‘AND HERE THE AUTHOR DY’D, AND I HOPE THE READER WILL BE SORRY’
CHALKHILL, John.
Thealma and Clearchus. A pastoral History in smooth and easie Verse. Written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq; an Acquaintant and Friend of Edmund Spencer.
London, Printed for Benj. Tooke … 1683.
8vo, pp. [6], 168, bound without preliminary and terminal blanks; lightly toned, otherwise a fine copy in black crushed morocco by Riviere, gilt; upper joint neatly repaired, lower board detached; the bookplates of Walter Thomas Walker, James Cox Brady, and Abel Berland.
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Thealma and Clearchus. A pastoral History in smooth and easie Verse. Written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq; an Acquaintant and Friend of Edmund Spencer.
First edition of Chalkhill’s unfinished pastoral poem, with the corrected state of the title, designating the author as ‘an acquaintant and friend of Edmund [originally ‘Edward’] Spencer’.
Chalkhill has eluded biographers since 1683, and was long suspected to be a figment of the imagination of Izaak Walton, who contributed the pleasant Preface to this volume – Chalkhill’s only other publications being two lyrics printed in The Compleat Angler. Some details of his life were brought to light by the discovery of a group of autograph manuscripts at Hopton Hall in Derbyshire in 1958 (see Croft, Autograph Poetry in the English Language I, pp. 38–9 ).
He was born about 1595 (and thus could hardly have been a friend of Spenser who died in 1599), attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and died in 1642. Walton did not know him personally, but was a distant relation. Thealma and Clearchus is unfinished, ending with the half-line ‘Thealma lives –’ to which Walton adds the terminal comment: ‘And here the Author dy’d, and I hope the Reader will be sorry.’
ESTC R20264; Wing C 1795; Hayward 130.
