IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 75 



were plants so different from the fully- developed 

 tree that they can with difficulty be identified 

 with the genus." ... "In the days of Walton, 

 of course what we now call conscientious bio- 

 graphy was unknown " (Mr Edmund Gosse in the 

 Nineteenth Century and After for February 1902). 



In a letter dated the 10th of May 1678, com- 

 mencing, " My Worthy Friend, Mr Walton," the 

 then Bishop of Lincoln, Thomas Barlow, says : " I 

 am heartily glad that you have undertaken to write 

 the life of that excellent person, and, both for 

 learning and piety, eminent Prelate, Dr Sanderson, 

 Bishop of Lincoln, because I know your ability 

 to know and integrity to write truth." This 

 writer at least considers that what Walton wrote 

 would be exact. 



"Besides The Complete Arigler,'' Miss Mitford 

 writes, "Izaak Walton has left us a volume 

 containing four or five lives of eminent men, 

 quite as fine as that great Pastoral, although 

 in a very difi"erent way. His Life of Dr Donne, 

 the satirist and theologian, contains an account 

 of a vision (the apparition of a beloved wife in 

 England, passing before the waking eyes of her 

 husband in Paris), which, both for the cleverness 

 of the narration and the undoubted authenticity 

 of the event, is amongst the most interesting 

 that is to be found in the long catalogue of 

 supernatural visitations." It is right here to 



