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Izaak Walton's Lives in the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Century: A Study of a Cult Object

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SOURCE: Granqvist, Raoul. “Izaak Walton's Lives in the Nineteenth and the Early Twentieth Century: A Study of a Cult Object,” in Studia Neophilologica, 54, No. 2 (1982): 247-61.

[In the essay below, Granqvist traces the way in which 19th-century intellectual trends shaped the interpretation of Walton and his writings.]

Biography in the early nineteenth century was a thriving business. The improved printing facilities, the extension of literacy, and the Sunday school movement were factors that originated and inspired mass production of biographies. The attention paid to biography was widespread and generous. Obscure semi-celebrities, poets, smugglers, peddlers, maniacs, curates, (even animals) were commemorated side by side with famous men such as Pitt the Elder, Wesley, Voltaire, Goldsmith. The purpose behind all this was to commend lives that were thought to be worthy of emulation and condemn unprofitable lives. Much of this literature is worthless; some of it repugnant. Joseph W. Reed says, however, that “it was not quite the Dark Ages of biography either. Much was done in the exhaustive publication of documents and correspondences without which the twentieth century biographer would be lost.”1 Compilers set out to sack old biographies for materials to fill biographical dictionaries and family libraries which, in these days of encyclomania, were immensely popular. And collections of “lives” were edited. This zeal also prompted the reissuing of old biographies. “All these efforts served to consolidate existing biographical information, while benefiting from the public's apparently insatiable appetite for new lives, new facts, and anecdotes”, Reed observes.2 Izaak Walton's Lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert and Robert Sanderson was one of the many books that were restored to posterity.3 In the course of the century this work was to have a number of functions. It is the aim of this article to examine these “functions” as they emerge in the light of the antiquarian and moralistic tendencies that determined the main course of the nineteenth century biography. I have divided the editions or the issues of the Lives into three main categories: the Zouch editions, the Major editions, and the turn-of-the-century editions. I neglect to give collation and bibliographical description of their content, as this would be outside the purpose of the article (and my competence). The Life of John Donne is given special attention for the reasons that Donne is, by any standards, the most interesting literary character in Walton's quintet and that it illustrates and represents different phases in the de-mythologizing of the work.

I

In 1796 there first appeared, in York, the edition of the Lives that was to have so many followers and imitators. The editor, Thomas Zouch (1737-1815), antiquary and divine, undertook the job of annotating Walton's work and supplying it with the kind of documentation he thought it lacked. It was Boswell and Johnson who had first expressed the idea that there was a need for such an annotated edition.4 But it is doubtful whether Johnson, who was an admirer of Walton's skill as a biographer, would have approved of the edition that Zouch turned out. Zouch's massive commentary ignores Walton the artist and the panegyrist. Zouch is preoccupied with treating the biography as contemporary history rather than “pure history”. Had Johnson edited the work—as he had projected—its nineteenth century history would, no doubt, have read differently.

In discussing the eulogies delivered for American revolutionary leaders between 1776-1826, Michael T. Gilmore said that “the true subject of the eulogy is the speaker and his community rather than the character and career of the person nominally portrayed”.5 This is true of the author-subject relationship Walton-Donne; Walton's presence is more apparent than Donne's. But it is equally true of that of Zouch and Donne-Walton. Zouch's ardent wish is to raise a monument for his church, the High Church or the Anglican Church, by restituting and securing Walton's divines for her interests. In the “Preface to the Reader” (1796), he submits to “interpret some traits of their character … sufficient to incite in the reader a desire of acquiring a more intimate knowledge of them”. But as can be seen from the comments interspersed throughout the work, his chief concern is to promote opinions in it that are consonant with Anglicanism. His professed objective, as cited above, smacks of opportunism. He also dedicated the work to Sir Richard Pepper Arden, “a true and firm friend of our ecclesiastical constitution”, who had been his pupil at Cambridge and whose chaplain he became on Sir Richard's appointment as Master of the Rolls.6 Thus the stamp of authority was attached to the work. Repeatedly Zouch stresses Walton's and the divines' attachment to the Church of England and their loyalty to the royal cause.7 He notes in his sketch of Walton's life Walton's “obedience” to his church and his ability to conform and avoid schisms. To Zouch Walton and his divines and the time in which they lived form a single cultural entity, an emblem of an ideal church. The Lives embodied for Zouch and his friends the concept of conformisms and a tool they could use in current theological polemics. Believing that the unity of the church was threatened by the rise of the Evangelical movement on the one hand, and Chartism on the other, conservative Anglicans took Walton to their hearts. The Reverend William Teale contemplating Walton's “virtues of a godly, righteous, and sober life”, attacked the mechanics' institutes, waving in his right hand Walton's Lives. What was wrong with the institutes was, he exclaimed, that

each member is trained to be an original thinker … These institutions have been the training-schools for sedition and heresy, for Chartists and Qwenites. But this is not the actual tendency of sound learning when controlled and directed by religion … Only let our English citizens have a wholesome supply of literature, and drink deeply of those wells of English undefiled, which flow from such writings as those of Shakespeare, Hooker, Bacon, Clarendon, and Wordsworth, and the result will soon be obvious in an orderly and submissive population, having a well grounded attachment to the constitution both in Church and State.8

