Introduction 



of a man who must have been as good a subject for, as he was an artist 

 in, biography. No doubt, Cotton, who was to survive his master 

 but four years, dying amid debts and difficulties, had more instant 

 demands upon his faculties ; but Canon Izaak Walton, in his long 

 quiet life in Salisbury Close, might surely have written some notes 

 of a father to whose biographical faculty, and consequent acceptability 

 with bishops, he owed his canonry. 



Later on Dr. Johnson talked of writing Walton's life, but his 

 well-known admiration for the " Lives " found no other expression 

 than possibly a certain influence on the form of his own " Lives of 

 the Poets," and his suggestion to Moses Browne that he should 

 reprint " The Compleat Angler," then somewhat fallen into neglect. 

 Browne published his edition in 1750, having weeded the text of 

 what he was pleased to regard as certain " redundancies," " super- 

 fluities," and " absurdities," an editorial proceeding to which we owe 

 the first authoritative life of our author, as it prompted Sir John 

 Hawkins to publish his edition (1760), in which the text was 

 restored to its original integrity, and to which were for the first time 

 prefixed " The Lives of the Authors." Browne had supplied what 

 Westwood calls " some loose biographical litter," but the honour of 

 being Walton's first serious biographer belongs to Sir John Hawkins, 

 on whose biography all subsequent biographies have been founded. 

 According to Mr. R. B. Marston, however, this is an honour which 

 he should from the beginning have shared with the famous antiquary 

 William Oldys, to whose collections he owed most of his Walton 

 material, and by whom entirely was written the life of Cotton. Dr. 

 Thomas Zouch was Walton's next original biographer, his life being 

 prefixed to his edition of the "Lives" in 1796 ; and then in 1 836 came 

 Sir Harris Nicolas, who, if Sir John Hawkins was the first, may 

 almost be said to be the first and last of Walton's biographers. For 

 the scientific thoroughness of his research has left hardly a single 

 stone unturned for subsequent editors, and, compared with his 

 elaborately minute narrative, every fact reinforced by a phalanx of 

 notes, Sir John Hawkins's work seems a mere outline, with the 

 occasional vagueness of myth. 



Thus, for later editors there is little left to be done anew with 



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