‘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. [vi], 168, bound without preliminary and terminal blanks; lightly toned, otherwise a fine copy in black crushed morocco by Riviere, gilt; joints neatly repaired; bookplates of Walter Thomas Walker and Abel Berland to front pastedown, and of James Cox Brady and Robert Ball to front free endpaper.
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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. This theory was refuted, however, when details of his life were brought to light by the discovery of a group of autograph manuscripts at Hopton Hall in Derbyshire in 1958 (Croft, 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. See Croft, Autograph Poetry in the English Language I.