Not surprisingly, Love and Truth (1680), the peaceful Walton's only exercise in polemics, was popular with the Anglicans. Here Walton attacks non-conformity and dissent, seeing it as a potential danger that in the end might bring popery into England. Zouch edited the tract in 1795, “with the laudable intention of recommending a quiet and peaceful conformity to the Church of England”. He inserted it in the third edition (1817) of the Lives, “to support conformism”.9 The Reverend Teale observed that it contains “very plain and satisfactory answers to the cavils most usually made against the doctrines and discipline of the Church, particularly those portions which we enjoy in common with the Romanists, and against our excellent civil constitution”.10 In Walton and his Lives the Anglican apologists discovered a source of theological subtlety and vitality they so badly needed to counter the ecclesiastical biographies published by the Evangelicals and the Roman Catholics. Walton symbolized for them a faith that was not only divine, but palpably human. Zouch's characterization of “honest Izaak” would be endlessly rehearsed in the century. We face the prototype of the Anglican layman:

mild complacency, forbearance, mature consideration, calm activity, peace, sound understanding, power of thought, discerning attention, and secretely active friendship. Happy in his unblemished integrity, happy in the approbation and esteem of others, he unwraps himself in his own virtue.11

The modesty and piety that Walton or Donne exhibit have their roots, the Anglicans expounded, in revelations or discoveries that are spiritual, but no less personal. Their virtues were neither inspired by intensive Bible reading, nor by stern clerical guidance.12 Donne's “conversion”, as it was rendered by Walton, is an instructive case. As Novarr has shown, Walton takes every opportunity to demonstrate that the impetus of Donne's civil actions was religious. Each detail, each concrete event (and Walton heightens them progressively through the three revisions he made of the work which took him about thirty-five years to complete) is arranged to intensify Donne's holiness. Donne's “conversion” is then no sudden change of mind. It is a slow process, rationally supervised and spiritually evoked. Zouch's marginalia to this section of the Life give evidence of the importance he attached to it: he admired Donne's search and hesitance and congratulated him for in the end finding the right church.13 If Walton then became for Anglicans what Bunyan was for the Puritans, his “deviations”, or those of his heroes, had to be excused or still better accounted for with as much persuasion as possible. And the most convincing way to do this was to enrich the presentation with an abundance of documentation. Thus partisanship could be toned down. At least three things puzzled the Anglican readers of the Life of Donne: the vision, his fasting, and his ars moriendi. To justify Donne's vision, Zouch resorted to current medical expertise where he found it explained;14 Donne's fasting he could tolerate as Donne used it to intensify his prayers;15 as for Donne's obsession with his own approaching death, he could offer no other explanation than Donne's personal idiosyncracy,16 although characteristically Zouch concedes to its possessing educational value. It could instruct readers by its “expression of penitential sorrow, of hope, or confidence in the goodness of God”.17

Zouch's projecting the Lives as an Anglican polemical treatise and Walton as the Anglican layman met occasionally with disapproval. In The Analytical Review (July 1796), he was accused of having exalted the characters of the Church of England and misrepresented the Dissenters and in The Monthly Magazine (May 1803) the attack came from the other camp.18 Zouch retorted and admitted no other interest than that of the enlightened antiquary. “The editor”, he declared, “is not conscious that he has entertained any other calling than that of exhibiting the characters of men with truth and candour, and of paying that tribute of applause which is due to the modest merit of many of our excellent Divines”.19 The majority of Zouch's commentary, which does not in any way draw out moral conclusions or “useful” lessons, concerns the identification of those individuals that Walton names as having influenced the divines. Zouch “adorned” the text, to use the expression made by R. C. Bald, Donne's modern biographer.20 The subsequent editions of Zouch's Lives (1807 and 1817) went further in establishing the book as the Anglican mouthpiece par excellence. The “adornment” process was continued and so was the polemical. Zouch's reply to The Analytical Review was included in the Preface to the second edition, which underlines the significance he attached to it. The third edition of the Lives contains the theological treatise “Reasons of the Present Judgement of the University of Oxford Concerning the Solemn League and Covenant” (1647). The Covenant, a signed agreement between the Scots and the English parliament, professed to maintain the uniformity of the Church of England, abolish popery, and preserve the rule of Parliament and the rights of the Kingdom. These ideas were all consonant with Anglican belief and their presentation, no doubt, together with Walton's popular accounts of the Caroline divines, contributed to their acceptance and respectability. In addition, the two Clarendon Press editions of the Lives (1805 and 1824) also included the tract.21 The Church of England apologists searched the past nostalgically. Donald A. Stauffer's assessment of their quest is unkind, but correct:

The orthodox Anglican biographer of the period, finding the present time uninspired and uninteresting, creates his monuments of piety by means of antiquarian research, as if the great days of the Church of England were already in the past. An Izaak Walton in the eighteenth century would have to look far to find such subjects within the Church of England as Hooker, Donne, Herbert, and Sanderson.22

