Introduction 



Giffbrd's criticism upon this is justifiably severe. " Izaak Walton," 

 he writes, " cannot be mentioned without respect ; but his letter was 

 written nearly half a century after Jonson's death, and when the 

 writer was in his eighty-seventh year. It is made up of the common 

 stories of the time, and a few anecdotes procured, while he was 

 writing, from the Bishop of Winchester, who must himself, at the 

 date of Izaak's letter, have been verging on ninety. It is not easy 

 to discover what was the Bishop's and what was Walton's, but on 

 these Wood constructed his Life of Jonson. He brings little of his 

 own but a few dates." 



In 1683 Walton had reached the advanced age of ninety, and if 

 the theory which makes himself the real author of " Thealma and 

 Clear chus, a Pastoral History, in smooth and easie verse," which he 

 published this year, be true, it may well be an example of that second 

 childhood's tenderness towards their early verses which is often 

 observed to overcome the aging prose-writer. However, Walton 

 declared the poem to have been " written long since, by John Chalk- 

 hill Esqre ; an Acquaint and Friend of Edmund Spencer," and as 

 there were more than one John Chalkhill among his second wife's 

 connections, and as even so innocent a dissimulation would probably 

 have been repugnant to Walton, there seems no good ground for 

 doubting his statement. Sir Harris Nicolas will not hear of Walton 

 being the author, but Lowell, on the other hand, is of opinion that 

 Walton very much tinkered his friend's poem and that it is " mainly 

 Walton's as it now stands." 



The publication of Thealma and Clearchus brings Walton's literary 

 life to an end, and here I may take the opportunity of remarking 

 that Walton's poetry, which the reader may study for himself in the 

 appendix, has perhaps been a little unduly depreciated. It is often 

 no doubt little more than versified prose, but " poetry " of this 

 order shares the advantage of the necessity imposed upon prose of 

 having something, however prosaic, to say. Moreover, the same 

 downright sincerity of feeling, which so often makes poetry of his 

 prose, comes to the rescue of his verse also, verse which seldom lacks 

 the prose excellence of apt and pithy phrase. On the other hand, in 

 Lowell's opinion, Walton's prose, like that of many another prose- 



Iviii 



