Till your kind hand unveiled her lovely face, gave her vigor to exert her rays.

And

Happy old man! whose worth all mankind knows,
Except himself; who charitably shows,

The ready road to virtue and to praise,
The road to many long and happy days,
The noble arts of generous piety,
And how to compass true felicity;
Hence did he learn the art of living well;
The bright Thealma was his oracle :
Inspired by her he knows no anxious cares,
Through near a century of pleasant years:
Easy he lives, and cheerful shall he die,
Well spoken of by late posterity,

As long as Spenser's noble flames shall burn,
And deep devotions throng about his urn;

As long as Chalkhill's venerable name

With noble emulation shall inflame

Ages to come, and swell the rolls of fame.

Your memory shall for ever be secure,

And long beyond our short-lived praise endure;
As Phidias in Minerva's shield did live,

And shared that immortality he alone could give."

The classic reader, when he recollects the story of Phidias, will easily acknowledge the propriety of the encomium passed on Mr. Walton, who secured immortal fame to himself, while he conferred it upon others. That divine artist, having finished his famous statue of Minerva, with the most consummate exquisiteness of skill, afterward impressed his own image so deeply on her buckler, that it could not be effaced without destroying the whole work.

d

The beauties of "Thealma and Clearchus," and the character of the author, are not unaptly described in the editor's own language. He intimates in the Preface, that "the reader will find what the title declares, a Pastoral History, in smooth and easy verse; and will in it find many hopes and fears finely painted and feelingly expressed. And he will find the first so often disappointed, when fullest of desire and expectation; and the latter so often, so strangely, and so unexpectedly relieved by an unforeseen Providence, as may beget in him wonder and amazement." He adds, that “the reader must here also meet with passions heightened by easy and fit descriptions of joy and sorrow; and find also such various events and rewards of innocent truth and undissembled honesty, as is like to leave in him (if he be a good-natured reader) more sympathizing and virtuous impressions than ten times so much time spent in impertinent, critical, and needless disputes about religion." Mr. Chalkhill died before he had perfected even the fable of his poem. He was a man generally known in his time, and as well beloved; for he was humble and obliging in his behaviour, a gentleman, a scholar, very innocent and prudent; and indeed his whole life was useful, quiet, and virtuous. So amiable were the manners, so truly excellent the character of all those, whom Izaak Walton honored with his regard.

When Leoniceni, one of the most profound scholars in Italy, in the fifteenth century, was asked by what art he had, through a period of ninety years, preserved a sound memory, perfect senses, an up

right body, and a vigorous health, he answered, "by innocence, serenity of mind, and temperance." Izaak Walton, having uniformly enjoyed that happy tranquillity, which is the natural concomitant of virtue, came to the grave in a full age, "like as a shock of corn cometh in his season.

"So would I live, such gradual death to find,
Like timely fruit, not shaken by the wind,
But ripely dropping from the sapless bough;
And dying, nothing to myself would owe.
Thus, daily changing, with a duller taste
Of lessening joys, I by degrees would waste;
Still quitting ground by unperceived decay,
And steal myself from life and melt away."
DRYDEN.

He died during the time of the great frost, on the fifteenth day of December, 1683, at Winchester, in the prebendal house of Dr. William Hawkins, his son-in-law, whom he loved as his own son. It was his express desire, that his burial might be near the place of his death, privately, and free from any ostentation or charge. On the stone which covers his remains within the cathedral of that city these lines are yet extant.

"Here resteth the body of

MR. ISAAC WALTON,

Who died the 15th of Decr. 1683.

"Alas! he's gone before,

Gone to return no more.

Our panting breasts aspire
After their aged sire,

Whose well-spent life did last
Full ninety years and past.
But now he hath begun
That which will ne'er be done,
Crowned with eternal bliss,

We wish our souls with his.

VOTIS MODESTIS SIC FLERUNT LIBERI."

He survived his wife many years. She died in 1662, and was buried in our Lady's Chapel, in the Cathedral of Worcester. In the north wall is placed a small oval monument of white marble, on which is the following inscription, written, no doubt, by her affectionate husband.

Here lyeth buried so much as

could die of ANA, the wife of
ISAAC WALTON,
who was

a woman of remarkable prudence
and of the primitive piety: her great
and general knowledge being adorned
with such true humility, and blest
with so much Christian meekness as
made her worthy of a more memorable
Monument.

She died (alas that she is dead)

the 17th of April, 1662, aged 52.
Study to be like her."

He had one son, Isaac, who never married, and a daughter Anne, the wife of Dr. William Hawkins, a prebendary in the church of Winchester, and rector of Droxford in Hampshire. Dr. William Hawkins left a son William, and a daughter Anne. The latter died unmarried. The son, who was a serjeant at law, and author of the well-known treatise of "The Pleas of the Crown," lived and died in the Close of Sarum. He published a short account of the life of his great uncle in 1713, and also his works in 1721, under the title of "The Works of the right reverend, learned, and pious Thomas Ken, D. D., late Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells. 4 vols." These works include only Ken's poetical compositions, which do not merit any great encomium, though they are written in a strain of real piety and devotion. This William Hawkins had a son and three daughters, the eldest of whom, Mrs. Hawes, relict of the Rev. Mr. Hawes, rector of Bemerton, is the only surviving person of that generation.

I have omitted to enumerate among the friends of our biographer, Dr. George Morley, Bishop of Winchester, and Dr. Seth Ward, Bishop of Salisbury. To be esteemed, to be caressed by men of such comprehensive learning and extraordinary abilities, is honorable indeed. They were his choicest and most confidential companions. After the Restoration, he and his daughter had apartments constantly reserved for them in the houses of these two prelates. Here he spent his time in that mutual reciprocation of benevolent offices, which constitutes the blessedness of virtuous friendship. He expe