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first wife, Rachel, is entered, and from Prebendary Bowles' Life of Bishop Ken, where is exhibited, from Izaak Walton's own large octavo, splendidly bound," book of common prayer, an extract containing his memoranda on the fly-leaves. One item is, Rachel, died 1640." Walton's direct consanguinity with Archbishop Cranmer has been insisted on, but in Major's edition of the Angler,' published 1823, a note is appended, which shows, from a passage in the introduction to his life of Hooker, that the opinion is incorrect. From this passage, it seems perfectly clear that Walton's first wife was grandniece to Cranmer, and that his affinity with "that first and brightest ornament of the Reformation," though perhaps as such equally honourable to his name, was gained by marriage only.

Walton was a man of kind feelings and domestic manners, sincere and unaffected in his piety, firm in his friendship, and of warm-hearted generosity. Indeed his character seems to have been of that quiet, amiable, reflective cast, which attracts surely but by almost imperceptible degrees, our full confidence and unqualified esteem. He deeply sympathised with the king, and persevered in the most inviolable attachment to the royal cause. In many of his writings he pathetically laments the afflictions of his sovereign, and the wretched condition of his beloved country, involved in all the miseries of intestine dissensions. In 1643 he retired to a small estate in Staffordshire, not far from Stafford. His property was not by any means large, and he was, according to his own words, a sufferer during the civil wars. When the covenanters paraded the covenant on their pikes and in their hats, "This," says he, "I saw; and suffered by it. But when I look back upon the ruin of families, the bloodshed, the decay of common honesty, and how the former piety and plain-dealing of this now sinful nation is turned into cruelty and cunning: when I consider this, I praise God that he prevented me from being of that party which helped to bring in this covenant, and those sad confusions that have followed it."

Walton is more generally known as a good fisherman, and a lover of good songs, than as a centre of friendship and love, radiating peace and happiness on all who came within the sphere of his influence, the respected and beloved intimate of the great and good, and the pious protector of persecuted piety. His connexion with Bishop Morley constitutes an important feature in his life. The biographer of Ken thus describes its origin

"The honest angler, who had left London in 1643, when the storm fell on the communion to which he was so ardently attached, and when, as Wood says, he found it dangerous for honest men to be there,' in those days of presbyterian persecution, retired from his shop at the corner of Chancery-lane, and having a cottage near the place where he was born, he removed his humble Lares-his affectionate and pious wife, the sister of Ken-and retired with his angle to his obscure and humble habitation, his own small property, near Stafford.

"Here, after a placid day spent on the margin of the solitary Trent or Dove, musing on the olden times, he returned at evening to the humble home of love-to the evening hymn of his wife-to his infant

Introductory Essay, p. 31.

daughter, afterwards the wife of Dr Hawkins-to his bible-and to the consolation of his proscribed prayer-book.

"This humble and affectionate party was joined by Morley, after he had been expelled from Christchurch, March 1747-8. In his lives of Herbert and Hooker, written under Morley's splendid roof, and published 1670, Walton speaks of the knowledge derived from his friend, with whom he had been acquainted forty years.' And now, with congenial feelings in his day of adversity, Morley passed the year before he left England in the cottage of his humble, pious, honest friend Izaak.

6

"Here was the proscribed service of the church of England performed daily in secrecy by the faithful minister of Christ and his church, now fallen on evil days;' and we can hardly conceive a more affecting group-the simple, placid, apostolic Piscator-Kenna, his dutiful, pious, prudent, and beloved wife, the sister of Ken-the infant child and the faithful minister of the church, dispossessed of all worldly wealth, and here finding shelter, and peace, and prayer."

