Chalkhill, John

(fl. 1600)

   Not much is known of this minor poet, except that he was at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1610, and is the author several poems. Izaac Walton's Compleat Angler (1653-1655) contains two of Chalkhill's poems: "Condon's Song" (referred to as "O, The Sweet Contentment") and "The Angler" (referred to as "O, the Gallant Fisher's Life"). Thirty years later Chalkhill published Thealma and Clearchus, A Pastoral History in smooth and easie Verse (1683), edited by Izaac Walton. Walton, in his preface, says of Chalkhill, "And I have also this truth to say of the author, that he was in his time a man generally known and as well belov'd; for he was humble and obliging in his behaviour, a gentleman, a scholar, very innocent and prudent: and indeed his whole life was useful, quiet, and virtuous" (DNB).

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition, 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Home Book of Verse. Burton Egbert Stevenson, ed. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1953. The Oxford Book of Seventeenth Century Verse. H.J.C. Grierson and G. Bullough, eds. Oxford University Press, 1934. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.