Or lonely tapers when from far they fling Around meek Walton's heavenly memory." WORDSWORTH. In the whole circle of English literature, a volume more unique and attractive to the best class of readers cannot easily be found, than the Lives of Walton. The most enthusiastic praises of the acutest critics have conferred an enviable immortality on their admirable author, which, added to the sweet and manly character of Honest Izaak, have united to give his book a place on the shelf above that of many writers of greater reputation and more brilliant genius. On a work of such excellence and so well known, we shall not now dwell with more particularity. Our object at present will be, to consider the principal features common to the Lives, and the personal as well as literary character of Walton himself. A certain family likeness exists between all the different heroes of Walton, and a similar mode of handling the relation of their lives. Thus all of them-Donne, Wotton, Herbert, Hooker, Sanderson —were remarkable for their early studies as well as precocity of genius each was a liberal scholar and devoted to his calling each was a firm and zealous churchman: all of them but Wotton were divines, and he was a sort of lay preacher: they were all most fortune in their deaths, regular and happy in their lives, even Hooker, notwithstanding his domestic trials. In their tempers and dispositions, they were men of great mildness and moderation: of a charitable turn, given to hospitality and the company of their friends, liberal thinkers, inclined to innocent pleasantry, utterly devoid of cunning or deceit, sincere Christians and unpretending philanthropists. Yet with all these points in common, each was possessed of a marked individuality of character and genius. Though both of them poets, and fine poets, the sentiment of Herbert is quite different from the fancy of Donne, and that again from the reflection of Wotton. Hooker and Sanderson, able on the same topics, displayed talents quite diverse; the one being more of a general philosophical inquirer, the other more of a theoretical casuist. There can be no stronger argument for the purity and innocence of Walton's life, than the fact that these were his personal friends-companions of his choice, who thought it no want of dignity in them to associate with the simple-hearted author of the Complete Angler. The Lives are written with considerable minuteness, and are yet very general, minute in particular instances, but general in the main outlines. They uniformly commence with an apology for his unfitness for the task of historical narrative, and excuses for the defects of style and manner. This was not, in all probability, an affectation, but real diffidence. The youth and prime of Walton having been passed in the pursuit of trade and commerce, his education had been of a very miscellaneous character, picked up from desultory reading and the conversation of the divines with whom he was a great favorite, and of whom he was a decided admirer. Commencing authorship, too, late in life, he felt the clogs of business and the want of freedom in his ideas and composition. This he soon attained, and if his style never became perfect, yet it was original of its kind, and such as no art of rhetoric could teach. Prefixed to the Lives is a biography of Walton, by Dr. Zouch, the same who wrote the life of Sir Philip Sidney. He has made a better preface of the first, than his stupid volume on the latter personage, though his passing criticisms on Donne and Fuller smack of the trained critic of the formal French school of criticism of the eighteenth century. The profession of Walton is known to have been that of a wholesale linen-draper or Hamburgh merchant. His first initiation into trade is thought to have been in one of the shops where, in company with other industrious young men, he was placed by the munificence of Sir Thomas Gresham (the English Medici, and founder of the Royal Exchange), who had erected several in the upper part of his celebrated building. After a course of prudent management, of frugality and assiduous labor, Walton, at the age of fifty years, retired from business, resolving to spend the rest of his years in the practice of his social and religious duties, and to cultivate his powers by reading, conversation and reflection. A moderate independency satisfied the simple desires of this contented Christian philosopher, and he was too wise a man not to leave the turmoil of business as soon as his circumstances warranted the removal. Unlike our modern money-seekers, he preferred ease and a quiet conscience to extravagance and display, and the laborious tasks requisite to meet large demands. Immediately on leaving trade, he turned author, and he affords one example more of the good writers who have arisen, not from the peasantry alone (which class boasts a Burns, a Hogg, and a Bloomfield), but from the middling classes of society, as Richardson the novelist, who was a printer; Defoe, a hosier; and even lower, Ben Jonson, a bricklayer, and Dodsley, a footman, who became a writer and publisher. We think we can perceive the effects of his business habits in the writings of Walton, in his method and accuracy, which it is becoming the fashion to impeach, his speciality, and honest dealing. The literary character of Walton is distinguished by the same sincerity and pure feeling that mark his personal disposition. Good sense, a reverence for the wise and good, a natural piety, and unfeigned simplicity, are the principal characteristics of the author as well as of the man. His garrulity (in some cases the effect of age, he wrote the life of Sanderson in his eighty-fifth year,) is the innocent, free talk of a familiar friend; yet it must be confessed this inclination to gossip and to accept reports and traditions as true history, has led him, in some cases, to statements that have been charged with being one-sided and partial. Beside those features of his personal character already mentioned, one occurs, and exceedingly prominent, his loyalty. This feeling grew out of his natural reverence for authority and superiors. He was also a zealous churchman for the same reason, and warmly opposed the covenant-and for this he suffered considerably in his temporal affairs, as well as in the trials to which his mild temper was subjected. A fast friend to royalty and the church, circumstances, as well as his natural bent, led him to embrace that particular side. His mother was the niece of Archbishop Cranmer, and his wife the sister of Bishop Ken, who has written some fine hymns, and whom James II. reckoned the first among the Protestant preachers of his time. The divines of that day, with whom Walton was intimately associated, greatly influenced his mind and character, and may be said, by their works and conversation, to have formed his mind and leading opinious-Donne, Herbert, Sanderson, Fuller, Ken, King, Usher, Chillingworth, and three poets, at that period the natural defenders of monarchy and nobility, Drayton, Shirley, the dramatist, and Chalkhill. From the multitude of eulogiums and affectionate allusions to Walton, living, and his memory after death, we have se lected the following nervous lines of Flatman, a forgotten poet, who has shown genius in two or three short pieces. Happy old man! whose worth all mankind knows, Except himself; who charitably shows The ready road to virtue and to praise, And how to compass true felicity. How correctly the poet has prophesied, the readers and admirers of Walton at the present day may answer. The name occurs but once beside in our own literature, and then in a work of fiction, the enchanting volume of Mackenzie; and apart from the melancholy sentiment and pathetic sweetness of that character, it is a magic name, consecrated to the respect of all scholars, and the love of all good men throughout the world. XXIX. ELIJAH FENTON. IN a former article, on Religious Biography, the very imperfect list of English biographies that rank as classic productions in that department of writing there inserted, includes |