From its start in 1698 the “Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge” had operated as a publishing institution. Its lists of approved literature were spread all over the world and included classifications such as: “Bibles”, “Books for the Use of the Poor”, “Against Popery”, “Christian Doctrine and Practice”, “Common Vices”.23 At the beginning of the nineteenth century the “S.P.C.K.” was compelled to become more militant and meet the new challenges. “Anti-infidel committees” were established to provide the ever expanding readership and the new “lending libraries” with publications “to arrest the evil and to counteract the effect which already had been produced”.24 The “S.P.C.K.” took the offensive on two fronts. First, it augmented its output and improved its distribution of religious and educational books and tracts; secondly, it began to popularize and standardize its texts. The Bible was furnished with maps and explanatory notes, one-shilling weekly magazines were begun, and reissues were made of “books combining amusement with instruction … which might be considered useful, whether directly or indirectly, for the promoting of the SOCIETY's design”.25 Walton's Lives met all these requirements and was accepted and adopted for publication. It was printed by the publishing house of Rivingtons in 1819, [1828], and 1833.26 In 1835 the Rivingtons, due to their Chartist loyalties, lost the agency and the two remaining editions printed for the Society were published by more conformist companies.27 The Lives, in the form they were presented by the “S.P.C.K.”, combined “instructiveness with amusement”. The popular appeal of Walton's spiritual and hymnal biographies, would arouse the interest of the reader who would then in a state of suspense and devotion, as it were, go on with the rest. To digest the latter section of the Lives, much loyalty to the cause was also needed, as it comprised the hardcore Anglican tract “Reasons of the Present Judgement of the University of Oxford, concerning the Solemn League and Covenant, Negative Oath, Ordinances concerning Discipline and Worship”. The method of appending theological tracts to imaginative literature was natural at a time when almost any written document was expected to convey moral or religious implications. The “S.P.C.K.” editions of the Lives do not incorporate Zouch's comments. Their inclusion would probably have weighed down the theological impact of the work. The Society, undoubtedly, increased its dissemination and prestige among a broad membership, nationally and internationally.

In America interest in the work came relatively late. Not until 1832 did the first American editions appear. One was printed by the Protestant Episcopal Press in New York, the other under the editorship of Edward Young in Boston/Cambridge. Both editions acclaimed to have been the “first”.28 The missionary zeal of the “S.P.C.K.” contributed to its transfer to the USA. Another factor for its mid-century renown in this country was probably the enthusiasm the English Romantic poets had demonstrated for the work. Their dicta and appraisals of Walton and the poets he celebrated were widely quoted and well-known.29 Their role in the restitution of Walton (and of Donne) was far more influential in the USA than in England.

The two 1832 editions—and the editions to come—were based on Zouch. But they suppressed considerably his annotations to accommodate the taste of the readership not concerned with tiresome documentation. No attempt was made either to supplant or corroborate his work with material from other available English sources. For the American editors Zouch is the undisputable authority. The High Church profile of the original is therefore retained, with the usual and obligatory salutations to the “right” and “only” Church. The fact that they all appear within a thirty-year period (between 1832 and 1866)—six in New York and five in Boston/Cambridge—is another extraordinary feature. The reasons for this are many and varied. It is evident that the American Evangelists, like their English counterparts, were finding in the Lives exemplary ideas and virtues to bolster their cause; “romantic” revivalists, guided by contemporary British writers, were introducing old English authors for unwitting audiences; and American publishers were asserting their identity by issuing separate “American” editions (although duplicating or imitating English versions). By the end of the 1860s, the interest in the Zouch editions had waned. The readers had turned to the new English editions which had a fresh air of modernity about them. The austere dogmatism of Zouch could no longer compete.

II

To instil new life into an old biography such as Walton's Lives necessitated a presentation of the individuals which provided copious information about their time, place, and character. A sense of contemporaneity had to be re-created and for this to emerge, accuracy and abundance of detail were not sufficient. Other elements had to be fused into the biography. By drawing parallels it was hoped that the “glorious” past would merge with the reality of the reader. Such comparisons would point to the transience of time and the permanence of certain values. They would also make the accounts more interesting and entertaining and counter or balance the antiquarian fondness for minutiae. These were some of the ideals that the biographers and editors sought to attain. The new classes of readers and the demands set up by educationalists and librarians were decisive in another respect, too. Attention was now paid to the fashion in which books were compiled and presented. This concern affected both the surface and the substance matter. The Zouch editions of the Lives, which we discussed in the previous chapter, would not meet these ideals. Their audience was mainly academic and clerical, their purpose sectarian and polemical. Thus there appeared as early as 1825 an alternative edition of the Lives, which, together with Zouch's, would become the matrix of all nineteenth century “lives”. More effectively than Zouch, it would establish Walton and his divines as principal cult objects.

