Izaak Walton was born at Stafford in August 1593. He came early up to London, and took a shop in Cornhill. In 1617–18 he was made one of the Ironmonger’s Company. In 1624 we find him a linen-draper in Fleet Street, near Chancery Lane, and in 1630 he bought a house in the latter thoroughfare. He possessed many noble and clerical friends, whose acquaintance he sedulously cultivated. To the “LXXX. Sermons” of Dr. Donne he prefixed in 1640 his “Life” of that worthy. His “Life of Sir Henry Wotton” appeared in the same year. During the Civil War he retired to Stafford. His “Complete Angler” made its first appearance in 1653. He published the “Life of Hooker” in 1662; the “Life of George Herbert” in 1670 in a first complete edition of the four “Lives;” the “Life of Sanderson” followed in 1678; and, possibly, a work called “Love and Truth” in 1680. He spent the close of his career in the house of his son-in-law, Prebendary Hawkins, in Winchester, where he died in his ninety-first year on the 15th day of December 1683, and was buried in Winchester Cathedral.

Personal

  One of the most interesting memorials of Walton left us is the monogram “I. W.” and the date “1658” scratched by Walton himself on the mural table to Isaac Casaubon in the south transept of Westminster Abbey. Dean Stanley was very fond of pointing this out to his personal friends as he escorted them to the Poets’ Corner; and it is the only desecration ever committed in the Abbey that he heartily forgave.

  Without ambition, save to be in the society of good men, he passed through turmoil, ever companioned by content. For him existence had its trials: he saw all that he held most sacred overthrown; laws broken up; his king publicly murdered; his friends outcasts; his worship proscribed; he himself suffered in property from the raid of the Kirk into England. He underwent many bereavements: child after child he lost, but content he did not lose, nor sweetness of heart, nor belief. He was one of those happy characters which are never found disassociated from unquestioning faith. Of old he might have been the ancient religious Athenian in the opening of Plato’s Republic, or Virgil’s aged gardener. The happiness of such natures would be incomplete without religion, but only by such tranquil and blessed souls can religion be accepted with no doubt or scruple, no dread, and no misgiving.

Complete Angler, 1653

  And I wish the Reader also to take notice, that in writing of it I have made myself a recreation of a recreation; and that it might prove so to him, and not read dull and tediously, I have in several places mixed, not any scurrility, but some innocent, harmless mirth, of which, if thou be severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge; for divines say, there are offences given, and offences not given but taken.

  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).

  I have just been reading a book which I may be too partial to, as it was the delight of my childhood; but I will recommend it to you: it is Izaak Walton’s “Complete Angler.” All the scientific part you may omit in reading. The dialogue is very simple, full of pastoral beauties, and will charm you.

  Let me take this opportunity of recommending the amiable and venerable Isaac Walton’s “Complete Angler;” a work the most singular of its kind, breathing the very spirit of contentment, of quiet, and of unaffected philanthropy, and interspersed with some beautiful relics of poetry, old songs, and ballads.

  That well-known work has an extreme simplicity, and an extreme interest, arising out of its very simplicity. In the description of a fishing-tackle you perceive the piety and humanity of the author’s mind. This is the best pastoral in the language, not excepting Pope’s or Philips’s. We doubt whether Sannazarius’ “Piscatory Eclogues” are equal to the scenes described by Walton on the banks of the River Lea. He gives the feeling of the open air. We walk with him along the dusty road-side, or repose on the banks of the river under a shady tree, and, in watching for the finny prey, imbibe what he beautifully calls “the patience and simplicity of poor, honest fishermen.” We accompany them to their inn at night, and partake of their simple, but delicious fare, while Maud, the pretty milk-maid, at her mother’s desire, sings the classical ditties of Sir Walter Raleigh. Good cheer is not neglected in this work, any more than in “John Buncle,” or any other history which sets a proper value on the good things of life. The prints in the “Complete Angler” give an additional reality and interest to the scenes it describes. While Tottenham Cross shall stand, and longer, thy work, amiable and happy old man, shall last.

  Indeed the “Complete Angler,” whether considered as a treatise on the art of angling, or a beautiful pastoral, abounding in exquisite descriptions of rural scenery, in sentiments of the purest morality, and in unaffected love of the Creator and his works, has long been ranked among the most popular compositions in our language.

  Its simplicity, its sweetness, its natural grace, and happy intermixture of graver strains with the precepts of angling, have rendered this book deservedly popular, and a model which one of the most famous among our late philosophers, and a successful disciple of Isaac Walton in his favorite art, has condescended to imitate.

  Will be recognized by every student of English literature as one of the most precious gems in the language.

  A London linen-draper writes a treatise on Angling, with no other thought, perhaps, than to teach an angler’s subtle craft, but infusing into his art so much of Christian meekness, so deep a feeling for the beauties of earth and sky, such rational loyalty to womanhood, and such simple, child-like love of song, the songs of bird, of milk-maid, and of minstrel, that this little book on fishing has earned its life of two hundred years already, outliving many a more ambitious book, and Izaak Walton has a place of honour amid British authors.

  I am glad to remember that there is such a book in our libraries, even if I understand very little of it, because it is one of the links between the life of the woods and streams and the life of the study, which it would be a great misfortune for us to lose.

  When I would be quiet and go angling it is my custom to carry in my wallet thy pretty book, “The Compleat Angler.” Here, methinks, if I find not trout I shall find content, and good company, and sweet songs, fair milkmaids, and country mirth.

