Thought (like the angels) nothing but the praise
Of thy Creator, in those last, best days.

Witness this book (thy emblem) which begins

With love; but ends with sighs and tears for sius.

Dr Henry King, bishop of Chichester, in a letter to Walton, dated in November, 1664, and in which is contained the judgment (herein before inserted) of Hales of Eaton, on the Life of Dr Donne, says, that Walton had, in the Life of Hooker, given a more short and significant account of the character of this time, and also of Archbishop Whitgift, than he had received from any other pen, and that he had also done much for Sir Henry Savile, his contemporary and familiar friend; which fact does very well connect with what the late Mr Des Maizeaux some years since related to a gentleman now deceased, from whom myself had it, viz. that there were then several letters of Walton extant, in the Ashmolean Museum, relating to a Life of Sir Henry Savile, which Walton had entertained thoughts of writing.

I also find that he undertook to collect materials for a Life of Hales. It seems that Mr Anthony Farringdon, minister of St Mary Magdalen, Milk Street, London, had begun to write the Life of this memorable person; but dying before he bad completed it, his papers were sent to Walton, with a request from Mr Fulman, † who had proposed to himself to continue and finish it, that Walton would furnish him with such information as was to his purpose. Mr Fulman did not live to complete his design; but a Life of Mr Hales, from other materials, was compiled by the late Mr Des Maizeaux, and published by him in 1719, as a specimen of a new Biographical Dictionary.

A Letter of Walton, to Marriot, his bookseller, upon this occasion, was sent me by the late Rev. Dr Birch, soon after the publication of my first edition of the Complete Angler, containing the above facts; to which the doctor added, that

* William Oldys, Esq. Norroy king-at-arms, author of the Life of Mr Cotton, prefixed to the Second Part, in the former editions of this work. + Mr William Fulman, amanuensis to Dr Henry Hammond. See him in Athen. Oxon. vol. ii. 823. Some specious arguments have been urged to prove that this person was the author of The Whole Duty of Man, and I once thought they had finally settled that long agitated question, "To whom is the world obliged for that excellent work?" but I find a full and ample refutation of them, in a book entitled Memoirs of several Ladies of Great Britain, by George Ballard, quarto, 1752, p. 318, and that the weight of evidence is greatly in favour of a lady deservedly celebrated by him, viz. Dorothy, the wife of Sir John Packington, Bart. and daughter of Thomas Lord Coventry, lord-keeper of the Great Seal, temp. Car. 1

after the year 1719, Mr Fulman's papers came to the hands of Mr Des Maizeaux, who intended in some way or other to avail himself of them; but he never published a second edition of his Life of Hales; nor, for aught that I can hear, have they ever yet found their way into the world.

In 1683, when he was ninety years old, Walton published "Thealma and Clearchus; a pastoral history, in smooth and easy verse, written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq. an acquaintance and friend of Edmund Spenser." To this poem he wrote a preface, containing a very amiable character of the author.

He lived but a very little time after the publication of this poem; for, as Wood says, he ended his days on the fifteenth day of December, 1683, in the great frost, at Winchester, in the house of Dr William Hawkins, a prebendary of the church there, where he lies buried.*

In the cathedral of Winchester, viz. in a chapel in the south aisle, called Prior Silksteed's Chapel, on a large black flat marble stone, is this inscription to his memory; the poetry whereof has very little to recommend it :

HERE RESTETH THE BODY OF

MR ISAAC WALTON,

WHO DYED THE FIFTEENTH OF DECEMBER,
1683.

Alas! he's gone before,
Gone to return no more.
Our panting breasts aspire
After their aged sire,

Whose well spent life did last
Full ninety years and past:
But now he hath begun
That which will ne'er be done.
Crown'd with eternal bliss,
We wish our souls with his.

Votis modestis sic flerunt liberi.

The issue of Walton's marriage were,-a son, named Isaac, and a daughter, named, after her mother, Anne. This son was placed in Christ Church College, Oxford; and, having taken his degree of bachelor of arts, travelled, together with his uncle, Mr (afterward bishop) Ken, in the year 1674, being the year of the jubilee, into France and Italy; and, as Cotton says, visited Rome and Venice. Of this son, mention is made

• Athen. Oxon. vol. i. col. 505.

+ Vide part ii. chap. vi. Athen. Ozon. vol. ii. 989; Biogr. Brit. art. Ken.

in the remarkable will of Dr Donne the younger, (printed on a half-sheet,) in 1662; whereby he bequeathed to the elder Walton all his father's writings, as also his commonplace book, which, he says, may be of use to him if he makes him a scholar. Upon the return of the younger Walton, he prosecuted his studies; and having finished the same, entered into holy orders; and became chaplain to Dr Seth Ward, bishop of Sarum; by whose favour he attained to the dignity of a canon-residentiary of that cathedral. Upon the decease of Bishop Ward, and the promotion of Dr Gilbert Burnet to the vacant see, Mr Walton was taken into the friendship and confidence of that prelate; and being a man of great temper and discretion, and for his candour and sincerity much respected by all the clergy of the diocess, he became very useful to him in conducting the affairs of the chapter.

