The preface to Sir John Skeffington's _Heroe of Lorenzo_ had for two
centuries lain forgotten, and escaped the notice of Walton's biographers,
till in 1852 it was discovered by Dr. Bliss of Oxford, and communicated by
him to the late William Pickering.

The original Spanish work was first published in 1630. The author's real
name was not Lorenzo, but Balthazar Gracian, a Jesuit of Aragon, who
flourished during the first half of the seventeenth century, when the
cultivated style took possession of Spanish prose, and rose to its
greatest consideration.[5] It is a collection of short, wise apothegms
and maxims for the conduct of life, sometimes illustrated by stories of
valour, or prowess, or magnanimity, of the old Castilian heroes who figure
in "Count Lucanor." The book, though now no longer read, must have been
very popular at one time, for there exist two or three later English
versions of it, without, however, the nervous concentration of style and
idiomatic diction that characterize the translation sent forth to the
world under Walton's auspices.

The two Letters published in 1680 under the title of Love and Truth,[6]
were written respectively in the years 1668 and 1679. The evidence of
their authorship is twofold, and we think quite conclusive. In one of the
very few copies known to exist, and now in the library of Emanuel College,
Cambridge, its original possessor, Archbishop Sancroft, has written:--"Is.
Walton's 2 letters conc. ye Distemp's of ye Times, 1680," and Dr. Zouch
appended to his reprint of the tract[7] a number of parallel passages
from other acknowledged writings of Walton, of themselves almost
sufficient to fix the question on internal evidence alone.

In the British Museum copy of this tract is the following note on one of