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

WALTON (GEORGE), a gallant 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 adinirals, 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 guus, 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

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

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 Anue, 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 be 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 an-. glers." 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. "The 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

had traced the several variations which the author from time to time made in these subsequent editions, as well by adding new facts and discoveries as by enlarging on the more entertaining parts of the dialogue. The third and fourth editions of his book have several entire new chapters; and the fifth, the last of the editions published in his life-time, contains no less than eight chapters more than the first, and twenty pages more than the fourth. Not having the advantage of a learned education, it may seem unaccountable that Walton so frequently cites authors that have written only in Latin, as Gesner, Cardan, Aldrovandus, Rondeletius, and even Albertus Magnus; but it may be observed, that the voluminous history of animals, of which the first of these was author, is in effect translated into English by Mr. Edward Topsel, a learned divine, chaplain, as it seems, in the church of St. Botolph, Aldersgate, to Dr. Neile, dean of Westminster: the translation was published in 1658, and, containing in it numberless particulars concerning frogs, serpents, caterpillars, and other animals, though not of fish, extracted from the other writers above-named, and others, with their names to the respective facts, it furnished Walton with a great variety of intelligence, of which in the later editions of his book he has carefully availed himself: it was therefore through the medium of this translation alone that he was enabled to cite the other authors mentioned above; vouching the authority of the original writers, as he elsewhere does sir Francis Bacon, whenever occasion occurs to mention his natural history, or any other of his works. Pliny was translated to his hand by Dr. Philemon Holland; as were also Janus Dubravius "de Piscinis & Piscium natura," and Lebault's "Maison Rustique," so often referred to by him in the course of his work. Nor did the reputation of "The Complete Angler" subsist only in the opinions of those for whose use it was more peculiarly calculated; but even the learned, either from the known character of the author, or those internal evidences of judgment and veracity contained in it, considered it as a work of merit, and for various purposes referred to its authority. Dr. Thomas Fuller, in his "Worthies," whenever he has occasion to speak of fish, uses his very words. Dr. Plot, in his "History of Staffordshire," has, on the authority of our author, related two of the instances of the voracity of the pike, and confirmed them by two other signal ones, that had then lately fallen out in

that county. These are testimonies in favour of Walton's authority in matters respecting fish and fishing; and it will hardly be thought a diminution of that of Fuller to say, that he was acquainted with, and a friend of, the person whom he thus implicitly commends. About two years after the restoration, Walton wrote the life of Mr. Richard Hooker, author of the "Ecclesiastical Polity:" he was enjoined to undertake this work by his friend Dr. Gilbert Sheldon, afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, who, by the way, was an angler. Bishop King, in a letter to the author, says of this life, "I have often seen Mr. Hooker with my father, who was afterwards bishop of London, from whom, and others at that time, I have heard of the most material passages which you relate in the history of his life." 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. Isaac Walton."

The life of Mr. George Herbert, as it stands the fourth and last in the volume in which that and the three former are collected, seems to have been written the next after Hooker's it was first published in 1670. Walton professes himself to have been a stranger to the person of Herbert; and though he assures us his life of him was a free-will offering, it abounds with curious information, and is no way inferior to any of the former. Two of these lives, viz. those of Hooker and Herbert, we are told, were written under the root of Walton's good friend, and patron Dr. George Morley, bishop of Winchester; which seems to agree with Wood's account, that, "after his quitting London, he lived mostly in the families of the eminent clergy of that time;" and none who consider the inoffensiveness of his manners and the pains he took in celebrating the lives and actions of good men, can doubt his being much beloved by them.

In 1670, these lives were collected and published in octavo, with a dedication to the above bishop of Winchester, and a preface, containing the motives for writing them; this preface is followed by a copy of verses, by his intimate friend and adopted son, Charles Cotton, of Beresford in Staffordshire, esq. the author of the second part of the "Complete Angler." The " Complete Angler" having, in the space of twenty-three years, gone through four