515 



WALTON, IZAAK. 



WANLEY, HUMPHREY. 



16 



1821 ; a work which comprises also notices of all Walton's coadjutors. 

 Dr. John Owen having, in 1659, published some 'Considerations' on 

 the Prolegomena and Appendix of the Polyglott, Walton published a 

 reply, the ample title of which will sufficiently explain the nature of 

 the controversy : ' The Conaiderator Considered ; or a brief view of 

 certain Considerations upon the Biblia Polyglotta, the Prolegomena, 

 and Appendix. Wherein, among other things, the certainty, integrity, 

 aud the divine authority of the original text is defended against the 

 consequences of Atheists, Papists, Anti-Scripturists, &c., inferred 

 from the various readings and novelty of the Hebrew points, by the 

 author of the said Considerations. The Biblia Polyglotta and trans- 

 lations therein exhibited, with the various readings, Prolegomena, and 

 Appendix, vindicated from his aspersions and calumnies ; and the 

 questions about the punctuation of the Hebrew text, the various 

 readings, and the ancient Hebrew character, briefly handled,' 8vo, 1659. 

 In 1655 Dr. Walton had published an 'Introductio ad lectionem lingua- 

 rum Orientalium.' 



Shortly after the Restoration Walton was appointed chaplain to the 

 king, and in 1661 he was created Bishop~of Chester. But his enjoy- 

 ment of this honour was very brief. He was installed on the llth of 

 September, and he died soon after his return from the ceremony, at 

 his house in Alderegate-street, London, on the 29th of November 

 1661. 



WALTON, IZAAK, the Father of Angling,' was born at Stafford, 

 on the 9th of August 1593. The register of baptisms and burials 

 supplies the name of his father, one Jervis Walton, who appears to 

 have been of the rank of a yeoman. Nothing more is known of this 

 person, except that he died in the year 1596-97, leaving his son Izaak, 

 it is supposed, an orphan. 



From the time of Walton's birth up to the age of twenty nothing is 

 known of him. It is presumed that he was apprenticed to a relation 

 of the same name who dwelt in Whitechapel, and is described as a 

 sempster, or hosier, but the identity of trades seems to be the sole 

 ground for this conjecture. He must however soon after the age of 

 twenty have been engaged in business on his own account; for in 1624 

 Sir John Hawkins states, on the authority of a deed in his possession, 

 that " Walton dwelt on the north side of Fleet Street, in a house two 

 doors west of Chancery Lane, and abutting on a messuage known by 

 the sign of the ' Harrow,'" and that hig house was then in the joint 

 occupation of himself and a hosier called John Mason. About 1623 

 (a year before the date of this deed) Walton states that he first began 

 "a happy affinity" with the family of his first wife, Rachel Floud, a 

 descendant of Archbishop Cranmer. He was married to this lady on 

 the 27th of December 1626. 



It was doubtless owing to this marriage that Walton first became 

 interested about Hooker, the author of the 'Laws of Ecclesiastical 

 Polity,' George Cranmer, his wife's uncle, having been Hooker's pupil. 

 Cranmer no doubt orally communicated the materials for the ad- 

 mirable Life of Hooker which Walton wrote during his residence with 

 Dr. Morley in 1662 : it was not however published until 1665. 



We owe the Life of Dr. Donne to another local connection. Walton's 

 house was situated in the parish of St. Dunstan in the West, of which 

 Donne was vicar. A close intimacy ensued between them, and we 

 find Walton attending, with other friends, on Donne's death-bed in 

 1631, and also that Walton wrote an elegy on his friend, which was 

 printed at the end of Donne's poems published by his son in 1633. 

 This elegy seems to be Walton's first avowed literary effort, and in it 

 he speaks of Donne's " powerful preaching," and calls himself his 

 " convert," which gives a clue to the intimacy between Walton and 

 Donne. Sir Henry Wotton requested Walton to collect materials for 

 a life of Donne, which Sir Henry himself had thought of writing, but 

 his death in 1639 put an end to the design. Walton however, hearing 

 that Dr. Donne's sermons were to be published without a prefatory 

 life, determined on writing it himself, and in the introduction to the 

 Life, published with the Sermons in 1640, he fully explains the reasons 

 which induced him to become Donne's biographer. 



Previous to this publication Walton had removed into Chancery- 

 lane, a few doors from Fleet-street, where his wife gave birth to two 

 sons, both of whom however died. In August 1640, soon after the 

 birth of an infant daughter, his wife also died. These heavy afflictions 

 seem to have had a great effect upon Walton, for in 1644 he left 

 Chancery -lane, and up to the year 1651 his residence ia wholly un- 

 certain; all his publications during this period were two commen- 

 datory copies of verses, and an address to Quarles's ' Eclogues.' About 

 1647 he married Anne Ken, half-sister of the non-conformist bishop 

 of that name. In 1648 he had a daughter born, and in 1650 a son, 

 who died after a few months. Walton's fourth and surviving son, 

 Isaac, was born in 1651. In this same year Walton published a 

 collection of Sir Henry Wotton's letters, poems, &c., under the title of 

 ' Reliquiae Wottonianso,' to which he prefixed the Life of Wotton. He 

 is also believed to have edited ' The Heroe of Lorengoe,' a translation 

 from the Spanish of Gracian, by Sir John Skeffington, which appeared 

 in 1652, and to which is prefixed a preface signed I. W., which bears all 

 the marks of having proceeded from Walton's pen. 



