BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. Iv 



tion, m'ght probably be carried on by his wife ;" (he might, 

 notwithstanding, have been a man-milliner, nor does the 

 one seem a more feminine occupation than the other ;) 

 and retiring from London to the neighborhood of his birth- 

 place in 1643 with what the same biographer calls, "a 

 fortune very far short of w hat now would be considered a 

 competency," he afterwards, according to Wood, " lived 

 mostly in the families of eminent clergymen of England, 

 of whom he was much beloved." 



Sir Harris Nicholas also proves, what Walton's other 

 biographers had overlooked, that he was married twice, 

 his first wife being Rachel Floud, sister of the Robert Floud 

 and John Floud, w^ho wrote commendatory verses to their 

 dear brother-in-law, Mr. Iz. Walton, on his Complete 

 Angler, prefixed to the edition of 1665. The date of this 

 marriage w^as the 27th of September, 1626, he being then 

 thirtv-three vears of aoje. The mother of the first Mr. 

 Walton was the daughter of the grand-nephew of Arch- 

 bishop Cranmer. She died in 1640, and the only child 

 that survived her in 1642, leaving Walton again a solitary 

 man. 



His second marriage, with Anne Ken (sister of Bishop 

 Ken, whose hymns, and, especially, sublime Doxology, 



" Praise God, from whom all blessings flow," &c., 



are so dear to every lover of sacred poetry), occurred 

 about the year 1646 ; the bride being not less than thirty- 

 five, and he seventeen years her senior. 



We cannot leave this part of Walton's life without en- 

 tering a protest against the following impertinent observa- 

 tions of Major (Introd. Essay, xxix.): "That he was 

 bred to trade mav be accounted for, either from the cir- 

 cumstance of his father's dying when he was only two 

 years old, or even from his own choice ; and that there 

 existed no incompatibility between the character he held 



