INTRODUCTION 



/. Outlines of Walton's Life 



IN his address to the reader of the 

 first collected edition of his Lives, 

 Walton says : " And now I wish, 

 that as that learned Jew, Josephus, and 

 others, so these men had also writ their 

 own lives ; but since it is not the fashion 

 of these times, I wish their relations or 

 friends would do it for them, before 

 delays make it too difficult." It was but 

 natural that so good a biographer should 

 desire to establish biography as a family 

 duty, or at all events as one of those 

 duteous " courtesies that are done to the 

 dead," to borrow a phrase of the younger 

 Donne's. Had Walton lived to our day, 

 as there seemed some possibility of his 

 doing, he would no doubt have been 

 somewhat more than satisfied with the 

 activity of biographers ; and perhaps 

 have noted for particular remark the 

 biographic conscientiousness of the 

 modern interviewer, eager to catch and 

 record every minute of a great man's life 

 as it flies. Perhaps it is a little strange 

 that his friend Cotton, or his son the 

 Canon, did not remember Walton's words, 

 and note for us some of the ways and talk 



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