learned books: but shall first here take a fair occafion to tell you, that you have been happy in choofing to write the Lives of three fuch perfons, as pofterity hath juft cause to honour; which they will do the more for the true relation of them by your happy pen of all which I shall give you my unfeigned cenfure.

I fhall begin with my moft dear and incomparable friend Dr. Donne, late Dean of St. Paul's church, who not only trusted me as his executor, but three days before his death delivered into my hands thofe excellent Sermons of his, now made public; profeffing before Dr. Winniff, Dr. Monford, and, I think, yourself then present at his bed-fide, that it was by my restless importunity, that he had prepared them for the prefs: together with which (as his beft legacy) he gave me all his fermonnotes, and his other papers, containing an extract of near fifteen hundred authors.

How these were got out of my hands, you, who were the meffenger for them, and how loft both to me and yourself, is not now seasonable to complain. But fince

they

they did mifcarry, I am glad that the general demonftration of his worth was for fairly preferved, and reprefented to the world by your pen in the hiftory of his life; indeed fo well, that, befide others, the best critic of our later time (Mr. John Hales, of Eaton College) affirmed to me, "he had not feen a life written with more "advantage to the fubject, or more repu"tation to the writer, than that of Dr. "Donne's."

After the performance of this task for Dr. Donne, you undertook the like office for our friend Sir Henry Wotton: betwixt which two there was a friendship begun in Oxford, continued in their various travels, and more confirmed in the religious friendship of age; and doubtlefs this excellent perfon had writ the Life of Dr. Donne, if death had not prevented him: by which means, his and your pre-collections for that work fell to the happy manage of your pen a work which you would have declined, if imperious perfuafions had not been ftronger than your modest resolutions against it. And I am

VOL. I.

b

thus

thus far glad, that the firft Life was so imposed upon you, because it gave an unavoidable cause of writing the second: if not, it is too probable we had wanted both; which had been a prejudice to all lovers of honour and ingenious learning. And let me not leave my friend Sir Henry without this testimony added to yours; that he was a man of as florid a wit, and as elegant a pen, as any former (or ours, which in that kind is a moft excellent) age hath ever produced.

And now, having made this voluntary obfervation of our two deceased friends, I proceed to fatisfy your defire concerning what I know and believe of the evermemorable Mr. Hooker, who was Schif maticorum malleus, fo great a champion for the Church of England's rights, against the factious torrent of Separatifts that then ran high against church-difcipline; and in his unanfwerable Books continues to be fo against the unquiet disciples of their fchifm, which now, under other names, ftill carry on their defign; and who (as the proper heirs of their irrational zeal) would

would again rake into the fcarce closed wounds of a newly bleeding State and Church.

And first, though I dare not say that I knew Mr. Hooker; yet as our ecclefiaftical history reports to the honour of St. Ignatius," that he lived in the time of St. "John, and had feen him in his child"hood;" fo I alfo joy that in my minority I have often seen Mr. Hooker with my father, who was after Bishop of London; from whom, and others, at that time, I have heard most of the material paffages which you relate in the history of his life; and from my father received fuch a character of his learning, humility, and other virtues, that, like jewels of unvaluable price, they still caft fuch a luftre, as envy or the ruft of time fhall never darken.

From my father I have also heard all the circumftances of the plot to defame him; and how Sir Edwin Sandys outwitted his accusers, and gained their confeffion and I could give an account of each particular of that plot, but that I judge it

fitter to be forgotten, and rot in the same grave with the malicious authors.

I may not omit to declare, that my father's knowledge of Mr. Hooker was occafioned by the learned Dr. John Spencer, who, after the death of Mr. Hooker, was fo careful to preferve his unvaluable fixth, seventh, and eighth books of Ecclefiaftical Polity, and his other writings, that he procured Henry Jackson, then of Corpus Chrifti College, to transcribe for him all Mr. Hooker's remaining written papers; many of which were imperfect; for his study had been rifled, or worse used, by Mr. Chark, and another, of principles too like his. But these papers were endeavoured to be completed by his dear friend Dr. Spencer, who bequeathed them as a precious legacy to my father; after whofe death they rested in my hand, till Dr. Abbot, then Archbishop of Canterbury, commanded them out of my cuftody, by authorizing Dr. John Barkeham to require, and bring them to him to his palace in Lambeth at which time, I have heard, they