The editor of the 1825 Lives was John Major, a London bookseller and publisher, whose famous edition of Walton's Compleat Angler (1823) made it one of the most popular books of the English language.30 It was also his desire to make the Lives popular. To achieve this he had to launch an edition that in a number of ways was distinct and different from Zouch's. In the “Introduction”, he declares, with direct address to Zouch, that his purpose is to delight not only the “antiquarian reader”. He expresses a dislike of Zouch's longwindedness and pedantry, yet he meticulously draws on him and, moreover, commissions the antiquarian Richard Thompson to add notes to those already current so that the pages swell out of proportion. What he censures and changes is Zouch's partiality. Major simply characterized the biography a pure “Book of the Church”. He does not advertise it as “Anglican” or use any other sectarian label. He notes that in Walton's narration “Philology and History [have been] handmaid to Morality and Religion”. Major weakened the religious aspect of this dualism, but he would not tamper with the “morality”. On the contrary, he made it—as we shall see soon—more explicit. Major, bookseller as he was, was perhaps more than anything else interested in things external to the text. The Zouch editions were sparsely illustrated and ornamented, a natural expression of the restraint and dignity they were intended to convey. Major's audience and market were different. Illustration or “embellishing” became one of his major concerns. Only in illustrating the Life of Donne, Major includes (1825) ten woodcuts and three copperplates, drawn and engraved by the best London artists of the day.31 The plates variously illustrate or comment on the text. There are, for instance, portraits or pictures of the “south entrance of St. Paul's Cathedral before the Fire of London, being the gate leading to Dr. Donne's monument”, of Dr. Thomas Morton, Bishop of Durham, and of the “vision” (engraved by J. M. Wright after C. Heath's drawing).32 This picture of Donne's revelation of his wife with her dead child in her arms, macabre and sentimental for a modern viewer, is an example of the tendency to use pictorial art to heighten a morality; here Donne's affection for his wife and the laudable intensity of his sorrow. Most of these illustrations accompanied the re-issues of Major's editions up to the 1880s, adding to them a trait of costliness and sumptuousness.33 Even if the reader of Major's edition was not an Anglican scholar, he was as scarce and elegant a specimen as the book itself.34 This realization seems to have dawned upon the editor of the next issue of the Lives that bears Major's hallmark and which was printed for Henry Washbourne in London in 1838. One of the few alterations made was to bring the notes to the foot of the page to facilitate the reading. This editorial improvement would make the book assume the character of a “Library Book” the editor hopes. In the “Introduction” he advertises the book in the following way: “a complete companion to the admirer of the exquisite simplicity of the pure old English Author and the incomparable men he commemorates”. The secularization and popularization of the book had started. It would now appear in “standard library” series and cheap editions mainly for “family usage”: in “Bohn's Standard Library” (1838), “Standard Editions of Popular Authors” [184-], “The Universal Library” (1853), “Bell & Daldy” (1864), and “George Bell & Sons' Standard Works” (1878). The notes attached to these texts are mostly hazardly selected and trivial.

In the tradition of Zouch, most editions of the Lives contained accounts of Walton's life. Up to the mid-century they were modelled on either that of Zouch or of John Hawkins (or a mish-mash of the two). Zouch had, we remember, hailed Walton's conforming type of piety, his staunch Anglicanism and Royalism. But it is Hawkins, the eighteenth century editor of The Compleat Angler (1760), who is responsible for equating Walton's personality with Piscator's, an association which would block critical judgement of Walton's achievement for almost the whole of the nineteenth century. As has been mentioned The Compleat Angler was enormously popular in this century; Horne has recorded some 180 issues or editions between 1760 and 1899. The readers loved Walton and his mouthpiece Piscator, in whom Margaret Bottrall recognized an English prototype, a

champion and expositor of the art of angling … markedly pious, a considerable moralizer, a man who relishes verse and song as well as food and drink, a great lover of the countryside, above all a man of tranquil and contented temper.35

The cult of Walton, i.e. of his charity, humility, homeliness, or any other virtue that an Englishman would name a virtue, reached its zenith in the mid-century. Most Lives sentimentalized the portrait further. His friendship with men so much above him in social position was noted with appreciation and astonishment. It was caused by the spiritual unanimity that there existed between them and their chronicler, it was explained. Walton and his divines formed one single concept. William Wordsworth's verse “Walton's Book of ‘Lives’” was often quoted as an emblematic motto of this unity; most popular were the lines: “The feather whence the pen / Was shaped that traced the lives of these good Men, / Dropped from an Angel's wing.”36 It is bewildering then to find that the Major editions up to 1857 (i.e. 1825, 1838, 1840, 1845) did not contain any more comprehensive account of Walton's life. One reason for the omission may have been the very canonization of Walton and the assumption that nothing more could or should be adduced. Another, very divergent reason, may have been a growing dissatisfaction with the portrait. In 1857, however, a “memoir” was added to the Major Lives. It was written by William Dowling, who wished to “exhibit the intellectual and moral character of Walton, and those qualities which made him the prized friend of so many famous men”.37 It is still the exemplary conduct of Walton, in combination with his ability to make friends with his superiors, that qualify Dowling's attempt at writing the “life”. Little seems to have changed. The measure of quality was Walton's moral earnestness, not his skill in selection, organizing, and style, for which he is now reputed. And the reader, it was repeated, would be gratified accordingly. “Rare ‘Lives’! that whoso reads, to him is given / To pace the precincts of the courts of Heaven”, writes one of Walton's devotees as late as 1884.38 But there is in Dowling's “memoir” an annotation that signals disrespect and unease with the hagiography. “All of Walton's friends are described as living on the very border land of perfection; and some of them are made to appear angelic.”39 It would last another forty years until all the labour in recording and collecting material relating to the characters in the Lives had punctured the spell that surrounded him and his heroes. Premature, indeed, is an unexceptional harsh attack on Walton by Benjamin Hanbury in 1830:

The naiveté and garrulity of Walton impart a fascination to his narrative, which will not bear the touch of the disenchanter's rod; for then the veil is withdrawn, and the smoke of incense is dissipated, we see nothing but the dregs of credulity and intolerance.40

Dowling's life reappeared more or less unaltered in the 1884 Major edition, which was the last to include the full ornamentation and exhaustive documentation of the previous ones. The editions to come would benefit from a biographic and literary scholarship that was not preoccupied with cataloguing and rehearsing clichés.

