in the upper buildings of his celebrated Burse. However this may be, he soon improved his fortune by his honesty, his frugality, and his diligence. His occupation, according to the tradition still preserved in his family, was that of a wholesale linen-draper, or Hamburgh merchant. The writers of the Life of Milton have, with the most scrupulous attention, regularly marked out the different houses successively inhabited by the poet, "as if it was an injury to neglect any place, that he honored by his presence." The various parts of London, in which Izaak Walton resided, have been recorded with the same precision. It is sufficient to intimate, that he was for some years an inhabitant of St. Dunstan's in the West. With Dr. John Donne, then vicar of that parish, of whose sermons he was a constant hearer, he contracted a friendship, which remained uninterrupted to their separation by death. This his parishioner attended him in his last sickness, and was present at the time that he consigned his sermons and numerous papers to the care of Dr. Henry King, who was promoted to the see of Chichester in 1641. He married Anne, the daughter of Thomas Ken, Esq. of Furnival's Inn; a gentleman, whose family, of an ancient extraction, was united by alliance with several noble houses, and had possessed a very plentiful fortune for many generations, having been known by the name of the Kens of Ken-Place, in Somersetshire. She was the sister of Thomas Ken, afterward the deprived Bishop of Bath and Wells. If there be a name to which I have been accus "THERE are no colors in the fairest sky So fair as these. The feather whence the pen Around meek Walton's heavenly memory." WORDSWORTH. EDITOR'S PREFACE. No one, it is believed, will be disposed to dispute the claims of "Izaak Walton's Lives," to a place in the Library of Old English Prose Writers. They are admitted at an early stage of the series, from the circumstance that these delightful pieces of biography are very little known in this country. Whilst that charming pastoral, "The Complete Angler," is familiar to every one who pretends to any acquaintance with old English literature, the "Lives" are in comparatively few hands. The Editor will consider himself amply compensated for any care he may have expended upon the publication of these volumes, if thereby he shall contribute in any degree to their being more widely known and more justly appreciated. The present edition, so far as the text is concerned, is an exact copy of Zouch's, which is generally regarded as the standard. The few illustrative Notes appended to the volumes are selected from the same edition, and from the beautiful edition published by Major, London, 1824. It is proposed, should there appear to be a demand for it, to insert "The Complete Angler," as a companion, in a subsequent part of the series. The next volume will contain se lections from the Discourses of "that apostolic prelate and constant martyr of Jesus Christ, Master Hugh Latimer, sometime Bishop of Worcester." ALEXANDER YOUNG. BOSTON, SEPTEMBER 20, 1832. |