Wadsworth was converted to Catholicism. This led to a sharp controversy between the Venetian ambassador's chaplain and the Infanta's tutor, but one which has made itself peculiarly famous by the emphatically gentlemanly manner in which the combatants treated one another. After Bedel returned to England he applied for the governorship of Trinity College, Dublin. This is Sir Henry Wotton's testimonial: "Myself being required to render unto your Majesty some testimonial of the said Wm. Bedel (who was long my chaplain at Venice in the time of my first Imployment), I am bound, in all conscience and truth (as far as your Majesty will vouchsafe to accept my poor judgment), to affirm of him, that I think hardly a fitter man for that charge could have been propounded unto your Majesty in your whole kingdom, for singular erudition and piety, conformitie to the Rites of your Church, and zeal to advance the cause of God, wherein his travels abroad were not obscure in the time of the excommunication of the Venetians." What magnificence combined with modesty! William Bedel easily won the post.

Sir Albertus Morton was Sir Henry Wotton's secretary. He afterwards became Secretary of State. Wotton's grief at the death of Morton was inexpressibly great, Walton tells us. Sir Henry writes to his friend, Nicholas Pey: "I received notice of Sir Albertus Morton's departure out of this world, who was dearer to me than mine own being in it." It was to Morton's memory Wotton wrote the poem beginning:

Silence, in truth, would speak my sorrow best,

For deepest wounds can least their feelings tell :

Yet let me borrow from my own unrest

A time to bid him, whom I loved, farewell.

Later on, at the death of Sir Albertus Morton's wife, Wotton wrote the simple but touching couplet :

He first deceas'd: She for a little tried

To live without Him: lik'd it not, and di'd.

Mr. Nicholas Pey had been a servant of Sir Henry's brother, and through him had been advanced to be a great officer in the king's house. He is remarkable as displaying the "constant service of the antique world." A man he was, we are told by Izaak Walton, of a "radical honesty." To him Sir Henry Wotton thus refers in his will: "To Mr. Nicholas Pey I leave my chest or cabinet of instruments and engines of all kinds of uses; in the lower box whereof are some fit to be bequeathed to none but so entire an honest man as he is." Zouch, in his useful edition of "Walton's Lives," states that in this box were Italian locks, pick-locks, screws to force open

doors, and many things of worth and rarity that Sir Henry Wotton had gathered in his foreign travel.

Lastly, we must not omit to speak of his "worthy Friend" Izaak Walton himself. In the Reliquiæ Wottonianæ are two letters written to Walton; one to encourage him in writing a life of Dr. Davis. This is how the magnificent Wotton gets over his omission of an early reply. "I am not able to yield any reason, no, not so much as may satisfy myself, why a most ingenuous letter of yours hath lyen so long by me (as it were in lavender) without an answer, save this only. The pleasure I have taken in your Stile and Conceptions, together with a Meditation of the Subject you propound, may seem to have cast me into a profound slumber. But, being now awaked, I do herein returne you most heartie thanks for the kinde prosecution of your first motion, touching a just office, due to the memory of our ever memorable Friend." The second letter I give in full:

My worthy Friend.

Since I last saw you I have been confin'd to my Chamber by a quotidian Fever, I thank God, of more contumacie than malignitie. It had once left me, as I thought; but it was only to fetch more company, returning with a surcrew of those splenetick vapors that are call'd Hypocondriacal: of which most say, the cure is good company; and I desire no better Physician then yourself. I have in one of those fits indeavour'd to make it more easie by composing a short Hymn; and since I have apparelled my best thoughts so lightly as in Verse, I hope I shall be pardon'd a second vanitie, if I communicate it with such a friend as yourself; to whom I wish a chearfull spirit and a thankfull heart to value it as one of the greatest blessings of our good God; in whose dear love I leave you, remaining Your poor Friend to serve you,

H. WOTTON.
Let us for a

Thus writes Sir Henry Wotton to Izaak Walton. moment leave the Reliquiæ Wottonianæ, where, perhaps, Izaak Walton cannot but speak in unbounded praise, for "the life" of a man in the 17th century is what we might call an elegy in prose. In the "Complete Angler" Walton is naming honoured names which stand sponsor for the justifiability of angling. He then ("Complete Angler," 1st edition, pp. 32, 33) says: "My next and last example shall be that undervaluer of money, the late Provost of Eaton Colledge, Sir Henry Wotton (a man with whom I have often fish'd and convers'd), a man whose forraign imployments in the service of this Nation, and whose experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness made his company to be esteemed one of the delights of mankind; this man, whose very approbation of Angling were sufficient to convince any modest Censurer of it, this man was also a most dear lover, and a frequent practicer of the Art of Angling."

Thus, then, in turns, write the two to one another and of one another. What has already been said of Wotton's friendship to Bedel, Morton, Pey, and Walton might be added to, though in a minor degree, perhaps, with regard to others. Jeremy Taylor says: "When we speak of friendship, which is the best thing in the world (for it is love and beneficence, it is charity that is fitted for society), we cannot suppose a brave pile should be built up with nothing." Great friendships, in other words, imply large souls.

