INTRODUCTION. XXI 



warp of the nation's annals; and that in the days 

 when the bickerings of King and Parliament were 

 ruffling its surface, the main current of England's 

 national life was flowing quietly enough. Izaak 

 Walton, we may be sure, had no desire to follow the 

 thundering drum, or to "go a-angling" in the turbid 

 pool of politics. His party fervor was not of the 

 feverish pitch that sets men upon convicting their 

 fellow-citizens of error by the final logic of throat- 

 cutting; so when the clouds of civil strife blackened 

 over London, like a prudent man and a thrifty linen- 

 draper, he put up his shutters, dismissed his 'pren- 

 tices, packed his rods and his tackle, and hied away 

 to the streams of quiet Staffordshire, where the trout 

 were leaping into the sunshine, and the wary chub 

 hung mid-deep in the shadows, and the pike lurked 

 solitary in his jungle under the lily-pads. Like the 

 prudent Mr. Piscator in "The Angler," when the 

 shower came up, he seated himself under a honey- 

 suckle hedge and waited till it was over. 



To more ardent spirits than his, this withdrawal 

 from active partisanship to the more congenial paths 

 of authorship and angling may smack unpleasantly 

 of lukewarmness, not to say timidity; and Walton 

 has been charged with both. Be that as it may, we 

 at least have some reason to be thankful that Izaak 

 Walton, instead of vaporing with Charles's cavaliers 

 or singing truculent psalms with Oliver's roundheads, 

 chose to serve his country according to his gifts by 

 composing the " Lives " and " The Angler." Per- 

 haps, too, Walton, as a contemplative man, reflected 

 that if there was fighting to be done, there were 

 plenty to do it out of sheer love for the game, not 