In summary it can be said that the Major editions, although originally “antiquarian” in format and outlook, popularized the work in England. It was published in commercial book series intended for broad usage; it reached for the first time sections of the reading public unfamiliar with it. The emphasis on the work's affiliations with the Broad Church movement was reduced. Instead, its more general exemplary power was commended. The cult that Walton was subject to also embraced his works. The extraordinary success of The Compleat Angler was consequential and interdependent with the relatively lesser reputation of the Lives.

III

Biography that feeds on exemplary lives needs censorship or suppression to survive. In Donne's case there has always been evidence of the other Donne, the worldly “Jack Donne”, of whom Walton is tacit. But Walton superbly exploits the mere idea of his existence to intensify his “conversion” and raise his stature as a holy man. The nineteenth century was unwilling to alter his view even if they clearly understood the nature and art of Walton's masquerade. In most instances, they only dressed the seventeenth century hagiography in clothes more fitting the temperament of the century. Idiosyncrasies and repulsive elements were either apologized or condemned. In their insatiable thirst for biographical addenda, the antiquarians were exposed to Donne's poetry and prose, a material that occasionally offended and disturbed them. Both Zouch's and Major's editions abound in references to Donne's works. Their attitude is most often ambiguous and hypocritical: they castigate what they find of no avail and adopt what they need to protect the Walton version. But the biographical formula to describe in order to prescribe did in the long run display certain lacunas and even errors in Walton's handling of the material. The Donne documentalists were compelled to turn to other sources than those most ready at hand. Foremost among these scholars was an antiquary, who is believed to be Thomas Edlyne Tomlins.41 His commentary on Walton's Life of Dr. John Donne (1852/3; reprinted in 1865) was based on all hitherto known classes of references and on new sources such as manuscript copies of Donne's letters and various London archives.42 There now existed, as it were, two biographies of Donne: Walton's hagiography and the antiquarian's fragmented reconstruction. The two would exist side by side until the very end of the century, when Augustus Jessopp and Edmund Gosse finally presented the comprehensive picture.43

The Lives published around the turn of the century follow the patterns already developed. The editions of “The Temple Classics” (1888, 1898, and 1908) continue the decorative and annotative tradition of Major; the one that appeared in “Morley's Universal Library” (1888) represents the popular class of the Lives (each volume in the monthly publication cost one shilling); “Chiswick Library of Noble Writers” printed costly facsimile editions (1904, 1906, 1907); and, after an interval of some forty years, there appeared separate American editions (1901, 1903, 1906). Two other editions deserve special mention: the one issued by Methuen & Co., in 1895, with an introduction by Vernon Blackburn and the other by “Walter Scott Library” (1899) and introduced by Charles Hill Dick. Both Blackburn and Dick revolted against Walton. Blackburn labels him a charming conversationalist and potterer, who, facing Donne, “paused with shame upon the threshold of his hero's youthful fervour”.44 Dick, who also notes his rambling style, imprecise documentation, and the silencing of “Jack Donne”, writes: “Donne was unfortunate in having for his biographer a man who was incapable of appreciating so strong and intense an intellect as his, or of doing justice to an imagination of such a calibre. …”45 These laments of Walton's imperfections would be rehearsed with the same intensity in the next decades as that with which previous generations had glorified in his venture. The literary preoccupation was now with Donne the youthful, passionate rebel and the inventor of a new poetic style.46 Walton, his former propagandist and interlocutor, had nothing more to yield. George Saintsbury, looking back at the past century's veneration of Walton, was, indeed, right in saying that “people used at one time to write as if Donne was chiefly worth notice because Walton wrote about him”, and, he added, “but we have pretty well changed that, to do our justice”.47 But the change was slow. Walton's subordinating of his heroes to his art was, as we have observed several times, destructive to their reputations. For centuries Walton, the persona, had been immaculate, his achievement beyond critical judgement. As late as 1899 Edgar C. S. Gibson, in an edition of Herbert's poetry, declared:

There does not appear to be any need to attempt to write a fresh life of George Herbert … Walton's delightful biography is ever fresh, and though it scarcely comes up to some of the other inimitable “lives” by the same hand, yet modern research has succeeded in adding but little to it.48

Gibson had, of course, been misled by the myth. Modern research was for a long time “prevented” from approaching Walton. The nineteenth century editors of the Lives desired Walton to perform two separate roles: the eulogist's and the biographer's. That of the eulogist he was capable of, but not the other. So there is much sense in Gosse's opinion:

I would venture to depreciate the multiplication of annotated editions of Walton's “Life of Donne.” They are all disrespectful of Walton, and they merely darken counsel with regard to Donne's career. Walton's treatment of the central years of his subject's life is a tangle quite inextricable by any number of notes. The “Life” is an exquisite work, which must stand alone, on the score of its sweet amenity and the beauty of its style.49

Gosse's statement of the “exquisiteness” of Walton's work reflected another stage in its reputation. The cult object had to be abused and shattered until its merits could be appreciated for their own sake. This was another slow process, lasting about forty years. Not until the 1950s had his art been assessed and his position as a biographer clarified by scholars such as David Novarr, Margaret Bottrall, John Butt, and Francisque Costa.50 His “saints”, long since set free, had by this time won new ground and led independent lives. Heroes and cult-figures in literature (and elsewhere) feed on respect and veneration. The nineteenth century history of Walton's Lives is a story about the exploitation of such a literary cult object.

