e he had eat
any meat, he said, after his pleasant manner, 'Dr. Donne, I have invited
you to dinner; and though you sit not down with me, yet I will carve to
you of a dish that I know you love well; for knowing you love London, I
do therefore make you dean of Paul's; and when I have dined, then do you
take your beloved dish home to your study; say grace there to yourself,
and much good may it do you."--WALTON'S _Life of Donne._
[10] See his "Verses to Mr. George Herbert, sent him with one of my
seals of the anchor and Christ. A sheaf of snakes used heretofore to be
my seal, which is the crest of our poor family." Upon the subject of
this change of device he thus quibbles:
"Adopted in God's family, and so
My old coat lost, into new arms I go;
The cross my seal, in baptism spread below,
Does by that form into an anchor grow:
Crosses grow anchors; bear as thou shouldst do
Thy cross, and that cross grows an anchor too," etc.
[11] See his Life, prefixed to his Poems, 12mo, 1677.
[12] It is pleasing to see the natural good taste of honest old Isaac
Walton struggling against that of his age. He introduces the beautiful
lines,
"Come live with me, and be my love,"
as "that smooth song made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago."
"The milkmaid's mother," he adds, "sung an answer to it, which was made
by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days. They were old-fashioned
poetry, but choicely good. I think much better than _the strong lines_
that are in fashion in this critical age."--_The Complete Angler_, Edit.
vi. p. 65.
[13] "A Poem on the Danger Charles I., being Prince, escaped in the Road
at St. Andero."
[14] [The Jacobean and Caroline poets, especially Donne and Cowley,
require considerable allowance to be made on Scott's judgment by those
who are not familiar with them.--ED.]
[15] _Fasti Oxon._ vol. i. p. 115. Considering John Dryden's marriage
with the heiress of a man of knightly rank, it seems unlikely that he
followed the profession of a schoolmaster. But Wood could hardly be
mistaken in the second circumstance some of the family having gloried in
it in his hearing.
[16] See Collins' _Baronetage_, vol. ii. The testator bequeaths his soul
to his Creator, with this singular expression of confidence, "the Holy
Ghost assuring my spirit, that I am the elect of God."
[17] Robert Keies, executed 31st January 1606, of whom Fuller, in his
Church History, tells the following anecdote:--
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