ΤΟ 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 DID, some years past, present 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 present 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 reprinteda. The two first were written under your roof; for which reason, if they were worth it, you might justly challenge a dedication : and indeed, so you might of Dr. Donne's, and sir Henry Wotton's; because, 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 discoursing with your Lordship, that hath enabled me a The Life of Bishop Sanderson was not then written. to make the relation of these lives passable (if they prove so) in an eloquent and captious age. And indeed, my lord, though these relations be well-meant sacrifices to the memory of these worthy men; yet I have so little confidence in my performance, that I beg pardon for superscribing your name to them; and desire 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 servant, IZAAK WALTON. TO THE READER. THOUGH the several 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 desire leave to inform you that shall become my reader, that when I sometime look back upon my education and mean abilities, it is not without some little wonder at myself, that I am come to be publicly in print. And though I have in those introductions declared some of the accidental reasons that occasioned me to be so, yet let me add this to what is there said; that by my undertaking to collect some 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 lawsuit, or a quarrel, and having begun, cannot make a fair retreat and be quiet, when they desire it.—And really, after such a manner, I became engaged into a necessity of writing the Life of Dr, Donne, contrary to my first intentions; and that begot a like necessity of writing the Life of his and my ever-honoured friend, sir Henry Wotton. And having writ these 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 unfitness. But, about that time, Dr. Gauden (then lord bishop of Exeter) published the Life of Mr. Richard Hooker, (so he called it,) with so many dangerous mistakes, both of him and his books, that discoursing 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 a truer account of Mr. Hooker and his books, than that bishop had done; and I know I have done so. 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 had twice enjoined me to it, I then declined my own, and trusted his judgment, and submitted to his commands; concluding, that, if I did not, I could not forbear accusing myself of disobedience, and indeed of ingratitude for his many favours. Thus I became engaged into the third Life. For the Life of that great example of holiness, 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 posterity: 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 lost, if I had not collected and presented them to the imitation of those that shall succeed us; for I humbly conceive writing to be both a safer and truer preserver of men's virtuous actions than tradition, especially as it is managed in this age. And I am also to tell the reader, that though this Life of Mr. Herbert was not by me writ in haste, 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 so that the reader may find in it some mistakes, some double expressions, and some not very proper, and some that might have been contracted, and some faults that are not justly chargeable upon me, but the printer; and yet I hope none so great, as may not by this confession purchase pardon from a good-natured reader. And now I wish that as that learned Jew, Josephus, and others, so these men had also writ their own lives: but since it is not the fashion of these times, I wish their relations or friends would do it for them, before delays make it too difficult. And I desire this the more, because it is an honour due to the dead, and a generous debt due to those that shall live, and succeed us, and would to them prove both a content and satisfaction. For when the next age |