Whilst all the ills are so improv'd In this estate, I say, it is Some comfort to us to suppose, That in a better clime than this You, our dear friend, have more repose; And some delight to me the while, If the all-ruling Power please We then shall have a day or two, A day without too bright a beam, There whilst behind some bush we wait, We'll prove it just, with treach'rous bait, And think ourselves in such an hour Of meaner men, the smaller fry. This, my best friend, at my poor home Notwithstanding Walton's very advanced age might, as he himself says, have procured him "a writ of ease," he continued to employ himself in literary pursuits; and at a period of life to which few men attain, and at which still fewer are capable of intellectual exertion, he commenced the Life of Robert Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln, a work requiring as much vigour of mind as any he had written, and which he completed with equal success. The volume was published about May 1678,6 and like the Memoir of Hooker, and the collected edition of the Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, and Herbert, was inscribed to Dr Morley, whose continued favours demanded a new testimony of his gratitude. As this was Walton's last work, and as whatever relates to him at so advanced 5 Cotton's Poems, ed. 1689, p. 114. The imprimatur is dated on the 7th of May 1678. a stage of his existence is of peculiar interest, everything which occurs in it illustrative of his own feelings or situation will be here introduced. The dedication commences with an acknowledgment of Bishop Morley's kindness; and shows that through Morley he had become acquainted with Sanderson, Chillingworth, and Dr Hammond : "MY LORD,-If I should undertake to enumerate the many favours and advantages I have had by my very long acquaintance with your lordship, I should enter upon an employment that might prove as tedious as the collecting of the materials for this poor monument, which I have erected, and do dedicate to the memory of your beloved friend Dr Sanderson. But though I will not venture to do that; yet I do remember with pleasure, and remonstrate with gratitude, that your lordship made me known to him, Mr Chillingworth, and Dr Hammond, men whose merits ought never to be forgotten. My friendship with the first was begun almost forty years past, when I was as far from a thought, as a desire to outlive him; and farther from an intention to write his life: but the wise Disposer of all men's lives and actions hath prolonged the first, and now permitted the last; which is here dedicated to your lordship (and as it ought to be) with all humility, and a desire that it may remain as a public testimony of my gratitude. My Lord, your most affectionate old Friend, and most humble Servant, IZAAK WALTON." In the preface Walton says: "I confess" the Life of Dr Sanderson "" was worthy the employment of some person of more learning and greater abilities than I can pretend to; and I have not a little wondered that none have yet been so grateful to him and posterity as to undertake it for as it may be noted, that our Saviour had a care, that for Mary Magdalen's kindness to him, her name should never be forgotten: so I conceive the great satisfaction many scholars have already had, and the unborn world is like to have by his exact, clear, and useful learning; and might have by a true narrative of his matchless meekness, his calm fortitude, and the innocence of his whole life: doth justly challenge the like from this present age; that posterity may not be ignorant of them and it is to me a wonder, that it has been already fifteen years neglected. But, in saying this, my meaning is not to upbraid others (I am far from that) but excuse myself, or beg pardon for daring to attempt it. This being premised, I desire to tell the reader that in this relation I have been so bold, as to paraphrase and say what I think he (whom I had the happiness to know well) would have said upon the same occasions; and if I have been too bold in doing so, and cannot now beg pardon of him that loved me, yet I do of my reader, from whom I desire the same favour. And though my age might have procured me a writ of ease, and that secured me from all further trouble in this kind; yet I met with such persuasions to undertake it, and so many willing informers since, and from them and others, such helps and encouragements to proceed, that when I found myself faint, and weary of the burthen with which I had loaden myself, and sometime ready to lay it down; yet time and new strength hath at last brought it to be what it now is, and here presented to the reader. "And lastly, the trouble being now past, I look back and am glad that I have collected these memoirs of this humble man, which lay scattered, and contracted them into a narrower compass; and, if I have, by the pleasant toil of doing so, either pleased or profited any man, I have attained what I designed when I first undertook it but I seriously wish, both for the reader's, and Dr Sanderson's sake, that posterity had known his great learning and virtue by a better pen; by such a pen, as could have made his life as immortal as his learning and merits ought to be." Having stated that Sanderson had, during a period of distress, received a sum of money from the learned Boyle through the hands of Dr Barlow, then Bishop of Lincoln, Walton solicited that prelate to relate the circumstance, and to give him any other information in his power respecting Sanderson, with which request he complied, in a letter to Walton, dated on the 10th of May 1678, which is annexed to the memoir. Bishop Barlow, who addressed him as 66 My worthy friend Mr Walton," expressed his satisfaction that he had undertaken to write Sanderson's life, "because," he said, "I know your ability to know, and integrity to write truth," and he subscribed himself, "your affectionate friend." When writing the account of Bishop Sanderson's death, Walton seems to have been very deeply impressed with the close approach of his own; and he concluded the memoir with this allusion to that event: "Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence changed this for a better life. 'Tis now too late to wish that my life may be like his; for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age; but I humbly beseech Almighty God that my death may; and do as earnestly beg of every reader to say Amen. 'Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile.' Ps. xxxii. 