LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 5 



your pen, in the history of his life ; indeed, so well, that, beside 

 others, the best critic of our later time, Mr John Hales, of 

 Eaton, affirmed to me, he had not seen a life written with more 

 advantage to the subject, or reputation to the writer, than that 

 of Doctor Donne." * 



Sir Henry Wotton dying in 1639, Walton was importuned 

 by Bishop King to undertake the writing his life also ; and, as 

 it should seern by a circumstance mentioned in the margin, it 

 was finished about 1644. -j- Notwithstanding which, the ear- 

 liest copy I have yet been able to meet with is that prefixed 

 to a collection of Sir Henry's Remains, undoubtedly made by 

 Walton himself, entitled Reliquue Wotionianae, and by him, in 

 1651, dedicated to Lady Mary Wotton and her three daughters ; 

 though in a subsequent edition, in 1685, he has recommended 

 them to the patronage of a more remote relation of the author, 

 namely, Philip, Earl of Chesterfield. 



The precepts of angling, meaning thereby the rules and 

 directions for taking fish with a hook and line, till Walton's 

 time, having hardly ever been reduced to writing, were propa- 

 gated from age to age chiefly by tradition : but Walton, whose 

 benevolent and communicative temper appears in almost every 

 line of his writings, unwilling to conceal from the world those 

 assistances which his long practice and experience enabled him, 

 perhaps the best of any man of his time, to give, in the year 

 1653 published, in a very elegant manner, his Complete Angler y 

 or Contemplative Man's Recreation, in small duodecimo, 

 adorned with exquisite cuts of most of the fish mentioned in 

 it. The artist who engraved them has been so modest as to 

 conceal his name : but there is great reason to suppose they 

 are the work of Lombart, who is mentioned in the Sculptura 

 of Mr Evelyn ; and also that the plates were of steel. 



And let no man imagine, that a work on such a subject must 

 necessarily be unentertaining, or trifling, or even uninstructive ; 

 for the contrary will most evidently appear, from a perusal of 

 this excellent piece, which, whether we consider the elegant 

 simplicity of the style, the ease and unaffected humour of the 

 dialogue, the lovely scenes which it delineates, the enchanting 

 pastoral poetry which it contains, or the fine morality it so 



* Bishop King's Letter to Walton before the Collection of the Lives, in 

 1670. 



f It is certain that Hooker's Life was written about 1664 ; and Walton 

 ays, in his Epistle before the Lives, that " there was an interval of twenty 

 years between the writing of Hooker's Life and Wotton's," which fixes the 

 date of the latter to 1644. 



