It was probably by his _Lives_, rather than, in the first instance, by
his _Angler_, that Walton won the liking of Dr. Johnson, whence came his
literary resurrection. It is true that Moses Browne and Hawkins, both
friends of Johnson's, edited _The Compleat Angler_ before 1775-1776, when
we find Dr. Home of Magdalene, Oxford, contemplating a 'benoted' edition
of the _Lives_, by Johnson's advice. But the Walton of the _Lives_ is,
rather than the Walton of the _Angler_, the man after Johnson's own
heart. The _Angler_ is 'a picture of my own disposition' on holidays.
The _Lives_ display the same disposition in serious moods, and in face of
the eternal problems of man's life in society. Johnson, we know, was
very fond of biography, had thought much on the subject, and, as Boswell
notes, 'varied from himself in talk,' when he discussed the measure of
truth permitted to biographers. 'If a man is to write a _Panegyrick_, he
may keep vices out of sight; but if he professes to write a _Life_, he
must represent it as it really was.' Peculiarities were not to be
concealed, he said, and his own were not veiled by Boswell. 'Nobody can
write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in
social intercourse with him.' 'They only who live with a man can write
his life with any genuine exactness and discrimination; and few people
who have lived with a man know what to remark about him.' Walton had
lived much in the society of his subjects, Donne and Wotton; with
Sanderson he had a slighter acquaintance; George Herbert he had only met;
Hooker, of course, he had never seen in the flesh. It is obvious to
every reader that his biographies of Donne and Wotton are his best. In
Donne's Life he feels that he is writing of an English St. Austin,--'for
I think none was so like him before his conversion; none so like St.
Ambrose after it: and if his youth had the infirmities of the one, his
age had the excellencies of the other; the learning and holiness of
both.'
St. Augustine made free confession of his own infirmities of youth. With
great delicacy Walton lets Donne also confess himself, printing a letter
in which he declines to take Holy Orders, because his course of life when
very young had been too notorious. Delicacy and tact are as notable in
Walton's account of Donne's poverty, melancholy, and conversion through
the blessed means of gentle King Jamie. Walton had an awful loyalty, a
sincere reverence for the office of a king. But wherever he introduces
King James, either in his Donne or his Wotton, you see a subdued version
of the King James of _The Fortunes of Nigel_. The pedantry, the good
nature, the touchiness, the humour, the nervousness, are all here. It
only needs a touch of the king's broad accent to set before us, as
vividly as in Scott, the interviews with Donne, and that singular scene
when Wotton, disguised as Octavio Baldi, deposits his long rapier at the
door of his majesty's chamber. Wotton, in Florence, was warned of a plot
to murder James VI. The duke gave him 'such Italian antidotes against
poison as the Scots till then had been strangers to': indeed, there is no
antidote for a dirk, and the Scots were not poisoners. Introduced by
Lindsay as 'Octavio Baldi,' Wotton found his nervous majesty accompanied
by four Scottish nobles. He spoke in Italian; then, drawing near,
hastily whispered that he was an Englishman, and prayed for a private
interview. This, by some art, he obtained, delivered his antidotes, and,
when James succeeded Elizabeth, rose to high favour. Izaak's suppressed
humour makes it plain that Wotton had acted the scene for him, from the
moment of leaving the long rapier at the door. Again, telling how
Wotton, in his peaceful hours as Provost of Eton, intended to write a
Life of Luther, he says that King Charles diverted him from his purpose
to attempting a History of England 'by a persuasive loving violence (to
which may be added a promise of 500 pounds a year).' He likes these
parenthetic touches, as in his description of Donne, 'always preaching to
himself, like an angel from a cloud,--_but in none_.' Again, of a
commendation of one of his heroes he says, 'it is a known truth,--though
it be in verse.'
A memory of the days when Izaak was an amorist, and shone in love
ditties, appears thus. He is speaking of Donne:--
'Love is a flattering mischief . . . a passion that carries us to
commit errors with as much ease as whirlwinds remove feathers.'
'The tears of lovers, or beauty dressed in sadness, are observed to
have in them a charming sadness, and to become very often too strong
to be resisted.'
These are examples of Walton's sympathy: his power of portrait-drawing is
especially attested by his study of Donne, as the young gallant and poet,
the unhappy lover, the man of state out of place and neglected; the
heavily burdened father, the conscientious scholar, the charming yet
ascetic preacher and divine, the saint who, dying, makes himself in his
own shroud, an emblem of mortality.
As an example of Walton's style, take the famous vision of Dr. Donne in
Paris. He had left his wife expecting her confinement:--
'Two days after their arrival there, Mr. Donne was left alone in that
room in which Sir Robert and he, and some other friends, had dined
together. To this place Sir Robert returned within half an hour, and
as he left, so he found Mr. Donne alone, but in such an ecstacy, and
so altered as to his looks, as amazed Sir Robert to behold him;
insomuch that he earnestly desired Mr. Donne to declare what had
befallen him in the short time of his absence. To which Mr. Donne was
not able to make a present answer: but, after a long and perplexed
pause, did at last say, "I have seen a dreadful vision since I saw
you: I have seen my dear wife pass twice by me through this room, with
her hair hanging about her shoulders, and a dead child in her arms;
this I have seen since I saw you." To which Sir Robert replied,
"Sure, sir, you have slept since I saw you; and this is the result of
some melancholy dream, which I desire you to forget, for you are now
awake." To which Mr. Donne's reply was, "I cannot be surer that I now
live than that I have not slept since I saw you: and I am as sure that
at her second appearing she stopped, and looked me in the face, and
vanished . . . " And upon examination, the abortion proved to be the
same day, and about the very hour, that Mr. Donne affirmed he saw her
pass by him in his chamber.
' . . . And though it is most certain that two lutes, being both
strung and tuned to an equal pitch, and then one played upon, the
other, that is not touched, being laid upon a table at a fit distance,
will (like an echo to a trumpet) warble a faint audible harmony in
answer to the same tune; yet many will not believe there is any such
thing as a sympathy of souls, and I am well pleased that every reader
do enjoy his own opinion . . . '