48 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



Walton's Lives is intended. You have been in 

 a mistake in thinking that Lord Hailes had it in 

 view. I remember one morning, while he sat 

 with you in my house, he said, that there should 

 be a new edition of Walton's Lives, and you said 

 that they should be noted a little. This was all 

 that passed on that subject. You must, therefore, 

 inform Dr Home, that he may resume his plan. 

 I enclose a note concerning it ; and if Dr Home 

 will write to me, all the attention that I can give 

 shall be cheerfully bestowed upon what I think 

 a pious work, the preservation and elucidation of 

 Walton, by whose writings I have been most 

 pleasingly edified." 



Later on, however, we read : *' Pray get for 

 me all the editions of Walton's Lives. I have a 

 notion that the republication of them with notes 

 will fall upon me, between Dr Home and Lord 

 Hailes." 



It has been said most men work for the 

 present, a few for the future. The wise work 

 for both — for the future in the present, and for 

 the present in the future. In his epistle to the 

 reader in Walton's Life of Bonne he informs us 

 that he wrote the Life of George Herbert chiefly 

 to please himself, but yet not without some respect 

 to posterity. In 1676, when the fifth edition of 

 The Complete Angler was given to the world, in 

 his epistle to the reader Walton says : •' I did not 



