Polyglotta, the Prolegomena, and Appendix. Wherein, among other things, the certainty, integrity, and the divine authority, of the original text is defended against the consequences of Atheists, Papists, Anti-Scripturists, &c. inferred from the various readings and novelty of the Hebrew points, by the author of the said Considerations; the Biblia Polyglotta and translations therein exhibited, with the various readings, prolegomena, and appendix, vindicated from his aspersions and calumnies; and the questions about the punctuation of the Hebrew text, the various readings, and the ancient Hebrew character, briefly handled," 8vo. These prolegomena, which have always been admired, and afford indeed the principal monument of his learning, consist of sixteen parts: 1. Of the nature, origin, division, number, changes, and use of languages. 2. Of letters, or characters, their wonderful use, origin and first invention, and their diversity in the chief languages. 3. Of the Hebrew tongue, its antiquity, preservation, change, excellency, and use, ancient characters, vowel points, and accents. 4. Of the principal editions of the Bible. 5. Of the translations of the Bible. 6. Of the various readings in the Holy Scripture. 7. Of the integrity and authority of the original texts. 8. Of the Masora, Keri, and Ketib, various readings of the Eastern and Western Jews, Ben Ascher, and Ben Napthali, and of the Cabala. 9. Of the Septuagint, and other Greek translations. 10. Of the Latin Vulgate. 11. Of the Samaritan Pentateuch,, and the versions of the same. 12. Of the Chaldee language, and versions. 13. Of the Syriac tongue, and versions. 14. Of the Arabic language and versions. 15. Of the Ethiopic tongue and versions; and, 16. Of the Persian language and versions. As these instructive prolegomena were highly valued by scholars on the continent, they were reprinted at Zurich in 1573, fol. by Heidegger, with Drusius's collection of Hebrew proverbs; and about 1777 Dr. Dathe printed an edition at Leipsic in 8vo, with a preface containing many judicious and learned remarks on several of Dr. Walton's opinions.

Nine languages, as we have observed, are used in this Polyglott, yet there is no one book in the whole Bible printed in so many. In the New Testament, the four evangelists are in six languages; the other books only in five; and those of Judith and the Maccabees only in three.

The Septuagint version is printed from the edition at Rome in 1587. The Latin is the Vulgate of Clement VIII. But for these and many other particulars of the history and progress of this work, so great an honour to the English press, we must refer to Dr. Clark's Bibliographical Dictionary, and that invaluable fund of information, Mr. Nichols's Literary Anecdotes. The alterations in the preface to the Polyglott, in which the compliments to Cromwell are omitted or altered so as to suit Charles II. have been long the topic of curious discussion, which has had the effect to give a factitious value to the copies that happen to have the preface unaltered. This was a few years ago in some measure destroyed by Mr. Lunn, the bookseller, who printed a fac simile of the republican preface, as it has been called, which may be added by the possessors of the royal copies.

66

After the restoration, Dr. Walton had the honour to present the Polyglott Bible to Charles II., who made him chaplain in ordinary, and soon after promoted him to the bishopric of Chester. In September 1661, he went to take possession of his see; and was met upon the road, and received with such a concourse of gentry, clergy, militia both of the city and county, and with such acclamations of thousands of the people, as had never been known upon any such occasion. This was on the 10th of September, and on the 11th he was installed with much ceremony; "a day," says Wood, not to be forgotten by all the true sons of the Church of England, though cursed then in private by the most rascally faction and crop-eared whelps of those parts, who did their endeavours to make it a May-game and a piece of foppery." This glory, however, which attended bishop Walton, though it seems to have been great, was yet short-lived; for, returning to London, he died at his house in Aldersgate-street, Nov. the 29th following, and was interred in St. Paul's cathedral, where a monument with a Latin inscription was erected to his memory, of which a broken stone now only remains, with a few words of the inscription, in the vault of St. Faith's under St. Paul's. Dr. Walton was twice married. His first wife was Anne, of the Claxton family of Suffolk. She died May 25, 1640, aged forty-three, and was buried in the chancel of Sundon church, where a handsome monument was erected to her memory. His second wife was Jane, daughter to the celebrated Dr. Fuller, vicar of St. Giles's Cripplegate. Dr. Walton had published at London,

in 1655, "Introductio ad lectionem Linguarum Orientalium," in 8vo.1

WALTON (GEORGE), a gallaut naval officer, memorable for the brevity of his dispatches, appears to have been of obscure origin, nor is any thing known of his history until his appointment, in 1692, to be first lieutenant of the Devonshire, an eighty-gun ship. From this time we have only accounts of his removals from one ship to another, without any opportunity of particularly displaying his courage, until 1718, when he commanded the Canterbury of sixty guns, and was sent under the command of sir George Byng to the Mediterranean: On the 11th of August, the British fleet, then off Sicily, which had during the preceding day and night, been in pursuit of the Spaniards, having come up so close to them as to render an engagement unavoidable, the marquis de Mari, one of their rear admirals, separated from the body of the fleet, and ran in for the Sicilian shore, with six ships of war, and all the gallies, store-ships, bomb-ketches, and fire-ships. Captain Walton was immediately detached after them with six ships of the line, by the commanderin-chief, who himself pursued the remainder, and soon began the attack, the issue of which was, that he captured four Spanish ships of war, one of them mounting sixty guns, commanded by rear admiral Mari himself, one of fifty-four, one of forty, and one of twenty-four guns, with a bomb-vessel and a ship laden with arms; and burnt one ship of war mounting fifty-four guns, two of forty, and one of thirty, a fire-ship, and a bomb-ketch. It may admit of some dispute, whether this brave officer derived a greater degree of popular favour from the gallantry of his conduct, or the very singular account he rendered of it to his commander-in-chief, and to the world. The whole of his dispatches were comprised in the following laconic note: Canterbury, off Syracuse, Aug. 16, 1718. "We have taken and destroyed all the Spanish ships and vessels that were upon the coast, the number as per margin. I am, &c. GEORGE WALTON."

