INTRODUCTION. ix 



monger." But this does not make against our argument 

 one whit ; for it is but natural that he should describe him- 

 self by a term which would, without doubt, give him greater 

 distinction than if he had named his actual trade and means 

 of obtaining daily bread. And even if so peaceable, plain, 

 and unpretentious a man as Izaak Walton cared little for 

 such trifles, it is just possible that they may have figured 

 larger in Mistress Rachel Floud's mind. Whateye.r_his 

 ^ 



profitable to enable him to retire when the Civil War broke 

 out; and so in 1644 he composes his affairs and settles 

 down to a life of leisure and enjoyment. The pity was that 

 he had not been so prosperous in his home-life, clouded as 

 it had been by the loss of his children, seven in number, 

 and of his wife who died in 1640. It is during the remain- 

 ing years of his long life that he has time to become the 

 Izaak Walton of English literature, to write The Lives and 

 The Compleat Angler^ or the Contemplative .Marts Recrea- 

 tion. 



Now, none but the most arrogant of those of Philistia 

 could bring himself to quarrel with Walton for those forty 

 years of seeming idleness. He used them to a very excel- 

 lent, if not always to a material purpose. For on many a 

 fine, fresh May morning he would stretch his legs up Tot- 

 tenham Hill with his honest angling comrades, Nat. and 

 R. Roe, bent on some fishing expedition ; or he would be 

 visiting"some of his friends, making them happier with his 

 gentle presence and his kindly words; and in the long 

 winter evenings he would be penning one of those bio- 

 graphies in which he did honour to the memory of those 

 who were dead. Nor was he an inactive citizen during this 

 period, for he held city offices in more than one capacity, 

 as Warden of the Yeomanry no less than as juryman and over- 



