4 LIFE OF WALTON. 



worth was so fairly preserved, and represented to the world, by 

 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 it seems 

 that it was finished about 1644. 1 Notwithstanding which, the 

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

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

 Walton himself, entitled " Eeliquiae Wottonianse," 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 having, till Walton's time, hardly 

 ever been reduced to writing, were transmitted 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 that information 

 which his long practice and experience enabled him, perhaps 

 the best of any man of his time, to give, published in the 

 year 1653, his " Complete Angler, 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 modestly concealed his name, but there is great reason to 

 suppose they are the work of Lombart, and on steel. 



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

 necessarily be un entertaining, or trifling, or even uninstructive : 

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

 it. 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 sweetly inculcates, it is with- 

 out parallel in any of the modern languages. 



Before the Reformation, the clergy, as well regular as secular 

 on account of their leisure, and because the canon-law forbade 

 them the use of the sanguinary recreations of hunting, hawking, 

 and fowling were the great proficients in angling. Yet none of 

 its precepts were committed to writing; and from the introduction 



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

 says, 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." H. 



