Page:Grierson Herbert - First Half of the Seventeenth Century.djvu/263

Rh form of biography from which a later age has perhaps suffered too much; but it was of divines especially that biographies were written. Christopher Wordsworth's collection runs to four volumes, and of them all—and few are destitute of interest—the most delightful are those of Isaac Walton (1593-1683), who wrote short biographies of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. A peculiar and ineffable charm breathes from the works of Walton, their gentle and pious spirit, their natural and felicitous style, careless in structure but never obscure. The Complete Angler (1653-76) is itself a character-sketch as well as a treatise on the mysteries of an art; and in his five lives he is less concerned about accurate details than about all that illustrates the goodness, learning, and devotion of his subjects. Complexity he does not care for. Donne's early life is hastened over, and there was more in Herbert than Walton saw; but the side he chooses to elaborate is presented with extraordinary distinctness and charm.