Page:Studies of a Biographer 3.djvu/50

 could have been required than extraordinary talents at the service of a most peculiar idiosyncrasy, and exposed to some trying combination of circumstance. For explanation one has hitherto been referred to the admirable Izaak Walton. His life of Donne is said to be the masterpiece of English biography. Critic after critic labours to show a genial appreciation of that performance. If, indeed, the book is to be read as we read The Vicar of Wakefield—as a prose idyl—a charming narrative in which we have as little to do with the reality of Donne as with the reality of Dr. Primrose, I can only subscribe to the judgment of my betters. But there are two objections to the life if taken as a record of facts. The first is that the framework of fact is of the flimsiest; and the second that the portraiture has a palpably 'subjective' element. Hagiography in general is more attractive than trustworthy. As we read, we imagine Walton gazing reverently from his seat at the dean in the pulpit, dazzled by a vast learning and a majestic flow of elaborate rhetoric, which seemed to his worthy but unlearned disciple to come as from 'an angel in the clouds,' and