Donne's Life he feels that he is writing of an English St. Austin,--'for
I think none was so like him before his conversion; none so like St.
Ambrose after it: and if his youth had the infirmities of the one, his
age had the excellencies of the other; the learning and holiness of
both.'

St. Augustine made free confession of his own infirmities of youth. With
great delicacy Walton lets Donne also confess himself, printing a letter
in which he declines to take Holy Orders, because his course of life when
very young had been too notorious. Delicacy and tact are as notable in
Walton's account of Donne's poverty, melancholy, and conversion through
the blessed means of gentle King Jamie. Walton had an awful loyalty, a
sincere reverence for the office of a king. But wherever he introduces
King James, either in his Donne or his Wotton, you see a subdued version
of the King James of _The Fortunes of Nigel_. The pedantry, the good
nature, the touchiness, the humour, the nervousness, are all here. It
only needs a touch of the king's broad accent to set before us, as
vividly as in Scott, the interviews with Donne, and that singular scene
when Wotton, disguised as Octavio Baldi, deposits his long rapier at the
door of his majesty's chamber. Wotton, in Florence, was warned of a plot
to murder James VI. The duke gave him 'such Italian antidotes against
poison as the Scots till then had been strangers to': indeed, there is no
antidote for a dirk, and the Scots were not poisoners. Introduced by
Lindsay as 'Octavio Baldi,' Wotton found his nervous majesty accompanied
by four Scottish nobles. He spoke in Italian; then, drawing near,
hastily whispered that he was an Englishman, and prayed for a private
interview. This, by some art, he obtained, delivered his antidotes, and,
when James succeeded Elizabeth, rose to high favour. Izaak's suppressed
humour makes it plain that Wotton had acted the scene for him, from the
moment of leaving the long rapier at the door. Again, telling how