Old Isaac Walton having by his will bequeathed a farm and land near Stafford, of about the yearly value of twenty pounds, to this his son and his heirs for ever, upon condition, that if his said son should not marry before he should be of the age of forty-one, or, being married, should die before the said age, and leave no son that should live to the age of twenty-one, then the same should go to the corporation of Stafford, for certain charitable purposes; this son, upon his attainment of that age, without having married, sent to the mayor of Stafford, acquainting him, that the estate was improved to almost double its former value, and that upon his decease the corporation would become entitled thereto.

This worthy person died, at the age of sixty-nine, on the 29th day of December, 1719; and lies interred in the cathedral church of Salisbury.

Anne, the daughter of old Isaac Walton, and sister of the above person, was married to Dr William Hawkins, a divine and a prebendary of Winchester, mentioned above; for whom Walton, in his will, expresses great affection, declaring that he loved him as his own son: he died the 17th day of July, 1691, aged fifty-eight, leaving issue, by his said wife, a daughter named Anne, and a son named William. The daughter was never married, but lived with her uncle, the canon, as his housekeeper, and had the management of his domestic concerns she remained settled at Salisbury, after his decease, until the 27th of November, 1728, when she died, and lies buried in the cathedral.

William, the son of Dr Hawkins, and brother of the last mentioned Anne, was bred to the study of the law; and, from the Middle Temple, called to the bar: but attained to no

degree of eminence in his profession. He wrote and published in octavo, anno 1713, A short Account of the Life of Bishop Ken, with a small specimen, in order to a publication of his Works at large; and, accordingly, in the year 1721, they were published in four volumes, octavo. From this Account, some of the above particulars respecting the family connections of Walton are taken.

I am informed that this gentleman for several years laboured under the affliction of incurable blindness, and that he died on the 29th day of November, 1748.

A few months before his death, our Author made his will, which appears, by the peculiarity of many expressions contained in it, as well as by the hand, to be of his own writing. As there is something characteristic in this last solemn act of his life, it has been thought proper to insert an authentic copy thereof in this account of him; postponing it only to the following reflections on his life and character.

Upon a retrospect of the foregoing particulars, and a view of some others mentioned in a subsequent letter,* and in his will, it will appear that Walton possessed that essential ingredient in human felicity, "mens sana in corpore sano: for, in his eighty-third year, he professes a resolution to begi a pilgrimage of more than a hundred miles, into a country the most difficult and hazardous that can be conceived for an aged man to travel in, to visit his friend Cotton, † and, doubtless,

* See his Letter to Charles Cotton, Esq. prefixed to the Second Part. To this journey he seems to have been invited by Mr Cotton, in the following beautiful stanzas, printed with other of his Poems, in 1689, 8vo. and addressed to his dear and most worthy friend, Mr Isaac Walton:

Whilst in this cold and blustering clime,
Where bleak winds howl and tempests roar,
We pass away the roughest time

Has been of many years before.

Whilst from the most tempestuous nooks
The chillest blasts our peace invade,
And by great rains our smallest brooks
Are almost navigable made;

Whilst all the ills are so improved,

Of this dead quarter of the year,

That even you, so much beloved,

We would not now wish with us here:

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,

Though nature now does weep in rain,
To think that I have seen her smile,
And haply may I do again

to enjoy his favourite diversion of angling in the delightfu. streams of the Dove, and on the ninetieth anniversary of his birth-day, he, by his will, declares himself to be of perfect memory.*

As to his worldly circumstances, notwithstanding the adverse accident of his being obliged, by the troubles of the times, to quit London, and his occupation, they appear to nave been commensurate, as well to the wishes as the wants of any but a covetous and intemperate man; and, in his relations and connections, such a concurrence of circumstances is visible, as it would be almost presumption to pray for. For, not to mention the patronage of those many prelates and dignitaries of the church, men of piety and learning, with whom he lived in a close intimacy and friendship; or the many ingenious and worthy persons with whom he corresponded and conversed; or the esteem and respect, testified by printed letters and eulogiums, which his writings had procured him to be matched with a woman of an exalted understanding and a mild and humble temper, to have children of good inclinations and sweet and amiable dispositions, and to see them well settled,—is not the lot of every man that, preferring a social to a solitary life, chooses to become the head of a family. But blessings like these are comparatively light, when

If the all-ruling Power please
We live to see another May,
We'll recompense an age of these
Foul days in one fine fishing day

We then shall have a day or two,
Perhaps a week, wherein to try
What the best master's hand can do
With the most deadly killing fly :

A day with not too bright a beam,

A warm, but not a scorching sun,
A southern gale to curl the stream,
And, master, half our work is done.

There, whilst behind some bush we wait
The scaly people to betray,
We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait
To make the preying trout our prey.

And think ourselves, in such an hour,
Happier than those, though not so high,
Who, like leviathans, devour

Of meaner men the smaller fry.

This, my best friend, at my poor home,
Shall be our pastime and our theme;
But then-should you not deign to come,
You make all this a flattering dream.

These, it must be owned, are words of course in a will; but had the fact been otherwise, he would have been unable to make such a judicious disposition of his worldly estate as he had done, or with his own hand to write so long an instrument as his will.