WALTON AS A BIOGRAPHER


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