«Sir,

His behaviour on this occasion procured him the honour of knighthood immediately on his return. He afterwards rose by the usual gradations to the rank of admiral of the blue, and was employed in various expeditions, but with

1 Biog. Brit.-Ath. Ox. vol. II.-Gen. Dict.-Lloyd's Memoirs.-Walker's Sufferings, &c.

out having any opportunity of acquiring additional distinction. In 1735 he retired altogether from active service on a pension of 600l. a year, and died in 1740. 1

1

WALTON (ISAAC, or, as he used to write it, IZAAK), a celebrated writer on the art of angling, and the author of some valuable lives, was born at Stafford in August 1593. His first settlement in London, as a shopkeeper, was in the Royal Burse in Cornhill, built by sir T. Gresham, and finished in 1567. In this situation he could scarcely be said to have had elbow-room; for, the shops over the Burse were but seven feet and a half long, and five wide; yet he carried on his trade till some time before 1624, when "he dwelt on the north side of Fleet- street, in a house two doors west of the end of Chancery-lane, and abutting on a messuage known by the sign of the Harrow;" by which sign the old timber-house at the south-west corner of Chancery-lane, in Fleet-street, till within these few years, was known. A citizen of this age would almost as much disdain to admit of a tenant for half his shop, as a knight would to ride double; though the brethren of one of the most ancient orders of the world were so little above this practice, that their common seal was the device of two riding one horse. He married probably about 1632; for in that year he lived in a house in Chancery-lane, a few doors higher up on the left hand than the former, and described by the occupation of a sempster or milliner. The former of these might be his own proper trade; and the latter, as being a feminine occupation, might be carried on by his wife: she, it appears, was Anne, the daughter of Mr. Thomas Ken, of Furnival's-inn, and sister of Thomas, afterwards Dr. Ken, bishop of Bath and Wells. About 1643 he left London, and, with a fortune very far short of what would now be called a competency, seems to have retired altogether from business. While he continued in London, his favourite recreation was angling, in which he was the greatest proficient of his time; and, indeed, so great were his skill and experience in that art, that there is scarcely any writer on the subject since his time who has not made the rules and practice of Walton his very foundation. It is, therefore, with the greatest propriety that Langbaine calls him "the common father of all anglers." The river that he seems mostly to have frequented

1 Campbell's Lives of the Admirals.-Charnock's Biog. Navalis.

for this purpose was the Lea, which has it source above Ware in Hertfordshire, and falls into the Thames a little below Blackwall; unless we will suppose that the vicinity of the New River to the place of his habitation might sometimes tempt him out with his friends, honest Nat. and R. Roe, whose loss he so pathetically mentions, to spend an afternoon there. In 1662 he was by death deprived of the solace and comfort of a good wife, as appears by a monumental inscription in the cathedral church of Wor

cester.

Living, while in London, in the parish of St. Dunstan in the West, of which Dr. John Donne, dean of St. Paul's, was vicar, he became of course a frequent hearer of that excellent preacher, and at length, as he himself expresses it, his convert. Upon his decease, in 1631, sir H. Wotton requested Walton to collect materials for a life of the doctor, which sir Henry had undertaken to write; but, sir Henry dying before he had completed the life, Walton undertook it himself; and in 1640 finished and published it, with a collection of the doctor's sermons, in folio. Sir H. Wotton dying in 1639, Walton was importuned by King to undertake the writing of his life also; and it was finished about 1644. The precepts of angling, that is, the rules and directions for taking fish with a hook and line, till Walton's time, having hardly ever been reduced to writing, were propagated from age to age chiefly by tradition; but Walton, whose benevolent and communicative temper appears in almost every line of his writings, unwilling to conceal from the world those assistances which his long practice and experience enabled him, perhaps the best of any man of his time, to give, in 1653 published in a very elegant manner his "Complete Angler, or Contemplative Man's Recreation," in small 12mo, adorned with exquisite cuts of most of the fish mentioned in it. The artist who engraved them has been so modest as to conceal his name; but there is great reason to suppose they are the work of Lombart, who is mentioned in the "Sculptura" of Mr. Evelyn; and also that the plates were of steel. Complete Angler" came into the world attended with encomiastic verses by several writers of that day. What reception in general the book met with may be naturally inferred from the dates of the subsequent editions; the second came abroad in 1655; the third in 1664; the fourth in 1668, and the fifth and last in 1676. Sir John Hawkins

"The