Ixxxiv LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. [1673, 



All this you tell u?, with so good success. 



That our obliged posterity shall profess 



To have been your friend, was a great happiness. 



And now, when many worthier would be proud 

 To appear before you, if they were allow' d, 

 I take up room enough to serve a crowd : 



Where, to commend what you have choicely writ. 

 Both my poor testimony and my wit 

 Are equally invalid and unfit : 



Yet tBis, and much more, Is most justly due : 

 Where what I write as elegant as true, 

 To the best friend I now or ever knew. 



But, my dear friend, tis so, that you and I, 



By a condition of mortality, 



With all this great and more proud world, must die : 



In which estate, I ask no more of fame, 



Nor other monument of honour claim, 



Thau that of your true friend to advance my name. 



And if your many merits shall have bred 

 An abler pen, to write your life when dead ; 

 I think an honester can not be read. Charles Cotton. 



Jan. 17, 1672. 



One of these verses show that Cotton's father was also a friend 

 of Walton's ; and the feeling manner in which the author men- 

 tions his own friendship for him, by calling him " the best friend 

 I now or ever knew," is the more striking, from his having 

 afterwards used nearly the same words in the second part of 

 " The Complete Angler," where he says, " I have the happiness 

 to know his person, and to be intimately acquainted with him ; 

 and in him to know the worthiest man, and to enjoy the best and 

 the truest friend any man ever had." 



It is rather singular that Walton should nowhere allude to his 

 only surviving son and daughter, during their childhood, for it 

 might have been expected that he would have frequently spoken 

 of their being with him, and of their education. His attachment 

 to the Church of England, and the prospect of preferment which 

 his intimacy with the Bishop of Winchester' and other prelates 

 afforded, naturally induced him to destine his son for holy orders ; 

 and his veneration for the sacred profession, added to the per- 

 sonal esteem which he felt for Dr WiUiam Hawkins, one of the 

 prebends of 'Winchester, made him yield a ready assent to the 

 marriage of his daughter Anne to that gentleman, which took 

 place some time before the year 1678. Young Izaak Walton is 

 supposed to have been educated by his maternal uncle, Thomas 

 Ken, 3 who obtained a stall in Winchester Cathedral, probably 



^ Bowles's Life of Ken, i. 23. 



