Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/280

Walton his death) in 1633, Walton added ‘An Elegie.’ Early in 1639 we find Wotton writing to Walton about angling, and about a ‘life’ of Donne which Wotton had undertaken, but had made little progress with, though Walton had readily assisted him in collecting materials. Wotton died in the following December, and Walton, hearing that Donne's sermons were about to be published without a life of the author, determined to supply the deficiency. In 1640 he prefixed his ‘life’ of Donne to the first folio edition of Donne's ‘LXXX Sermons,’ and his memoir was approved by such critics as Charles I and the ‘ever memorable’ John Hales of Eton. In 1658 he issued separately an improved edition of his ‘Life of Donne,’ which he dedicated to Sir Robert Holt of Aston.

In August 1644 a vestryman for St. Dunstan's was chosen ‘in room of Izaak Walton lately departed out of this parish.’ The battle of Marston Moor had given a crushing blow to the royalists, and Walton as a known sympathiser with the defeated party may, in the general exasperation of feeling, have thought it wise to leave his old quarters and to retire upon the modest competence which he exalted above riches. Wood says he retired to Stafford, but, if so, he was back in London in time for Laud's execution early in 1645, and in the first months of 1650 we find him residing at Clerkenwell. In 1651 he published ‘Reliquiæ Wottonianæ,’ with his ‘Life of Sir Henry Wotton,’ of which further editions appeared in 1654, 1672, and 1685.

Walton was probably at Stafford on 3 Sept. 1651 anxiously awaiting news of the battle of Worcester. After ‘dark Worcester’ he was entrusted with the ‘lesser George’ jewel of Charles II, which was ultimately restored to his majesty, then in exile. He carried the jewel to London and delivered it to Colonel Blague (, Hist. of the Order of the Garter).

Walton was sixty when in 1653 he published his immortal treatise, ‘The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation. Being a Discourse of Fish and Fishing, not unworthy the perusal of most Anglers London, Printed by T. Maxey for Richard Marriot in S. Dunstans Churchyard, Fleet Street,’ 8vo. The treatise was dedicated to John Offley (d. 1658) of Madeley Manor in Staffordshire, his most honoured friend. The first edition differs materially from the second, which appeared under Walton's superintendence in 1655. The former is cast in the form of a dialogue between two persons, Piscator and Viator, while in the second edition three characters, Piscator, Venator, and Auceps, sustain the conversation. Totnam Hill, however, is still the scene, and a Mayday morning the time of meeting.

Nothing is heard of Walton between 1655 and 1658. When Fuller's ‘Church History’ appeared in the former year, we read of a pleasant interchange of compliments between Walton and the author (see Biogr. Brit. and ). In 1658, too, while wandering in Westminster Abbey, Walton scratched his monogram with the date on Isaac Casaubon's tablet. He had a profound admiration for ‘that man of rare learning and ingenuity,’ and was intimate with his son Meric. Walton's inscription is the earliest and most pardonable of a countless number that have since defaced the tombs in the abbey (, Memorials of Westminster Abbey, p. 271).

The Restoration was marked by the preferment of a number of eminent divines of royalist sympathies, who esteemed Walton as a friend of the ‘captivity.’ Prominent among them was [q. v.], and towards the close of 1662, a few months after Morley's translation to the see of Winchester, Walton, who had recently been living at Clerkenwell, found a permanent asylum for his old age in the bishop's palace. In 1665 he gave to the world his ‘Life of Richard Hooker,’ a two years' labour dedicated to his host. Prefixed to the memoir was an affectionate letter to ‘honest Izaak’ from Henry King, bishop of Chichester. The second edition of the ‘Life’ was prefixed to Hooker's ‘Ecclesiastical Polity’ of 1666, and again in 1676 and 1682 (all folio). In April 1670 appeared Walton's ‘Life of George Herbert’ (London, 8vo), and in the same year the four lives were collected and printed in one volume, with a dedication to Morley. A reprint of 1675 is prefaced by a poem from [q. v.] in honour of his ‘old and most worthy friend.’ This issue is styled the fourth edition, the separate issues of the lives of Donne, Wotton, and Hooker probably being included in the reckoning. Numerous editions have since appeared, the most noteworthy being those of Thomas Zouch in 1796, of Major in 1825, of Mr. A. H. Bullen in 1884 for Bohn's ‘Illustrated Library,’ and of Mr. Austin Dobson in 1898 for the ‘Temple Classics.’

Walton varied his stay with the bishop of Winchester by visits to Cotton's ‘little fishing house’ on the Dove, and he commissioned his disciple to write a treatise more especially upon fly fishing as a supplement to the ‘Compleat Angler.’ Cotton had to be