inclination. He surrendered his promised post to Sir William Becher, along with the smaller place at Court which had been his. This may have been that Clerkship of Chancery for which he petitioned the King, and which was claimed and possibly appropriated by Sir Julius Cæsar when he became Master of the Rolls.1 By this surrender Wotton was able to free himself from the only dangerous candidate for the vacancy, and on July 24th, 1624, he was duly elected to fill a place especially suited to his peculiar gifts, and in the enjoyment of which he could look forward to a peaceful old age." Of the remainder of his tranquil life but little has been left by Izaak Walton to say, and none could paint a more delicate portrait of his hero than the gentle-hearted old angler. He had obtained what he most coveted-a wellearned and honest, but by no means inactive, retirement. The new Provost could not, however, rid himself of his debts without paying them; and debts have a habit of coming home to roost like the rooks to their ancestral elms. He was so poor on his entry of office that the Fellows of Eton had to furnish the bare walls of his chambers. He was under the additional necessity of paying the most pressing of his debts before he could actually enter upon his new duties, and he had to appeal to the King through the mediation of Nicholas Pey, Clerk of the Kitchen, for the sum of five hundred pounds, which was due to him probably for expenses incurred during his last embassy alone. His letter contains the following pathetic petition, which was successful: "It wrinkles my face," he wrote, "to tell you that my will cost me £500; that done, my thoughts are at rest, and over my study door you shall find written, INVIDIA REMEDIUM." 4 The blank may in part be filled in with the expenses of his installation, and in part with the payment of his more pressing debts. But, in spite of his success in obtaining this sum, Wotton never seems to have been able to cut the garment of his expenditure according to the scanty cloth of his income. On February 12th, 1628, he petitioned Charles for preferment, setting forth his services and his poverty. He begged the King to give him the next good 1 Reliquiæ, p. 352. 'Birch, James I., Vol. II. p. 440; cf. Harwood, Alumni Etonenses, pp. 12-15. ' Idem, p. 15. 4 Reliquiæ, p. 359. C C 66 deanery that shall fall vacant by death or remove."1 That Wotton never succeeded in entirely clearing off his encumbrances is clearly shown by his will, in which as far as he could he made provision for the payment in full of what still remained owing. There are other instances in his last letters of his need of money, and in 1637, not quite two years before he died, he put in a petition for the Mastership of the Savoy, in case Dr. Balcanqual, the then Master, were promoted to the Deanery of Durham.3 But it is needless to multiply such instances, and Wotton's debts were in the main covered by the money owed to him by a king who loved his ambassadors to make a brave show, but who was seldom ready to pay the piper, though he himself had called the tune. Wotton's life at Eton may best be represented by his immortal poem, which sings with artless grace and unaffected sincerity the Character of a Happy Life: "How happy is he born and taught Whose passions not his masters are, Who envies none that chance doth raise, Who hath his life from rumours freed, Who God doth late and early pray, That man is freed from servile bands 1 Reliquiæ, pp. 562-564. 3 Idem, pp. 340, 341. 4 Idem (Life), pp. xlix., 1. and lii.-liv. 1 That this poem, which was Ben Jonson's favourite,1 though he was but an indifferent practitioner of its precepts, shows the storms through which Wotton had passed will be denied by no one. He had struggled to rise, and for a time had been a person of high consideration in the eyes of the Court and of the nation. But, in spite of glaring faults, he was a man of too honest a temper to be able to contend with the wiles of less scrupulous men. He may not have been free from reproach during his several embassies, nor in his treatment of Casaubon; but the "lusty winter of his age" stole quietly to its close in the calm atmosphere of Eton, where his chief trouble appears to have been his inability to gratify his friends by the election of boys in whom they were interested to the scholarships of the place. Vexed as he was by the recollection of unpaid debts, for the most part his last years were spent in faithful service of the highest interests of learning and of the great school of which he was the diligent and able head. His leisure moments were devoted to the diplomatic pursuit of angling, and his constant comrade in this exercise, Izaak Walton, says that had he lived he would have published a treatise upon his favourite sport. That this was one of Wotton's unfulfilled literary projects need cause no regret, since he left the field open for his biographer to produce one of the classics of the English language. The two friends often fished together in a bend of the