JET. 60.] LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. xlvii 



sufficiently interesting ; and he therefore wisely introduced a 

 variety of topics calculated to attract the general reader. He 

 says he did not undertake the task to please himself; but in 

 writing of it he " had made a recreation of a recreation ; " and 

 that to prevent its reading "dull and tediously, he had in 

 several places mixt some innocent mirth," which " innocent 

 mirth," he adds, " I am the willinger to justify, because the whole 

 discourse is a kind of picture of my own disposition, at least of 

 my disposition in such days and times as I allow myself when 

 honest Nat. and R. R. [Roe] and I go a-fishing together." 

 Walton justly ridiculed the idea of making an angler by a book, 

 but suggests that most of those who love Angling "may here f\ . r - 

 learn something that may be worth their money, 5 if they be not 

 needy: and if they be, then my advice is that they forbear, for I 

 write not to get money, but for pleasure ; and this discourse boasts 

 of no more, for I hate to promise much and fail." 



He dedicated the work to John Offley, of Madely Manor, in 

 Staffordshire, Esquire, " his most honoured friend " who, there is 

 some grounds for supposing, was remotely related to him. Mr 

 Offley was a very skilful angler, and Walton speaks of his " former 

 favours " to him. Sir Henry Wotton told Walton " that his inten- 

 tions were to write a discourse of the art, and in praise of Angling;" 

 and he adds, " doubtless he had done so, 6 if death had not pre- 

 vented him ; " thus in " The Complete Angler," as in the " Life 

 of Donne," Walton accomplished an object which had been 

 contemplated by Wotton ; and it is extremely likely that in their 

 many conversations whilst fishing, remarks were made by that 

 accomplished person, of which he availed himself ; a suggestion 

 which the frequent allusions to him in the work render the more 

 probable. 



On the 1 8th of May 1653, Walton proved the will of his father- 

 in-law, Mr Thomas Ken, who died on the I2th of June i65i. 7 

 That instrument was dated on the I2th of April 1651, and it 

 appears that Mrs Walton received her share of her father's 

 property on her marriage, as Ken bequeathed her only five 

 shillings, because he had " heretofore bestowed a portion sufficient 

 upon her." Her sister Jane married a person of the name of John 

 Symonds, from whom she was then separated, as her father states 



9 The price of the first edition of "The Complete Angler" was eighteenpence. 



6 See the Dedication of "The Complete Angler." 



7 "1651, June 12, Mr Thomas Ken, of Furnival's Inne, the sheriff's attorney 

 accomptant, died." Vide Smith's Catalogue of persons deceased. Additional MS. 886, 

 in the British Museum. 