Notes

  1. English Biography in the Early Nineteenth Century: 1801-1838 (Yale University Press, New Haven, London, 1966), p. 25.

  2. Pp. 24-5.

  3. The full title of each Lives varies considerably. The text will only include an abbreviation or any other signum (date of publication, publisher's or editor's name), sufficient for identification. All the editions surveyed appear in the Appendix, in full title; they are organized according to the system in which they are presented in the article. Within each category they appear in chronological order.

  4. See David Novarr, The Making of Walton's Lives (Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1958), pp. 8-10.

  5. “Eulogy as Symbolic Biography: The Iconography of Revolutionary Leadership, 1776-1826”, in Studies in Biography: Harvard English Studies 8, ed. Daniel Adam (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1978), p. 131.

  6. Lives (1807), p. vii. See Appendix.

  7. Lives (1796), pp. ix-xii.

  8. Lives of English Laymen, Lord Falkland, Izaak Walton, Robert Nelson (James Burn, London, 1842), p. 202. Cf. Christopher Wordsworth's prefatorial note to the Lives: they are “designed for the good and service of the Religion by law established” and a warning for Papists and Dissenters alike. In Ecclesiastical Biography, 2nd edition (London, 1818), IV, 5 (1st edition 1810, 3rd 1839, 4th 1853).

  9. In the “Prefaces”. Izaak Walton's Love and Truth. In Two Modest and Peaceable Letters, Concerning Distempers of the Present Times, York.

  10. The Life of Izaak Walton (James Burn, London, 1842), p. 202.

  11. The Life of Izaak Walton (London, 1830), pp. 85-6. This edition at the British Museum, “privately printed”, does not give the name of the author. But it is Zouch's, which is verified by a collation of the text with his notes in the 1796 Lives and his The Life of Izaak Walton: Including Notices of his Contemporaries, Embellished with Numerous Engravings (London, 1826).

  12. See Francisque Costa, L'Œuvre d'Izaak Walton (1593-1683), Études Anglaises (Didier, Montréal, Paris, Bruxelles, 1973), pp. 379-80.

  13. Lives (1807), p. 27.

  14. The Life of Izaak Walton (1826), pp. 17-18. In Lives (1796, p. xv) he reproved Walton for inserting it at all, which indicates that he was familiar with Walton's revisions (Walton only included it in the last edition of 1675).

  15. 1796, p. 40, note d.

  16. 1796, p. 96, note e.

  17. 1796, p. xlvii.

  18. [Reviews of Zouch's Lives], 24, 48-51; 15, 277-78. The Monthly Magazine opinions were echoed in an anonymous article in the Gentleman's Magazine from the same year (pp. 1016-17).

  19. “Preface”, Lives (1807).

  20. John Donne: A Life (The Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1970), p. 15.

  21. For its inclusion in the editions of the “Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge”, see below, p. 252.

  22. The Art of Biography in Eighteenth Century England (Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1941), p. 459.

  23. W. O. B. Allen & Edmund McClure, Two Hundred Years: The History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1690-1898 (London, 1898), pp. 188-9.

  24. Ibid., pp. 189-190.

  25. Ibid., p. 192.

  26. In addition, the “S.P.C.K.” published the Lives of Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson, in 1819, 1833, and 1842.

  27. See Elisabeth Jay, The Religion of the Heart: Anglican Evangelicalism and the Nineteenth-Century Novel (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979), p. 8.

  28. In the “Prefaces”.

  29. In the early 1830s Coleridge's works were made available to the American public and his approving references to Walton and to Donne's sermons were noted; see e.g., The Christian Examiner (1831), XI, 12 and The Christian Review (1837), II, 193 f. Lamb's and Wordsworth's affection for Walton were also known; see my The Reputation of John Donne, 1779-1873, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia 24 (Almqvist & Wiksell International, Stockholm, 1975), pp. 159-167.

  30. There are 62 reprints or editions of The Compleat Angler (between 1823 and 1953), only counting those that stem from Major; see Bernard S. Horne, The Compleat Angler 1653-1967: A New Bibliography, The Pittsburg Bibliophiles (University of Pittsburg Press, Pittsburg, 1970), p. 40.

  31. He employed the same artists for his edition of The Compleat Angler; for their identity, see ibid., p. 39.

  32. The picture is reproduced in my Reputation of John Donne 1779-1872, p. 62. Donne's “vision” would not appear again; it was omitted from all subsequent editions of the Lives.

  33. The 1838 edition adds one woodcut; the 1857 edition adds four woodcuts and three copperplates; the 1884 edition omits two woodcuts.

  34. The Pickering edition of the Lives (1827) (see Appendix), minute in size and beautifully clothed, was to become another “collector's gem”.

  35. Izaak Walton. Bibliographical Series of Supplements to “British Book News” on Writers and their Work, ed. Bonamy Dobrée. The British Council 68 (Longmans, Green & Co, London, 1955), pp. 23-4.

  36. Ecclesiastical Sketches (London, 1822), p. 85; quotations from the poem can be found in Major (1825) and seq. eds., in Pickering (1827), in the “Universal Library” (1853), etc., in their “Prefaces”.

