LIFE OF WALTON. XXI 



life of him was a free-will-offering, i it abounds with curious inform- 

 ation, and is no way inferior to any of the former. 



Two of these Lives; viz. those of Hooker and Herbert, we are told, 

 were written under the roof of Walton's good friend and patron, Dr. 

 George Morley, bishop of Winchester;* which particular seems to 

 agree with Wood's account, that, " after his quitting London, he 

 lived mostly in the families of the eminent clergy of that time." a And 

 who that considers the inoffensiveness of his manners, and the pains 

 he took in celebrating the lives and actions of good men, can doubt 

 his being much beloved by them ? 



In the year 1670, these Lives were collected and published in oc- 

 tavo ; with a Dedication to the above bishop of Winchester ; and a 

 Preface, containing the motives for writing them : this preface is 

 followed by a Copy of Verses, by his intimate friend and adopted son, 

 Charles Cotton, of Beresford in Staffordshire, Esq. the author of the 

 Second Part of the Complete Angler, of whom further mention will 

 hereafter be made ; and by the Letter from bishop King, so often 

 referred to in the course of this Life. 



The Complete Ang/er having, in the space of twenty-three years, 

 gone through four editions, Walton, in the year 1676, and in the 

 eighty-third of his age, was preparing a fifth, with additions, for 

 the press; when Mr. Cotton wrote a second part of that work : It 

 seems Mr. Cotton submitted the manuscript to Walton's perusal, who 

 returned it with his approbation, 4 and a few marginal strictures : And 

 in that year they came abroad together. Mr. Cotton's book had the 

 title of the Complete Angler s being Instructions how to angle for a 

 Trout or Grayling, in a clear stream; Part II. and it has ever since 

 been received as a Second Part of Walton's book. In the title-page, 

 is a cipher composed of the initial letters of both their names ; which 

 cipher, Mr. Cotton tells us, he had caused to be cut in stone, and set 

 up over a fishing-house, * that he had erected near his dwelling, on 

 the bank of the little river Dote, which divides the counties of Stafford 

 and Derby. 



Mr. Cotton's book is a judicious supplement to Walton's ; for it 

 must not be concealed, that Walton, though he was so expert an 

 angler, knew but little of fly-fishing; and indeed he is so ingenuous 

 as to confess, that the greater part of what he has said on that sub- 

 ject was communicated to him by Mr. Thomas Barker,* and not the 

 result of his own experience. This Mr. Barker was a good-humoured 

 gossiping old man, and seems to have been a cook ; for he says," he 

 had been admitted into the most ambassadors* kitchens, that had come 

 to England for forty years, and drest fish for them;" for which, he 

 says, " he was duly paid by the Lord Protector."? He spent a 



(1) Epistle to the Reader of the Collection of Lives. 



(2) Dedication of the Lives. 



(3) Zouch says that apartments for Walton and his daughters were re- 

 served both in the house of the bishop of Winchester, and in that ol the 

 bishop of Salisbury. 



(4) See Walton's Letter to Cotton, before the Second Part. 



(5) Vide, infra, Part II. 



(6) Vide infra. 



(7) Barker's Delight, p. 20. 



