BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. Ixix 



An attempt has been made to show that Walton himself 

 was the real author of the poem ; and Mr. Singer, the 

 editor of the reprint at Chiswick in 1820, hesitates not to 

 say, that"Chalkhill is but a name unappropriated — a verbal 



phantom — a shadow of a shade In his (Walton's) 



Complete Angler, he has given two songs, to which he 

 has also affixed Chalkhill's name .... and I have some- 

 times been inclined to doubt whether Thealma and Cle- 

 archus might not be a youthful production of his own." 

 Sir Harris Nicholas, however, shows, from the pedigree 

 of the Walton and Kerr families, that there was a con- 

 nexion by the second marriage of the second Mr. Walton's 

 father with the Chalkhill family, w^hich accounts for the 

 manuscript being in Walton's hands. Archdeacon Nares, 

 in an elaborate article furnished to the Gentleman's Maga- 

 zine (vol. xciii., p. 2), copies the inscription of a monument 

 to John Chalkhill, a Fellow of Winchester College, in 

 Winchester Cathedral (1679). Walton's own preface to 

 the poem is enough to settle the matter in the mind of 

 every one who considers the frank and guileless character 

 of our venerable author ; besides which, it is so cha- 

 racteristic that we copy it at length : 



" The Reader will find in this book, what the title de- 

 clares, a Pastoral History, in smooth and easie verse, and 

 will in it find many hopes and fears, finely painted and 

 feel'ngly expressed ; and he will find the first so often 

 disappointed, when fullest of desire and expectation ; and 

 the latter so often, so strangely, and so unexpectedly re- 

 lieved by an unforeseen Providence, as may beget in him 

 wonder and amazement. 



" And the Reader will here also meet with passions 

 heightened by easie and fit descriptions of Joy and Sor- 

 row ; and find also such various wants and rewards of 

 innocent Truth and undissembled Honesty, as is like to 

 leave in him (if he be a good-natured reader) more sym- 

 pathizing and virtuous impressions than ten times as much 