  There are two books which have a place by themselves and side by side in our literature,—Walton’s “Complete Angler” and White’s “Natural History of Selborne;” and they are books, too, which have secured immortality without showing any tincture of imagination or of constructive faculty, in the gift of one or the other of which that distinction commonly lies. They neither stimulate thought nor stir any passionate emotion. If they make us wiser it is indirectly and without attempting it, by making us more cheerful. The purely literary charm of neither of them will alone authorize the place they hold so securely, though, as respects the “Angler,” this charm must be taken more largely into account. They cannot be called popular, because they attract only a limited number of readers, but that number is kept full by new recruits in every generation; and they have survived every peril to which editing could expose them, even the crowning one of illustration. They have this in common, that those who love them find themselves growing more and more to love the authors of them, too. Theirs is an immortality of affection, perhaps the most desirable, as it is the rarest, of all.

  His book holds spicy place among ranks of books, as lavender keeps fresh odor among stores of linen. It is worth any man’s dalliance with the fishing-craft to make him receptive to the simplicities and limpidities of Walton’s “Angler.” I am tempted to say of him again, what I have said of him before in other connection:—very few fine writers of our time could make a better book on such a subject to-day, with all the added information and all the practice of the newspaper columns.

  Unquestionably, “Old Izaak,” as his followers delight to call him, has won the regard and reverence of many generations of anglers throughout the world, not so much because of the literary merit of his book, though that is great, as because of the influence of that rare, restful, humanizing spirit which so largely pervades it. It is for this that the “Complete Angler” occupies, and will, in all likelihood, continue to do so for many and many a day to come, a unique place among the best of our English literature. To all lovers of angling, at any rate, it will never cease to be a classic or to body forth the delightfully unalloyed personality of the writer. Of course, few learners have consulted the book for practical guidance.

  And thou, homely little brown thing with worn leaves, yet more precious to me than all jewels of the earth—come, let me take thee from thy self and hold thee lovingly in my hands and press thee tenderly to this aged and slow-pulsing heart of mine! Dost thou remember how I found thee half a century ago all tumbled in a lot of paltry trash? Did I not joyously possess thee for a sixpence, and have I not cherished thee full sweetly all these years? My Walton, soon must we part forever; when I am gone say unto him who next shall have thee to his own that with his latest breath an old man blessed thee!

  Walton’s “Angler,” 1653, first edition. Rev. J. Brand (1807), £3, 3s. (fine copy). Hunter (1813), £7, 10s. Utterson (1852), £11, 15s. Beckford (1883), fine copy, in green morocco, £87—Bain. Gibson-Craig (1887), £195 (morocco). Gibson-Craig (1888), £23 (imperfect, sold with all faults). G. Wood (Sotheby, 1891), £310 (clean, in original sheepskin). Sotheby (December 1895), £415.

Lives

  He talked of Isaac Walton’s “Lives,” which was one of his most favourite books. Dr. Donne’s Life, he said, was the most perfect of them.

  Izaac Walton, adorned with a guileless simplicity of manners, claims from every good man the tribute of applause. It was his ambition to commend to the reverence of posterity the merits of those excellent persons, whose comprehensive learning and exalted piety will ever endear them in our memories.

  His life of Dr. Donne, the satirist and theologian, contains an account of a vision (the apparition of a beloved wife in England passing before the waking eyes of her husband in Paris) which both for the clearness of the narration and the undoubted authenticity of the event, is among the most interesting that is to be found in the long catalogue of supernatural visitations.

  The life of the “learned and judicious” Mr. Richard Hooker, by Izaak Walton, is one of the most perfect biographies of its kind in literature. But it is biography on its knees; and though it contains some exquisite touches of characterization, it does not, perhaps, convey an adequate impression of the energy and enlargement of the soul whose meekness it so tenderly and reverentially portrays. The individuality of the writer is blended with that of his subject, and much of his representation of Hooker is an unconscious idealization of himself. The intellectual limitations of Walton are felt even while we are most charmed by the sweetness of his spirit, and the mind of the greatest thinker the Church of England has produced is not reflected on the page which celebrates his virtues.

  As a biographer, again, Walton was an innovator. The five short lives which he published, though pale by the side of such work in biography as the end of the eighteenth century introduced, are yet notable as among the earliest which aim at giving us a vivid portrait of the man, instead of a discreet and conventional testimonial. It is to Walton, too, that we owe the idea of illustrating and developing biography by means of correspondence. Without doubt his incorrigible optimism entered into his study of the character of his friends, and it is no part of his inexperience as a portrait-painter that he mixes his colours with so much rosewater. He saw his distinguished acquaintances in that light; he saw them pure, radiant, and stately beyond a mortal guise, and he could not be true to himself unless he gave them the superhuman graces at which we may now smile a little. We sometimes feel that the stiffness of the biographical portrait is irksome to him. But here, as elsewhere, the artist is true to himself.

General

  Izaak Walton hallows any page in which his reverend name appears.

  Not many English authors have possessed a more attractive or strictly idiomatic style, not many have exhibited a wider variety of expression, than Izaak Walton, but Walton had no classical learning.

  Few English prose writers again are better known than Izaak Walton, though it might be difficult to prove that in a matter of pure literature he stands very high. The engaging character of his subjects, and the still more engaging display of his own temper and mode of thought which he makes in almost every sentence, both of his “Complete Angler” and of his hardly less known “Lives,” account for the survival and constant popularity of books which are neither above nor below the better work of their time in literary form.

  He had the purest and the most innocent of minds, he was the master of a style as bright, as sweet, as refreshing and delightful, as fine clean home-spun some time in lavender; he called himself an angler, and he believed in the description with a cordial simplicity whose appeal is more persuasive now than ever. But he was nothing if not the citizen afield—the cockney aweary of Bow Bells and rejoicing in “the sights and sounds of the open landscape.”