The only contemporary criticism known to me is that of Richard Franck, who had served with Cromwell in Scotland, and, not liking the aspect of changing times, returned to the north, and fished from the Esk to Strathnaver. In 1658 he wrote his Northern Memoirs, an itinerary of sport, heavily cumbered by dull reflections and pedantic style. Franck, however, was a practical angler, especially for salmon, a fish of which Walton knew nothing he also appreciated the character of the great Montrose. He went to America, wrote a wild cosmogonic work, and The Admirable and Indefatigable Adventures of the Nine Pious Pilgrims (one pilgrim catches a trout!) (London, 1708). The Northern Memoirs of 1658 were not published till 1694. Sir Walter Scott edited a new issue, in 1821, and defended Izaak from the strictures of the salmon-fisher. Izaak, says Franck, 'lays the stress of his arguments upon other men's observations, wherewith he stuffs his indigested octavo; so brings himself under the angler's censure and the common calamity of a plagiary, to be pitied (poor man) for his loss of time, in scribbling and transcribing other men's notions. I remember in Stafford, I urged his own argument upon him, that pickerel weed of itself breeds pickerel (pike).' Franck proposed a rational theory, which my Compleat Angler no sooner deliberated, but dropped his argument, and leaves Gesner to defend it, so huffed away. .' 'So note, the true character of an industrious angler more deservedly falls upon Merrill and Faulkner, or rather Izaak Ouldham, a man that fished salmon with but three hairs at hook, whose collections and experiments were lost with himself,'—a matter much to be regretted. It will be observed, of course, that hair was then used, and gut is first mentioned for angling purposes by Mr. Pepys. Indeed, the flies which Scott was hunting for when he found the lost Ms. of the first part of Waverley are tied on horse-hairs. They are in the possession of the descendants of Scott's friend, Mr. William Laidlaw. The curious angler, consulting Franck, will find that his salmon flies are much like our own, but less variegated. Scott justly remarks that, while Walton was habit and repute a bait-fisher, even Cotton knows nothing of salmon. Scott wished that Walton had made the northern tour, but Izaak would have been sadly to seek, running after a fish down a gorge of the Shin or the Brora, and the discomforts of the north would have finished his career. In Scotland he would not have found fresh sheets smelling of lavender. Walton was in London 'in the dangerous year 1655.' He speaks of his meeting Bishop Sanderson there, 'in sad-coloured clothes, and, God knows, far from being costly.' The friends were driven by wind and rain into 'a cleanly house, where we had bread, cheese, ale, and a fire, for our ready money. The rain and wind were so obliging to me, as to force our stay there for at least an hour, to my great content and advantage; for in that time he made to me many useful observations of the present times with much clearness and conscientious freedom.' It was a year of Republican and Royalist conspiracies: the clergy were persecuted and banished from London. No more is known of Walton till the happy year 1660, when the king came to his own again, and Walton's Episcopal friends to their palaces. Izaak produced an 'Eglog,' on May 29: 'The king! The king's returned! And now We have our laws, and have our king.' If Izaak was so eccentric as to go to bed sober on that glorious twenty-ninth of May, I greatly misjudge him. But he grew elderly. In 1661 he chronicles the deaths of 'honest Nat. and R. Roe,—they are gone, and with them most of my pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away, and returns not.' On April 17, 1662, Walton lost his second wife: she died at Worcester, probably on a visit to Bishop Morley. In the same year, the bishop was translated to Winchester, where the palace became Izaak's home. The Itchen (where, no doubt, he angled with worm) must have been his constant haunt. He was busy with his Life of Richard Hooker (1665). The peroration, as it were, was altered and expanded in 1670, and this is but one example of Walton's care of his periods. One beautiful passage he is known to have rewritten several times, till his ear was satisfied with its cadences. In 1670 he published his Life of George Herbert. 'I wish, if God shall be so pleased, that I may be so happy as to die like him.' In 1673, in a Dedication of the third edition of 'In Reliquiae Wottonianae, Walton alludes to his friendship with a much younger and gayer man than himself, Charles Cotton (born 1630), the friend of Colonel Richard Lovelace, and of Sir John Suckling: the translator of Scarron's travesty of Virgil, and of Montaigne's Essays. Cotton was a roisterer, a man at one time deep in debt, but he was a Royalist, a scholar, and an angler. The friendship between him and Walton is creditable to the freshness of the old man and to the kindness of the younger, who, to be sure, laughed at Izaak's heavily dubbed London flies. him,' says Cotton, 'I have the happiness to know the worthiest man, and to enjoy the best and the truest friend any man ever had.' We are reminded of Johnson with Langton and Topham Beauclerk. Meanwhile Izaak the younger had grown up, was educated under Dr. Fell at Christ Church, and made the Grand Tour in 1675, visiting Rome and Venice. In March 1676 he proceeded M.A. and took Holy Orders. In this year Cotton wrote his treatise on fly-fishing, to be published with Walton's new edition; and the famous fishing house on the Dove, with the blended initials of the two friends, was built. In 1678, Walton wrote his Life of Sanderson. . . . "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 be; and do as earnestly beg of every reader to say Amen!' He wrote, in 1678, a preface to Thealma and Clearchus (1683). The poem is attributed to John Chalkhill, a Fellow of Winchester College, who died, a man of eighty, in 1679. Two of his songs are in The Compleat Angler. Probably the attribution is right: Chalkhill's tomb commemorates a man after Walton's own heart, but some have assigned the volume to Walton himself. Chalkhill is described, on the title-page, as 'an acquaintant and friend of Edmund Spencer,' which is impossible.1 On August 9, 1683, Walton wrote his will, 'in the neintyeth year of my age, and in perfect memory, for which praised be God.' He professes the Anglican faith, despite 'a very long and very trew friendship for some of the Roman Church.' His worldly estate he has acquired 'neither by falsehood or flattery or the extreme crewelty of the law of this nation.' His property was in two houses in London, the lease of Norington farm, a farm near Stafford, besides books, linen, and a hanging cabinet inscribed with his name, now, it seems, in the possession of Mr. Elkin Mathews. A bequest is made of money for coals to the poor of Stafford, every last weike in Janewary, or in every first weike in Febrewary; I say then, because I take that time to be the hardest and most pinching times with pore people.' To the Bishop of Winchester he bequeathed a ring with the posy, 'A Mite for a Million.' There are other bequests, including ten pounds to 'my old friend, Mr. Richard Marriott,' Walton's bookseller. This good man died in peace with his publisher, leaving him 1 There is an edition by Singer, with a frontispiece by Wainewright, the poisoner. London, 1820. |