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 sometimes 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

He had not then written the Life of Bishop Sanderson.

In the preceding Epistle Dedic story, our Author modestly res gus ail clan to “acquired learning or study.”

• Henry Wotton addressed the following letter to Mr. Jose W. to,

by Sir Henry Wotton's dying before he performed it, I became like those men that enter easily into a law-suit 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

Walton, who had requested him to perform his promise of writing the Life of Dr. Donne:

"MY WORTHY FRIEND,

"I am not able to yield any reason, no not so much as may "satisfie myself, why a most ingenuous letter of yours hath "lain so long by me (as it were in lavender) without an

answer, save this only, the pleasure I have taken in your "style and conceptions, together with a meditation of the “subject you propound, may seem to have cast me into a “gentle slumber. But, being now awaked, I do herein return "you most hearty thanks for the kind prosecution of your "first motion, touching a just office due to the memory of “our ever-metaorable friend; to whose good fime, though “it be needless to add any thing (and, my age considered, "almost hopeless from my pen), yet I will endeavour to “perform my promise, if it were but even for this cause, “that in sying somewhat of the life of so deserving a man, ** I may percà.nce over-live mine own.

“That wich you add of Dr. King (now n.de Dean of "Richester, and by that translated u to my native soui) is a "great spur unto me, with whom I hope shotly to confer " about it in my pissage towards Boughton Malherb (which “was my genial air), and mivite lam to a frien l-hip with "tat fardly, where is predecessor was fatal arly acquaited. "I all write to you at large by the next messenger (being

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

"at present a little in business), and then I shall set down certain general heads, wherein I desire information by your loving diligence; hoping shortly to have your own ever"welcome company in this approaching time of the fly and "the cork. And so I rest your very hearty poor friend to serve you. H. WOTTON,” (Reliquia Wottonianæ, p. 360. edit. 3.)

Dr. JOHN GAUDEN, born at Mayland in Essex, educated at St John's College, Cambridge, was Dean of Bocking, and Master of the Temple, in the beginning of the reign of Charles I. In 1660 he was made Bishop of Exeter, and from thence promoted to Worcester in 1662, in which year he died, 2ged 57 years. “When Archbishop Sheldon acquainted the

King that Bishop Gauden was dead," his Majesty replied, that he made no doubt but it would be easy to find a more worthy person to fill his pl-ce."

(Life of Dr. John Barwick, p. 560.) Whatever credit may be due to the animadversions of several writers on the conduct of Dr. Gauden, which in se ne instances was certainly indefet sible, it will be only an act of ju tice to intimate, that the editor of the works of Mr. Richard Hooker, and the author of the 1⁄4- moirs of the Life of Bishop Brownrigg, ad of many other valuable writings, deserves much of yo tity. His way of preaching is said to have been rest

admirable

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 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 twice had 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

admirable and edifying. Charles II. when he nominated him to the See of Exeter, bore this testimony to his merit, by observing, “That he, upon all occasions, had taken worthy "pains in the pulpit and at the press to rescue his Majesty "and the church of England from all the mistakes and

heterodox opinions of several and diferent factions; as also "from the sacrilegious hands of those false brethren, whose "scandalous conversation was consummate in devouring church"Lands, and then with impudence to make sacrilege lawful." (Woxuda Ath. Oz. eol, in. col. 208.)-It must be owned, that he was one of the Assembly of Divines in 1643, and that he took the covenant; to which, however, he made some scruples and objections, so that his name was scon struck out of the the list. He abandoned the cause of the Parliament as soon as they relinquished their first avowed principles of reforming only. tristad of extirpating Monarchy and Episcopacy.