Sir Henry Wotton's large-heartedness is displayed in every aspect of his life, but perhaps nowhere is it quite so remarkable, considering the age in which he lived, as in his religious toleration. Let me quote some of the anecdotes told by Walton. In conversation with a priest, Wotton pounced upon him with this question, "Do you believe that those many thousands of poor Christians were damned that were excommunicated because the Pope and the Duke of Venice could not agree about their temporal power? even those poor Christians that knew not why they quarrelled. Speak your conscience." To which the astounded priest could only find breath to reply, "Excusez-moi." Again, to one who asked him, "Whether a Papist may be saved?" he replied, "You may be saved without knowing that. Look to yourself." To another whose earnestness exceeded his knowledge, and was still railing against the Papists, he gave this advice: "Pray, sir, forbear, till you have studied the points better. . . . . . Take heed of thinking the farther you go from the Church of Rome, the nearer you are to God."

May we not, on reading these and such-like sayings, justly apply to him the words in which Chaucer describes his knight, "he was a verray parfight, gentil knight "?

II. Sir Henry Wotton's Poetry.

I have already mentioned the lines written on the death of Morton, the couplet on the death of Morton's wife, and the hymn written on his sick-bed. Sir Henry Wotton's poems are not numerous. They may be divided into loyal poems, such as "On his Mestris, the Queen of Bohemia;" a hymn upon the birth of Prince Charles; religious poems, including a translation of the 104th Psalm; and Poems on Nature. The last-named include "A Description of the Spring on a Banck as I sate a-Fishing," which Izaak Walton has quoted entire in the "Complete Angler." Another is "A Description of the Countrey's Recreations," which deserves to be read through whole.

Quivering feares, Heart-tearing cares,
Anxious sighes, Untimely tears,
Fly, fly to Courts;

Fly to fond wordling's sports,

Where strain'd Sardonick smiles are glossing still,
And greife is forc'd to laugh against her wil;
Where mirth's but mummery ;

And sorrows only real be.

Fly from our Country pastimes! fly,

Sad troop of humane misery;

Come serene lookes,

Cleare as the Christal brookes,

Or the pure azur'd heaven, that smiles to see
The rich attendance of our poverty.

Peace and a secure mind,

(Which al men seeke) we only find.

Abused Mortalls! did you know

Where Joy, Hearts ease, and Comforts grow;
You'd scorne proud towers,

And seeke them in these bowers,

Where winds sometimes, our woods perhaps may shake, But blustring care could never tempest make,

Nor murmurs e'er come nigh us,

Saving of fountaines that glide by us.

Here's no fantastick Mask, nor dance,

But of our Kids, that frisk and prance :

Nor warres are seen,

Unless upon the greene

Two harmeless Lambs are butting one the other;
Which done, both bleating run, each to his Mother.
And wounds are never found,

Save what the Plow-share gives the ground.

Here are no false entrapping baites,

To hasten too, too hasty fates;

Unless it be

The fond Credulity

Of silly fish, which worldling-like, still look

Upon the bait, but never on the hook :

Nor envy, unless among

The Birds for prize of their sweet song.

Go! let the diving Negro seek

For Gemmes hid in some forlorne creek :

We all Pearles scorne,

Save what the dewy morne

Congeals upon each little spire of grass;

Which careless shepheards beat down as they pass;

And gold ne'er here appears,

Save what the yellow Ceres beares.

Blest silent Groves! ô may ye be

For ever Mirth's best Nursery!
May pure contents

For ever pitch their tents

Upon these Downs, these Meads, these Rocks, these Mountains,

And Peace still sluber, by these purling fountains!

Which we may every yeare

Find when we come a fishing here.

Two other poems in the small collection must be mentioned. The first is his best known poem, "The Character of a Happy Life":

How happy is he born and taught,
That serveth not an other's will?
Whose Armour is his honest thought,
And simple Truth his utmost Skill?

Whose Passions not his masters are,
Whose soul is still prepar'd for Death;
Untied unto the world, by care

Of Publick fame, or private breath.

Who envies none that Chance doth raise,
Nor Vice hath ever understood;
How deepest wounds are given by praise,
Nor rules of State, but rules of good.

Who hath his life from rumors freed,
Whose Conscience is his strong retreat :
Whose state can neither flatterers feed,
Nor ruine make oppressors great.

Who God doth late and early pray,
More of his grace than gifts to lend :
And entertaines the harmless day
With a Religious Book, or Friend.

This man is freed from servile bands
Of hope to rise, or feare to fall :

Lord of himselfe, though not of Lands,

And having nothing, yet hath all.

There is in Walton's "Life of Wotton" an entire absence of any

reference to his hero's relations with women. expected that this ideal knight would have sworn

VOL. CCLXXII.

We should have

"To love one maiden only, cleave to her,
And worship her by years of noble deeds,
Until he won her."

NO. 1935.

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