xcviii LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. [1680, 



If this address was written by Walton, it would seem that he 

 was only the editor, and not the author of the letters ; and there 

 is no other difficulty in considering this to be the case than the 

 circumstance of the tract not being printed by his friend Marriott, 

 who was then living, and who printed all his other works. With 

 respect to the authorship of the letters, it is to be observed that 

 they are both signed " R. W.," instead of" J. W.," or with Walton's 

 more usual abbreviation of his names, " Iz. Wa. ; " that no other 

 instance is known of his having used an imaginary signature ; and 

 that as the writer was personally acquainted with the parties 

 addressed, and even alludes to a conversation which he had with 

 one of them the evening before the date of his first letter, it would 

 be absurd to suppose that he would affix to them any other initials 

 than his own. On the other hand, it may be contended that the 

 two shopkeepers were supposititious persons ; or that before the 

 letters were sent to press, the incongruities above mentioned were 

 purposely made to conceal the author. These hypotheses are, 

 however, opposed by the internal evidence which the letters bear 

 of having been really written under the circumstances described : 

 by the fact that even the most trifling artifice 5 or simulation 

 was repugnant to Walton's disposition ; and that no reasonable 

 cause can be assigned for his wishing to conceal that these letters 

 proceeded from his pen, if he was the author of them. He was 

 then nearly eighty-seven years of age, and must have been too 

 indifferent to the world's praise or censure to have had recourse, 

 for the first time in his life, to anything which bore the appearance 

 of deception. Against these reasons for disbelieving that Walton 

 wrote the letters, there is nothing except a similarity of style, and 

 the memorandum of Archbishop Sancroft ; but the former is 

 always uncertain evidence ; and the latter may be explained by 

 Walton's having merely caused them to be printed, or by a 

 rumour respecting the authorship which might be unfounded. 



The question has, however, been sufficiently discussed ; and it 

 is only necessary to add, that if Walton was the author of these 

 letters, and they were actually written under the circumstances 

 mentioned in them, it would appear that he was at Coventry in 

 February '1668 ; that the two factious shopkeepers were brothers, 

 and his cousins ; that the one to whom the first letter was 

 addressed died before the second was written ; and that they and 



5 Archdeacon Nares well observed, in reference to the authorship of "Thealma and 

 Clearchus," " Let him not be made answerable for what he did not write, and for artifices 

 of fiction which he would surely have considered as nothing less than dishonest." Gentle- 

 man's Magazine, vol. xciii. part ii. p. 419. 