2." When the Life of Sanderson was reprinted and prefixed to the Bishop's Sermons,7 Walton made those corrections which in the 7 On that occasion the above passage was slightly altered, as it there stands :"Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence changed this for a better postscript to the first edition he says he then wished to have done, but was prevented by the manuscript being hastened from him. To the edition of Sanderson's Life which was printed in 1678, Walton added a letter which he had received from Dr Pierce, dated at North Tidworth, 5th March 1678, in which he addressed him as 66 Good Mr Walton," on the subject of Sanderson's correspondence, and referred him to some materials for his life of that prelate. A copy of Bishop Sanderson's Sermons which belonged to Walton is preserved, and was probably the one which is mentioned in his will. In the title page its original owner has written "Izaak Walton, June 25°, 1658, price 155." Numerous passages of the celebrated preface to the "Fourteen Sermons" are marked by him, because they expressed opinions similar to his own. Several marginal notes occur, containing the names of the persons to whom Sanderson alluded, and he has copied at length all the texts which are referred to. At the end of the preface to the "Twenty Sermons," Walton has written, "This Preface is an humble and bold challenge to the dissenting brethren of the Clergy of England: And was writ by that humble and good man the author, in the times of persecution and danger;" and in his Life of Sanderson he alludes to it in very similar terms.8 About the year 1678, Walton determined on publishing a poem entitled "Thealma and Clearchus," a pastoral history "in smooth and easy verse," which had been written many years before by John Chalkhill, Esq., "an acquaintant and friend of Edmund Spencer." Walton's preface is dated on the 7th of May 1678, though the first edition of the poem which has been discovered, was not printed until 1683. The reprint of Thealma and Clearchus in 1820 exhibits an amusing specimen of critical sagacity, as it is therein gravely asserted that "Chalkhill is but a name unappropriated—a verbal phantom—a shadow of a shade,” and the authorship of the poem is attributed to Walton himself; whereas an life:-'tis now too late to wish that mine may be like his: for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age; and God knows it hath not; but I most humbly beseech Almighty God that my death may: and I do as earnestly beg, that if any reader shall receive any satisfaction from this very plain, and as true relation, he will be so charitable as to say Amen. "Blessed is that man in whose spirit there is no guile. Ps. xxxii. 2." 8 Ed. Zouch, vol. ii. p. 250. I. W. This hypothesis has been adopted in the Retrospective Review (vol. iv. p. 231), in Major's edition of the "Complete Angler," and was even exaggerated in a long note to an edition of Zouch's Life of Walton, published by Prowett in 1823. Its fallacy was first exposed by the late Archdeacon Nares, in the Gentleman's Magazine, upon the grounds of its extreme improbability, and that such a deception was utterly inconsistent with Walton's character. Mr Nares noticed the monumental inscription to John elaborate pedigree, which has been recently compiled, proves not only the existence of numerous persons of that name, but shows that Thomas Ken, the father of Mrs Walton, chose his second wife from the Chalkhill family. This connection may have been the cause of the manuscript of the poem having fallen into Walton's hands, and it is very probable that he knew the author, as he has described him with some care, and introduced two of his songs into the "Complete Angler." There is, however, much difficulty in deciding which of the John or Jon Chalkhills mentioned in the pedigree was the poet. He may have been the father of Mrs Ken, or more probably was the John Chalkhill, a M.A., whose filiation has not been ascertained, but who was for forty-six years fellow of Winchester College, and died on the 20th of May 1679, at the age of eighty. The following is Walton's preface to Thealma and Clearchus : "The reader will find in this book what the title declares, a Pastoral History in smooth and easy verse; and will in it find many hopes and fears finely painted and feelingly expressed. And he will find the first so often disappointed, when fullest of desire and expectation; and the latter so often, so strangely, and so unexpectedly relieved by an unforeseen Providence, as may beget in him wonder and amazement. And the reader will here also meet with passions heightened by easy and fit descriptions of joy and sorrow; and find also such various events and rewards of innocent truth and undissembled honesty, as is like to leave in him (if he be a goodnatured reader) more sympathising and virtuous impressions, than ten times so much time spent in impertinent, critical, and needless disputes about religion: and I heartily wish it may do so. "And I have also this truth to say of the author, that he was in his Chalkhill, the fellow of Winchester College, mentioned above, but he was not aware of the connection between the families of Chalkhill and Ken. Of that person Mr Nares observed: "In the south cloister of Winchester Cathedral is, or was very lately, a monument to a John Chalkhill of that very period, a fellow of Winchester College, whose character, as given in the inscription, singularly accords with part of that given by Walton. H. S. E. Joan. Chalkhill, A. M. hujus Coll'ii Annos 46 Socius, Vir, quoad vixit, Solitudine et Silentio, Temperantia et Castitate, Orationibus et Eleemosynis, Contemplatione et Sanctimonia, Ascetis vel primitivis par: qui cum a Parvulo in Regnum Coelorum Viam fecit, Octogenarius rapuit, 20 die Maij, 1679. "Now as Walton died at Winchester in the prebendal house of his son-in-law Dr Hawkins, which probably he had always been accustomed to visit, so attached was he to his daughter and her husband, he doubtless personally knew and much esteemed this Mr Chalkhill; and knew of him all that he expressed in his eulogy. "The only objection that I perceive, arises from the date (1678) subjoined to Walton's preface that being the year previous to the death of Chalkhill, according to the monument. The probability is that this date has no reference to the preface, which was most likely to be written near the time of the publication in 1683. It might, therefore, only mark the time when the poem was put into Walton's hands by its author, being exactly a year before his death. Be this as it may, I think we have here a memorial of the real John Chalkhill." Vide Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xciii. Part II. p. 419. Ibid. |