x INTRODUCTION 



representation and ingenuity of analogy, and in his forcible 

 quaintness of style, as completely as he did in social status 

 and in personal surroundings. In complete contrast to the 

 romantic productions of the self-educated tinker of Bedford, 

 the works of Walton and Evelyn were at any rate influenced 

 by, though they can hardly be said to have been moulded 

 upon, the style of the preceding age of old English prose 

 writers ending with Milton. The influence of the latter is, 

 indeed, plainly noticeable both in the diction and in the 

 general sentiment of these two great masters of the pure, 

 nervous English of their period. 



It would serve no good purpose to make any attempt here 

 to trace the points of resemblance between the works of 

 Walton and Evelyn, and then to note their differences in 

 style. Each has contributed a masterpiece towards our 

 national literature, and it would be a mere waste of time to 

 make comparisons between their chief productions. This 

 much, however, may be remarked, that the conditions under 

 which each worked were completely different from those 

 surrounding the other. Izaak Walton, the author of many 

 singularly interesting biographies, and of the quaint half- 

 poetical Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Mans Recreation, 

 the great classic " Discourse of Fish and Fishing, " was a 

 London tradesman, while his equally celebrated contempor- 

 ary John Evelyn, author of Syha, or a Discourse of Forest 

 Trees, the classic of British Forestry, was a more highly 

 cultured man, who wrote, in the leisure of official duties and 

 amid the surroundings of easy refinement, many useful and 

 tasteful works both in prose and poetry, ranging over a wide 

 variety of subjects. Judging from the number of editions 

 which appeared of their principal works, they were both held 

 in great favour by the reading public, though on the whole 

 the advantage in some respects lay with Evelyn. But during 

 the present century the taste of the public, judged by this 

 same rough and ready, practical standard, has undoubtedly 

 awarded the prize of popularity to Izaac Walton. 



So far as the circumstances of their early life were con- 

 cerned there was greater similarity between Walton and 

 Pepys, than between either of them and Evelyn. Born in the 

 lower middle class, the son of a tailor in London, and himself 



