SOURCE: Bald, R. C. “Historical Doubts Respecting Walton's Life of Donne.” In Essays in English Literature from the Renaissance to the Victorian Age, edited by Millar MacLure and F. W. Watt, pp. 69-84. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1964.

In the essay below, Bald catalogs the historical inaccuracies and inconsistencies in Walton's Life of Donne.

Sir Thomas More's History of King Richard the Third is a classic. It can be read with pleasure more than once, and one's interest in the presentation of the figure of Richard is independent of the fact that for over two hundred years doubts have been cast on More's veracity. The book, it has been alleged, is a piece of political propaganda designed to aid the cause of a conqueror by utterly discrediting the line he had overthrown. More's literary art, however, has made it almost irrelevant to ask whether his historical facts are...