r, is his account of
Donne's preparation for death

'Several charcoal fires being first made in his large study, he
brought with him into that place his winding-sheet in his hand, and
having put off all his clothes, had this sheet put on him, and so tied
with knots at his head and feet, and his hands so placed as dead
bodies are usually fitted, to be shrouded and put into their coffin or
grave. Upon this urn he thus stood, with his eyes shut, and with so
much of the sheet turned aside as might show his lean, pale, and death-
like face, which was purposely turned towards the east, from which he
expected the second coming of his and our Saviour Jesus. In this
posture he was drawn at his just height, and, when the picture was
fully finished, he caused it to be set by his bedside, where it
continued, and became his hourly object till death.'

Thus Donne made ready to meet the common fate:--

'That body, which once was a temple of the Holy Ghost, is now become a
small quantity of Christian ashes. But I shall see it reanimated.'

This is the very voice of Faith. Walton was, indeed, an assured
believer, and to his mind, the world offered no insoluble problem. But
we may say of him, in the words of a poet whom he quotes:--

'Many a one
Owes to his country his religion;
And in another would as strongly grow
Had but his nurse or mother taught him so.'

In his account of Donne's early theological studies of the differences
between Rome and Anglicanism, it is manifest that Izaak thinks these
differences matters of no great moment. They are not for simple men to
solve: Donne has taken that trouble for him; besides, he is an
Englishman, and

'Owes to his country his religion.'

He will be no Covenanter, and writes with disgust of an intruded Scots
minister, whose first action was to cut down the ancient yews in the
churchyard. Izaak's religion, and all his life, were rooted in the past,
like the yew-tree. He is what he calls 'the passive peaceable
Protestant.' 'The common people in this nation,' he writes, 'think they
are not wise unless they be busy about what they understand not, and
especially about religion'; as Bunyan was busy at that very moment. In
Walton's opinion, the plain facts of religion, and of consequent
morality, are visible as the sun at noonday. The vexed questions are for
the learned, and are solved variously by them. A man must follow