INTRODUCTION. XV 



by the sign of ' The Harrow.' " His last settlement in 

 the city was, according to the parish register of Saint 

 Dunstan, in the seventh house from the corner of 

 Chancery Lane; and we find it further recorded that 

 he filled successively the parish offices of scavenger 

 (not, we may suppose, in a malodorous way), jury- 

 man, constable, grand-juryman, overseer of the poor, 

 and vestryman. During his busy London life Wal- 

 ton's chief recreation was, of course, angling, an 

 amusement profanely described by Swift, who, in- 

 deed, stopped at nothing, as " a stick and a string, 

 with a fly at one end and a fool at the other." In 

 this gentle, maligned craft, Izaak was accounted the 

 greatest proficient of his time ; and his favorite 

 haunt for the sport seems to have been the Lea, a 

 stream, we fancy, long stripped of its trout, to say 

 nothing of its pleasant Waltonian inns, with their 

 " lavender in the windows and twenty ballads stuck 

 about the walls." These quaint hostelries inspired 

 some of Walton's most characteristic passages. He 

 never tires of ringing his pleasant changes upon their 

 homely cheer; and one may venture to conjecture 

 that if the joys awaiting good men in the next world 

 are benevolently adjusted to their preferences in 

 this, Izaak Walton is now reaping the reward of a 

 well-spent life, in some celestial inn, o'ergrown with 

 woodbine and honeysuckle, and presided over by a 

 seraphic hostess " cleanly and handsome and civil " 

 beyond the hostesses of this grosser mould. 



Walton was twice married, and, true to his predi- 

 lection for the clergy, he went to them each time for 

 his wife. His first venture was Rachel Floud, ma- 

 ternally descended from Archbishop Cranmer. By 



