Introduction to The Compleat Angler | Page 4

thy tongue, by silence might These have been
buried in oblivion's night.'
S. P. also remarks:-
'No ill thing can be clothed in thy verse';
hence Izaak was already a rhymer, and a harmless one, under the Royal
Prentice, gentle King Jamie.
By this time Walton was probably settled in London. A deed in the
possession of his biographer, Dr. Johnson's friend, Sir John Hawkins,
shows that, in 1614, Walton held half of a shop on the north side of
Fleet Street, two doors west of Chancery Lane: the other occupant was
a hosier. Mr. Nicholl has discovered that Walton was made free of the
Ironmongers' Company on Nov. 12, 1618. He is styled an Ironmonger
in his marriage licence. The facts are given in Mr. Marston's Life of
Walton, prefixed to his edition of The Compleat Angler (1888). It is
odd that a prentice ironmonger should have been a poet and a critic of
poetry. Dr. Donne, before 1614, was Vicar of St. Dunstan's in the West,
and in Walton had a parishioner, a disciple, and a friend. Izaak greatly
loved the society of the clergy: he connected himself with Episcopal
families, and had a natural taste for a Bishop. Through Donne, perhaps,
or it may be in converse across the counter, he made acquaintance with
Hales of Eton, Dr. King, and Sir Henry Wotton, himself an angler, and
one who, like Donne and Izaak, loved a ghost story, and had several in
his family. Drayton, the river-poet, author of the Polyolbion, is also
spoken of by Walton as 'my old deceased friend.'

On Dec. 27, 1626, Walton married, at Canterbury, Rachel Floud, a
niece, on the maternal side, by several descents, of Cranmer, the
famous Archbishop of Canterbury. The Cranmers were intimate with
the family of the judicious Hooker, and Walton was again connected
with kinsfolk of that celebrated divine. Donne died in 1631, leaving to
Walton, and to other friends, a bloodstone engraved with Christ
crucified on an anchor: the seal is impressed on Walton's will. When
Donne's poems were published in 1633, Walton added commendatory
verses:-
'As all lament (Or should) this general cause of discontent.'
The parenthetic 'or should' is much in Walton's manner. 'Witness my
mild pen, not used to upbraid the world,' is also a pleasant and accurate
piece of self-criticism. 'I am his convert,' Walton exclaims. In a citation
from a manuscript which cannot be found, and perhaps never existed,
Walton is spoken of as 'a very sweet poet in his youth, and more than
all in matters of love.' {1} Donne had been in the same case: he, or
Time, may have converted Walton from amorous ditties. Walton, in an
edition of Donne's poems of 1635, writes of
'This book (dry emblem) which begins With love; but ends with tears
and sighs for sins.'
The preacher and his convert had probably a similar history of the heart:
as we shall see, Walton, like the Cyclops, had known love. Early in
1639, Wotton wrote to Walton about a proposed Life of Donne, to be
written by himself, and hoped 'to enjoy your own ever welcome
company in the approaching time of the Fly and the Cork.' Wotton was
a fly-fisher; the cork, or float, or 'trembling quill,' marks Izaak for the
bottom-fisher he was. Wotton died in December 1639; Walton prefixed
his own Life of Donne to that divine's sermons in 1640. He says, in the
Dedication of the reprint of 1658, that 'it had the approbation of our late
learned and eloquent King,' the martyred Charles I. Living in, or at the
corner of Chancery Lane, Walton is known to have held parochial
office: he was even elected 'scavenger.' He had the misfortune to lose
seven children--of whom the last died in 1641--his wife, and his
mother-in-law. In 1644 he left Chancery Lane, and probably retired
from trade. He was, of course, a Royalist. Speaking of the entry of the
Scots, who came, as one of them said, 'for the goods,--and chattels of
the English,' he remarks, 'I saw and suffered by it.' {2} He also

mentions that he 'saw' shops shut by their owners till Laud should be
put to death, in January 1645. In his Life of Sanderson, Walton vouches
for an anecdote of 'the knowing and conscientious King,' Charles, who,
he says, meant to do public penance for Strafford's death, and for the
abolishing of Episcopacy in Scotland. But the condition, 'peaceable
possession of the Crown,' was not granted to Charles, nor could have
been granted to a prince who wished to reintroduce Bishops in Scotland.
Walton had his information from Dr. Morley. On Nov. 25, 1645,
Walton probably wrote, though John Marriott signed, an Address to the
Reader, printed, in 1646, with Quarles's Shepherd's Eclogues. The
piece is a