Walton had by his marriage connections identified himself with 

 the Royalist party, and the strongly expressed approval of Charles I. 

 of the ' Life of Donne,' combined with other circumstances, rendered 

 him very zealous in a difficult and dangerous service which distin- 



guished this period of his life; the ' Lesser George ' having been con- 

 fided to his care after the battle of Worcester, by Charles II., for safe 

 conveyance to London. Aehmole details this service in his ' History 

 of the Order of the Garter,' and declares that Walton was " well 

 known, and as well beloved of all good men." 



In 1653 the work upon which his fame principally rests appeared 

 ' The Complete Angler, or Contemplative Man's Recreation,' a work 

 which, to use the words of Sir Harris Nicolas, "whether considered as 

 a treatise on the art of angling, or as a beautiful pastoral, abounding in 

 exquisite descriptions of rural scenery, in sentiments of the purest 

 morality, and in an unaffected love of the Creator and his works, 

 has long been ranked among the most popular compositions in our 

 language." In 1654 the second edition of the ' Reliquiae ' and in 1655 

 the second of the 'Angler* appeared. Between this period and 1658 

 all trace of Walton is lost. In 1658 Dr. Donne's Life was first pub- 

 lished as a separate work. At the Restoration, two years afterwards, 

 Walton testified his joy by addressing an ' Humble Eclogue ' on the 

 subject to Alexander Brome, printed with that writer's poems, and 

 published in 1661. 



During the troubled times preceding the Restoration, Walton had 

 become intimate with Drs. Morley and Sanderson, who were now 

 elevated to the respective sees of Worcester and Lincoln. Another 

 friend of Walton's, Dr. King, was also reinstated in the see of Chiches- 

 ter. In 1662, having again become a widower, he left his residence, 

 which appears to have been in Clerkenwell, and went to reside with 

 Dr. Morley, who was just then made Bishop of Winchester. At this 

 time also he took the lease of a house in Paternoster-row, called tho 

 Cross Keys, which was burned down in the great fire. 



In 1670 the 'Life of George Herbert ' was published, for the mate- 

 rials of which he was indebted to Dr. Henchman, Bishop of London. 

 A collected edition of the ' Lives ' also appeared at this time. 



In 1673 Walton had the happiness of seeing his daughter Aune 

 married to Dr. William Hawkins, a prebendary of Winchester 

 Cathedral. Walton's son is supposed to have been educated by his 

 maternal uncle, Thomas Ken, also a prebendary of the same cathedral, 

 for in 1675 we find them travelling abroad together, a tour on the 

 Continent forming a regular part of the education of those days. 

 Young Walton was soon after admitted at Christchurch, Oxford. In 

 1676 Charles Cotton, Walton's well-known coadjutor in the later 

 editions of the ' Complete Angler ' (Cotton contributing a treatise on 

 fly-fishing to that work), comes into notice. [COTTON, CHARLES.] He 

 built the fishing-house on the banks of the Dove, near his own house, 

 Beresford Hall, and there Walton's old age found the ease and retire- 

 ment which he so well deserved. In the year 1678 his last literary 

 efforts appeared; the Life of his friend Bishop Sanderson, and an 

 introduction to a poem by John Chalkhill, entitled 'Thealma aud 

 Clearchus,' concerning which strange mistakes have been made. Many 

 persons attributed it to Walton himself, but Sir Harris Nicolas has 

 proved that the family of Walton's second wife intermarried with a 

 family of this name, and through them the poem came into Walton's 

 hands. An anonymous tract, printed in 1680, entitled 'Love and 

 Truth,' is attributed -to Walton, but upon slender authority. Waltou 

 died at the house of his son-in-law, during a severe frost, on the 15th 

 of December 1683, and lies buried in Winchester Cathedral. 



Walton's son became a canon of Salisbury Cathedral, and is said to 

 have contributed largely to Walker's ' Sufferings of the Clergy,' and 

 to have most hospitably received Bishop Ken when deprived of his 

 bishopric. He died December 29, 1719, and Anne Walton in 1715. 

 There are no descendants of the name of Walton living. A good 

 portrait of ' Old Izaak,' by Houseman, was bequeathed by a descendant 

 to the National Gallery. 



There are many editions of the 'Complete Angler,' from that of 

 1653 to the present time. That of 1833 is a splendid work iu two 

 quarto volumes, edited by Sir H. Nicolas, who has written the first 

 good Life of Walton. There was also an edition of all Walton's works 

 by Major, in 1823. Dr. Zouch wrote a poor Life of Walton, prefixed 

 to an edition of his ' Lives.' 



WAL WORTH, SIR W. [RICHARD II.] 



WANLEY, REV. NATHANIEL, is the author or compiler of a 

 work which first appeared in a folio volume in 1678, and has been, 

 often reprinted in various forms, entitled ' Wonders of the Little 

 World.' The little world is the microcosm, man, and the work con- 

 sists of a large collection of remarkable stories illustrative of human 

 nature. They are selected however with no judgment : incredibilities 

 and exploded fictions are as welcome to the omnivorous collector as 

 the best established facts ; and the book in truth is of little or no 

 value. Wanley was born at Leicester in 1633, studied at Trinity 

 College, Oxford, took his degree of B.A. in 1653, that of M.A. in 1657; 

 seems then to have been appointed minister at Beeby in Leicester- 

 shire, which he was when he published at London, in 1658, a tract 

 entitled ' Vox Dei, or the Great Duty of Self-Reflection upon a Man's 

 own Ways; ' afterwards became vicar of Trinity Church in Coventry, 

 and died in 16SO. 



WANLEY, HUMPHREY, was the son of the Rev. Nathaniel 

 Wauley, and was born at Coventry, 21st of March 1672. He is said to 

 have been first intended for a limner, and afterwards to have been put 

 to some trade ; but he had been early smitten with a taste for the 

 study of old books and other antiquities; and besides, he had 