The poverty of Izaak is here set in too strong a light; he had not, it is true, the revenue of a bishop, but his poverty was quite com. parative. He enjoyed a competence, and was content; he had enough, and to spare; and his cottage door was opened with a ready and affectionate welcome to the destitute Morley, whom he sheltered and fed as long as he chose to remain. Izaak was fervently attached to his wife, and usually spoke of and addressed her by her maiden-name, femininised Kenna,—thus investing with an air of poetry and refinement his most familiar and constant companion. How happy and inherently worthy a couple must they have been, who could thus deprive familiarity of the venom of disregard with which it is charged, and with which it usually impregnates the soil wherever it is permitted to grow. Izaak's love of fishing-his reflective turn of mind-his ever-stirring affection for his Kenna-his unambitious spirit-and withal, his tact in this higher strain of poetry-have each contributed a note in the touching harmony of the following Angler's Wish,' written by himself:

I in these flow'ry meads would be;
These crystal streams should solace me;
To whose harmonious bubbling noise,

I with my angle would rejoice,

Sit here and see the turtle dove
Court his chaste mate to acts of love;

Or on that bank, feel the west wind
Breathe health and plenty; please my mind
To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flow'rs,
And then wash'd off by April show'rs:

Here, hear my Kenna sing a song,
There, see a blackbird feed her young.

Or a leverock build her nest;
Here, give my weary spirits rest,

And raise my low-pitch'd thoughts above

Earth, or what poor mortals love:

Thus, free from law-suits, and the voico
Of princes' courts, I would rejoice.

Or with my Bryan and a book,
Loiter long days near Shawford brook;
There sit by him and eat my meat,
There see the sun both rise and set,
There bid good morning to next day,
There meditate my time away;

And angle on, and beg to have

A quiet passage to a welcome grave.

Izaak Walton has been termed "the common father of all anglers ;" indeed all subsequent writers on the subject have cited him as chief authority. "The precepts of angling," says Sir John Hawkins, "till Walton's time, were propagated from age to age chiefly by tradition; but he, unwilling to conceal from the world those assistances which his long practice and experience enabled him to give, published, in 1653, his Complete Angler, in a very elegant small duodecimo, adorned with exquisite cuts of most of the fish mentioned in it. And let no man imagine that a work on such a subject must necessarily be unentertaining, or trifling, or even uninstructive; for the contrary will most evidently appear from a perusal of this most excellent piece, whichwhether we consider the elegant simplicity of his style, the ease and unaffected humour of the dialogue, the lovely scenes which it delineates, the enchanting pastoral poetry which it contains, or the fine morality it so sweetly inculcates-has hardly its fellow in any of the modern languages." It is certainly but too true, that as Sir John Hawkins says, there are very few who could reason, contemplate, instruct, converse, jest, sing, and recite verses, with that sober pleasantry, that unlicentious hil arity, that Piscator does. Some opinion may be formed of the estimation in which the Complete Angler was held in the time of its author, from the fact that the fifth edition appeared in the 23d year after its first publication.

The Complete Angler has happened to be the first of Walton's publications mentioned here, but it was in fact preceded by two biographies, one of Dr John Donne, dean of St Paul's and vicar of St Dunstan's in the West, whom he frequently heard and much admired -and at length, to use his own words, became his convert. To his life was appended a collection of the Doctor's sermons, and the whole published in folio. The other was the life of Sir Henry Wotton, who had occupied himself on the compilation of a life of Dr Donne, and at whose desire Walton had collected materials for the Doctor's history. Sir Henry dying while the work was yet unfinished, Walton took it up, and completed it, and afterwards, at the king's request, wrote a life of Sir Henry himself. About two years after the restoration he wrote the life of Mr Richard Hooker, author of the Ecclesiastical Polity;' he was induced to undertake this by his friend, Dr Gilbert Sheldon, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, who by the way was an angler. Sir William Dugdale, speaking of the three posthumous books of the 'Ecclesiastical Polity,' refers the reader "to that seasonable historical discourse lately compiled and published with great judgment and integrity, by that much deserving person, Mr Izaak Walton."

The life of Mr George Herbert seems to have been written next after Hooker's: it was first published in 1670. Walton professes to have been a stranger to the person of Herbert, and though his life of

him was, as he assures us, a free-will offering, it abounds with curious information, and is in no way inferior to any of the former. The lives of Hooker and Herbert, it is said, were written under the roof of Walton's attached friend, Morley, who had returned to England and was then bishop of Winchester; which seems to accord with Wood's account, that "after his quitting London, he lived mostly in the families of the eminent clergy of that time," to whom his unaffected piety, amiable manners, staunch friendship, and delight in recording the history of good men, must have endeared him.