  37. In the “Introduction”.

  38. I. Westwood, In Memoriam, Izaak Walton, Obiit 15th December, 1683, Twelve Sonnets and an Epilogue (Chiswick Press, London, [1884]). The verses come from the last part of a sonnet called “The ‘Lives’”.

  39. The “Introduction”, p. xiv.

  40. In “Introduction and Notes”, in The Ecclesiastical Polity and other Works of Richard Hooker, with his Life by Izaak Walton and Strype's Interpolations (London, 1830), I, lvi. Cf. William Warburton's castigation of the Lives as “the quaint trash of a fantastical life-writer”. In The Works of the Right Reverend William Warburton, Lord Bishop of Gloucester (London, 1788), VII, 895.

  41. See Bald, John Donne: A Life, p. 15.

  42. It was published by Henry Kent Causton in a series called “The Contemplative Man's Library, for ‘the Thinking Few’”.

  43. Bald, pp. 15-8.

  44. The “Introduction”, p. xiv.

  45. The “Introduction”, p. xi.

  46. The main exponents of this re-appraisal are the successive editions of his poetry: Grosart (1872), Norton (1895), Chambers (1896), Grierson (1912).

  47. The Lives, etc., “The World's Classics” (H. Milford, Oxford University Press, London, New York, 1927), p. xvii.

  48. The Temple by George Herbert. With Notes and Introduction (London, 1899), p. ix. Cf. the comment made some sixty years earlier by another editor of Herbert's poetry: “Concerning Herbert's exemplary Character and Life nothing need to be added.” Barnabas Oley, ed. The Remains of that Sweet Singer of the Temple George Herbert (Pickering, London, 1836), p. vi.

  49. The Life and Letters of John Donne, Dean of St. Paul's (Heinemann, London, 1899), I, xii-xiii.

  50. For the titles of Novarr's, Bottrall's, and Costas's works, see above, notes 4, 35, and 12 respectively. John Butt, Biography in the Hands of Walton, Johnson, and Boswell: Ewing Lectures (University of California, Los Angeles, 1966). Except one or two school editions of the “lives” of Donne and Herbert, the Lives published in recent times are comparatively few: the editions in “The World Classics” (prefaced by G. Saintsbury), in 1927, 1936, and 1940; two editions by T. Nelson [1926 and 1955]; and the one in “Falcon Educational Books”, with a brilliant introduction and notes by S. B. Carter from 1951.

Appendix

1. “The Zouch editions”

1796 The lives of Dr. John Donne; Sir Henry Wotton; Mr. Richard Hooker; Mr. George Herbert; and Dr. Robert Sanderson. By Izaak Walton. With notes, and the life of the author. By Thomas Zouch … York. Printed by Wilson, Spence, and Mawman, 1796.

1805 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton; Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert; and Dr. Robert Sanderson. Written by Izaak Walton … New ed. 2 vols. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1805.

1807 The lives of Dr. John Donne; Sir Henry Wotton; Mr. Richard Hooker; Mr. George Herbert; and Dr. Robert Sanderson. By Izaak Walton. With notes, and the life of the author, by Thomas Zouch … 2d ed. York. Printed by T. Wilson and R. Spence, 1807.

1817 The lives of Dr. John Donne; Sir Henry Wotton; Mr. Richard Hooker; Mr. George Herbert; and Dr. Robert Sanderson. To which is now first added Love and Truth; with notes and the life of the author, by Thomas Zouch … 3d ed. 2 vols. York. T. Wilson and Sons, 1817.

1819 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr.. Richard Hooker, Mr.. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. A new ed. London. F. C. and J. Rivington, 1819. Printed for … “Booksellers to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge”.

1824 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. A new edition. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1824.

[1828] The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. A new edition. London, F. C. and J. Rivington. “Booksellers for Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge”, [1828].

1832 The lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. By Izaak Walton. With some account of the author and his writings … Boston, Hilliard, Gray and company; Cambridge, Brown, Shattuck and co., 1832. In the Library of the Old English Prose Writers. 9 vols., vols. 5-6, ed. Alexander Young.

1832 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. By Izaak Walton. With a life of the author, by Thomas Zouch, M.A., and notes selected from those of Dr. Zouch … New York. Protestant Episcopal Press, 1832. In Parish and Religious Family Library, vol. XI.

1833 The lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. New ed. By Izaak Walton. With some account of the author and his writings. London. J. G. and F. Rivington, 1833.

1846 The lives of Dr. J. Donne; Sir Henry Wotton; Mr. R. Hooker; Mr. G. Herbert and Dr. R. Sanderson, with notes and life of the author T. Zouch. American edition. New York, 1846.

1846 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. With a life of the author by Thos. Zouch and notes selected from those of Dr. Zouch. New York. H. M. Onderdonk & co., 1846.

1846 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. By Izaak Walton: with some account of the author and his writings, by Thomas Zouch … A new ed., with illustrative notes, etc. New York. Wiley and Putnam, 1846. In “Wiley and Putnam's Library of Choice Reading”.

1848 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson … With some account of the author and his writings by Thomas Zouch. A new ed. With illustrative notes etc. New York. George P. Putnam, 1848. Complete in one volume.