Thames near to Eton, where perchance they may have caught the gaudy but tasteless barbel, and where they smoked their pipes together after they had partaken of their modest luncheon. Wotton has left a memory of one of these harmless excursions in a tiny idyll as delicate and lifelike in poetry as are the kindred pictures of Birket Foster in a sister art: "And now all Nature seem'd in love, New juice did stir th' embracing vines, 1 Conversations with Drummond, Con. vii. Ben Jonson knew this in a form differing in some points from the one quoted above, which shows that the poem was handed about the Court in manuscript, and that it was written before Wotton had experienced the quiet of which it speaks. • Reliquiæ, pp. 348, 355, 370 and 471. The jealous trout, that low did lie, There stood my friend, with patient skill Already were the eaves possest With the swift pilgrim's daubèd nest. In Philomel's triumphing voice. The showers were short, the weather mild, Joan takes her neat-rubb'd pail, and now She trips to milk the sand-red cow; Where for some sturdy football swain The fields and gardens were beset And now, though late, the modest rose This poem presents a dainty picture of the stately Provost and the gentle Izaak on a spring morning, when occupied with their delightful pursuit; and every line shows what a keen eye Wotton possessed for the rural beauties of his native land. It may be that here and there are lines which smack of Rydal water, but for all that they are descriptive. In short, he was a poet who, with a deep and fervent power of devotion, was able to sing of lighter things with an artless simplicity which is in the highest degree refreshing, if it be compared with the struggling efforts of Donne's more laboured muse. But Wotton busied himself with occupations of a graver kind than the gentle craft, though his head was at all times fuller of projects than his hand to carry them to completion. The first grief which disturbed his quiet at Eton was the untimely death of his brilliant and beloved nephew, Sir Albertus Morton, who had been promoted to the Clerkship of the Council, and for whom he mourned in deeply touching lines. All the male representatives of his name had passed away before he entered into his rest, and there are traces throughout his letters of this period of a solitary sadness which welcomed death as a friend. But this loneliness of spirit did not prevent him from doing his duty with all his might. A perusal of the statutes of Eton showed him that he, as Provost, ought to take Holy Orders, and in 1627 he expressed his 1 1 Reliquiæ, pp. 384, 385. * Idem, pp. 321, 322 and 388, 389. intention of so doing to King Charles, who raised no objection. He followed out his purpose so far as to proceed to Deacon's Orders, a circumstance which renders his petitions for clerical preferment intelligible.1 It is not for a moment suggested that hope of such preferment had anything to do with Wotton's decision; it was only bare need which induced him to ask for advancement of this kind. He devoted himself to the interests of the school with intelligent industry, and took especial care to bring forward bright and promising pupils. Once, when an old friend, seeing him come out of the chapel in his surplice, was minded to be facetious, he cited the example of Charles V., who retired from his throne to a cloister, and who then said with much contentment that he had now more time to meditate upon the goodness of God than busier men could find." Nor did he forget his first chaplain and valued friend, William Bedell, when an opportunity of serving him arose, and it was largely by his influence that Bedell obtained the Provostship of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1627, which was the first step towards his preferment to the bishoprics of Kilmore and Ardagh.3 While he was thus busied in his daily duties he formed large plans of literary work. In 1624 he had already issued his Elements of Architecture, which, in spite of its scantiness, is full of information and admirably written. He had doubtless at this time completed to the end of the reign of Elizabeth his State of Christendom, a book which does more credit to his power of writing English than to his capacity of correctly reasoning out the political problems suggested by his observation. Had he lived to fulfil all, or even the greater part, of his literary intentions, something more worthy of his conspicuous talents might have survived. It was his purpose to have written a life of Luther, a work in which he would have achieved a considerable success. But Charles dissuaded him from undertaking that congenial task, and made him an allowance of two hundred, which was afterwards raised to five hundred, pounds a year, to enable him to collect materials for a History of England. Whether this allowance was ever paid or not may perhaps be a matter of doubt, but no one who has attentively read Wotton's Characters 1 Reliquiæ, pp. 323, 324, 327-329. Idem (Life), p. xxxvii. 3 Idem, pp. 329, 330. |