sportive talk, the outcome of a religion which was like his homely garb,
not too good for every-day wear. We see him, now diligent in his business,
now commemorating the virtues of that cluster of scholars and churchmen
with whose friendship he was favoured in youth, and teaching his young
brother-in-law, Thomas Ken, to walk in their saintly footsteps,--now
busy with his rod and line, or walking and talking with a friend, staying
now and then to quaff an honest glass at a wayside ale-house--leading a
simple, cheerful, blameless life

"Thro' near a century of pleasant years."[1]

We have said that the reader regrets that Walton should have left so
little behind him: his "Angler" and his Lives are all that is known to
most. But we are now enabled to present those who love his memory with
a collection of fugitive pieces, in verse and prose, extending in date
of composition over a period of fifty years,--beginning with the Elegy
on Donne, in 1633, and terminating only with his death in 1683. All these,
however unambitious, are more or less characteristic of the man, and
impregnated with the same spirit of genial piety that distinguishes the
two well-known books to which they form a supplement.

Walton's devotion to literature must have begun at an early age; for in
a little poem, entitled _The Love of Amos and Laura_, published in 1619,
when he was only twenty-six, and attributed variously to Samuel Purchas,
author of "The Pilgrims," and to Samuel Page, we find the following
dedication to him:--

"TO MY APPROVED AND MUCH RESPECTED FRIEND, IZ. WA.

"To thee, thou more then thrice beloved friend,