xvi INTRODUCTION. 



dangerous service to the Prince Charles, who had just been 

 defeated at the battle of Worcester. Among the losses of 

 the prince was a jewel, the " lesser George," a badge of the 

 Order of the Garter, which was, however, preserved by one 

 Colonel Blague and passed by him to a Mr. Barlow, and 

 after another transference it came to Mr. Izaak Walton, who 

 succeeded with considerable risk in placing the jewel in 

 certain hands, whence it came safely to its owner. Now for 

 a Royalist to communicate between two Royalist prisoners 

 at that time and this is what Walton did was a hazardous 

 adventure, and that he should have come well out of it 

 means that he possessed a practical shrewdness, and it may 

 also imply a steady nerve and a strong arm. 



About this time he may have been engaged in a leisurely 

 fashion upon the writing of The Compkat Angler, or the 

 Contemplative Maris Recreation (it was published in 1653), 

 and no doubt the events of the period would suggest many 

 a moral set forth in the book. It is curious that books like 

 The Compleat Angler and The Lives of Donne, Wot ton, 

 Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson should have been written 

 when they were; that the former should belong to the 

 decade when grim Puritanism reigned in the land, and that 

 certain of the latter should be contemporaneous with the 

 profligate literature of the Restoration. The reason is not 

 that Walton kept clear of the turmoil of the century and 

 was unaffected by its events, but rather that he was at all 

 times, an indulger in the contemplative man's recreation, 

 "which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other 

 blessings attending upon it." It is not unnatural that the 

 book should have speedily become a favourite among a 

 section of Englishmen with whom Walton was already 

 popular; for in these evil times, when there was no court 

 in England, every Royalist gentleman must needs fall back 



