooker, which he wrote at the request of Dr Sheldon, when he was Bishop of London. In 1670 he published The Life of George Herbert (together with the other Lives). In 1678 he published The Life of Dr Robert Sanderson.

The Life of Donne was at first a mere sketch. Walton was always altering and retouching his writings, like a true artist not finding readily "a chisel fine enough to cut the breath of his

thought," and he has well "padded" The Life of Donne in particular. Baxter was very different in this respect; of one of his books he says: "I scarce ever wrote one sheet twice over, nor stayed to make any blots or interlinings, but was fain to let it go as it was first conceived."

The lives of Hooker and Herbert were written when Walton was residing with Bishop Morley at Winchester. The text of the lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker and Herbert is usually taken from the fourth edition of 1675, and the text of the life of Dr Sanderson from the edition of 1678. There was a second impression of it produced in 1681, which, however, does not contain many alterations from the text of the first edition.

Mr T. Westwood's communication to Notes and Queries in 1865 should be read as to his opinion on the editions of the Lives (see 3rd S. VIII., p. 482). He considers no such editions as 1670 and 1675 ever appeared, and that the edition of 1675 is really the second collective issue, and he accounts for its being styled the "fourth" on the title page by the fact that two of the Lives were therein reprinted for the fourth timethose of Donne and Hooker.

From the beautiful verses written by Cotton to Walton in 1672, and set out at the end of this

volume, the reader can get at a glance a very good idea of the lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker and Herbert, so graphically has Cotton depicted their characters and appropriated their very language. But a study of the Lives should be made by any reader as yet unacquainted with them :

"the feather whence the pen

Was shaped that traced the lives of these good Men,
Dropped from an Angel's wing,"

as Wordsworth has in a sonnet so beautifully expressed it.

"These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar" (Heb. xi. 13).

"Rare Lives! that whoso reads, to him is given
To pace the precincts of the courts of Heaven."
T. WESTWOOD.

(a) JOHN DONNE

(1573-1631)

"Diligent and believing."

Dr John Donne was born in the Parish of St Nicholas Olave, London, in 1573; he was a son of John Donne, a London merchant. His mother was the daughter of a Mr John Heywood. They belonged to the Church of Rome. He was sent when in his twelfth year to Hart