1850 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. By Izaak Walton: with some account of the author and his writings, by Thomas Zouch … A new ed., with illustrative notes, etc. New edition, complete in one volume. New York. G. P. Putnam, 1850. In “Putnam's Choice Library”.

1852 The lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson. With some account of the author and his writings, by Thomas Zouch. New ed., with illustrative notes, etc. New York. G. P. Putnam, 1852.

1854 The lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson. With some account of the author and his writings by Thomas Zouch. New ed., with illustrative notes. New York. A. S. Barnes, 1854. In “Choice English Biography”.

1854 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. Written by Izaak Walton … New ed. with portraits. London, 1854. For the “Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge”.

1857 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr.. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. New ed., with portraits. London, 1857. For the “Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge”.

1860 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson; with some account of the author and his writings, by Thomas Zouch. New ed., with illustrative notes. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, Lee, 1860.

1861 Walton's lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. With some account of the author and his writings by Thomas Zouch. New ed., with illustrative notes, index, etc. Boston. Crosby, Nichols, Lee, 1861.

1865 Walton's lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. With some account of the author and his writings. By Thomas Zouch … A new ed., with illustrative notes. Boston. W. Veazie, 1865.

1866 The lives of John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Robert Sanderson. Boston. Ticknor and Fields, 1866.

2. “The Major editions”

1825 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson: by Izaak Walton. To which are added, the autographs of those eminent men, now first collected; an index, and illustrative notes … London. John Major, 1825.

1827 The lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. Written by Izaak Walton. London. William Pickering, 1827.

1838 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. A new ed., with illustrative notes and plates. London. H. Washbourne, 1838.

[1838] The lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. Illustrated by numerous biographical notices. London? In “Bohn's Standard Library”, [1838].

1840 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. By Izaak Walton. A new ed., with illustrative notes, portraits, etc. … London. H. Washbourne, 1840.

1845 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson … A new ed., with illustrative notes, portraits, etc. … London. H. Washbourne, 1845.

1847 The lives of Dr. Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert (and) Dr. Sanderson. By Izaak Walton. A new edition, with Major's illustrative notes, portraits, etc., revised by W. Nicol … London. H. Washbourne, 1847.

[184-?] The lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. (London. Ingram, Cooke, and co., 184-?). Half-title: Standard edition of popular authors.

1853 The lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. Written by Izaak Walton. London. Ingram, Cooke, and co., 1853. In The Universal Library: Biography, vol. I, pt 1.

1857 Lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. A new ed., to which is added a memoir of Mr. Izaak Walton, by Will. Dowling, … with illustrative notes, engravings, index, etc., London. H. Washbourne, 1857.

1858 Walton's lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. A new ed.: to which is added, A memoir of Mr. Izaak Walton, by Will. Dowling, …, with illustrative notes, engravings, index, etc., London. H. Washbourne and co., 1858.

1864 The lives of Dr. John Donne; Sir Henry Wotton; Mr. George Herbert; and Dr. Robert Sanderson. London, Bell and Daldy, 1864.

1878 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, and others … London. G. Bell and Sons, 1878.

1884 Walton's lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. With notes and illustrations. A new ed.: rev. by A. H. Bullen, with a memoir of Izaak Walton by William Dowling. London. G. Bell and sons, 1884. In “Bohn's Illustrated Library” (1849).

3. “The turn-of-the century editions”

1888 Izaak Walton's lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, and George Herbert, with an introduction by Henry Morley. London, Glasgow, New York. G. Routledge and sons, 1888. In “Morley's Universal Library”, 59 (1883).

1888 Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, and Herbert. London. J. M. Dent and Co., 1888. 2 vols. In “Temple Classics”.

1895 The lives of Doctor John Donne, Sir Henrt Wotton, Mr. George Herbert, and Doctor Robert Sanderson, by Izaak Walton … In one volume. London, Methuen and company, 1895. In “English Classics,” ed. W. E. Henley. A new edition in 1921.

1898 Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, etc., by Izaak Walton … ed. H. A. Dobson. 2. vols. London. J. M. Dent and Co., 1898. (Major). In “The Temple Classics”, ed. Israel Gollanz (1896).

[1899] The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. Ed. Charles Hill Dick. London (1899). In “The Scott Library”, (1892).

1901 The Complete Angler and The Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson. London. MacMillan and Co. New York. Alfred W. Pollard, 1901. In “Library of English Classics”.

1903 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. New York, Scott-Thaw co., 1903.

1904 The lives of Doctor John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, knight, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert and Doctor Robert Sanderson, by Izaak Walton. London. Chiswick Press for G. Bell and Sons, 1904. In “The Chiswick Library of Noble Writers”. (20 copies printed).

1906 The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson … New York, Brentano's 1906. Printed in England by the Chiswick Press, C. Whittinghem and co.

1906 The lives of Doctor John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Doctor Robert Sanderson. New York, Duffield, 1906.

[1906] The lives of Dr. John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Dr. Robert Sanderson. Ed. Charles Hill Dick. London. Walter Scott. In “Camelot Series”.

1907 The lives of Doctor John Donne, Sir Henry Wotton, Knight, Mr. Richard Hooker, Mr. George Herbert, and Doctor Robert Sanderson. London, New York, privately printed by the Chiswick Press for Brentano's 1907. “The Chiswick Library of Noble Authors”.

1908 Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, etc. (2d ed.) London, J. M. Dent, 1908. In “The Temple Classics”.

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