In 1676, the eighty-third year of his life, Walton was preparing a fifth and enlarged edition of the Angler,' when Mr C. Cotton of Beresford, in Staffordshire, whom he had adopted as a son, wrote a second part, on Fly-fishing, of which Walton, though an expert angler, knew little, being indebted for what he has said on this subject chiefly to his friend Mr Thomas Barker, author of a book entitled, 'Barker's delight, or the art of Angling.'

In the same year, notwithstanding his age, he undertook to write a life of Bishop Sanderson, which was published, together with some of the Bishop's writings, and a sermon of Hooker's, in 1677. The period when the faculties of men usually begin to decline, had long passed, when he undertook this life; yet far from lacking the excellencies which distinguish the former lives, it abounds with evidences of a vigorous imagination, sound judgment, and memory unimpaired. Sufficient commendation of these productions would be found in the fact that 'Walton's Lives' was a very favourite book of Dr Johnson,-one which, as Boswell states, he not only read but studied. One short passage the Doctor has pointed out as affording him peculiar delight, and much food for reflection; it forms the concluding paragraph of Sanderson's Life" Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence changed this for a better life:-It is now too late to wish that mine may be like his; for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age; and God knows it hath not; but I most humbly beseech Almighty God that my death may; and I do as earnestly beg that if any reader shall receive any satisfaction from this very plain, and as true relation, he will be so charitable as to say Amen."

It appears that Walton had contemplated writing the life of Sir Henry Savile, several letters relating to it having been found. He also undertook to collect materials for a life of Hales. In 1683, when he was ninety years old, he published Thealma and Clearchus,' a pastoral history, in smooth and easy verse, written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq., an acquaintance and friend of Edmund Spenser; to this poem he wrote a preface, containing a very amiable character of the author. He lived but a very little time after this publication, for, as Wood says, he ended his days on the 15th of December, 1683, during the great frost, at Winchester, in the house of Dr William Hawkins, a prebendary of that cathedral, where he lies buried. On a large, flat, black marble stone, is an inscription to his memory, the poetry of which has very little to recommend it.

Edmund Castell, D. D.

BORN A. D. 1606.-DIED A. D. 1685.

THIS learned and industrious divine was born in 1606 at Hatley in Cambridgeshire. He entered Emmanuel college, Cambridge, in 1621, and resided in that college for several years, but ultimately removed to St John's college in order to enjoy the use of its library, which was of special service to him in compiling his 'Lexicon Heptaglotton.' On this magnificent work he expended the labours of eighteen years, and a sum of twelve thousand pounds. This fact is stated by Hearne, on the authority of a letter from Dr Castell himself. It is likewise confirmed by an advertisement in the London Gazette, in which Castell informs the subscribers to his lexicon, that they may send for their copies of "that long-expected, often, and many ways most dismally obstructed and interrupted work, which is now fully finished: (the author) having laboured therein eighteen years,-expended not so little as £12,000, besides that which has been brought in by benefactors and subscribers."

In 1666, Castell was appointed king's chaplain, and also professor of Arabic at Cambridge; and in 1668, he obtained a prebend in Canterbury. These appointments assisted to relieve him a little under the pressure of the pecuniary embarrassments in which his lexicon had involved him; but the publication of the work itself next year failed to afford him any compensation either for his labour or expenses. The age could not appreciate its value, and the copies lay unsold upon his hands.

Dr Walker received eminent assistance from Dr Castell in preparing his celebrated polyglott bible. The latter not only collated the Samaritan, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, but even aided the publication from his own funds, besides contributing his own labours gratuitously. His only other work was a thin quarto, entitled, Sol Angliæ Oriens auspiciis Caroli II. Regum gloriosissimi.' He died at Higham Gobion in 1685. The great object of Castell's life was the pursuit of oriental literature. In this he spared no labour and no expense that a fortune at one time liberal could supply. He bequeathed his valuable collection of manuscripts to the university of Cambridge. It is supposed that about 500 of his lexicons were unsold at his death. These were placed by his niece and executrix in a room of a house at Martin in Surrey, where for many years they lay exposed to the unmolested depredations of rats and other vermin. The consequence was, that when they came into the possession of this lady's executors, scarcely one complete volume could be formed out of the remainder, and the whole load of learned rags brought only seven pounds!