th Christ's Hospital.

From the hasty sketch drafted in the above outlines, it will be seen
that throughout all Pepys' manhood the circumstances of his daily life
and environment were much more similar to those of Evelyn than to those
of Walton, who may well be ranked as their senior by almost one
generation. Like Evelyn, Izaak Walton was rather the child of the
country than a boy of the town. Born in Stafford in 1593, he only came
to settle in London after he had attained early manhood. Thus, though a
citizen exposing his linen drapery and mens' millinery for sale first in
the Gresham Exchange on the Cornhill, then in Fleet Street, and latterly
in Chancery Lane, the Bond Street of that time, he ever cherished a
longing for more rural surroundings and a desire to exchange life in the
city for residence in a smaller provincial town. On the civil war
breaking out in Charles the Ist's time, he retired from business and
went to live near his birth place, Stafford, where he had previously
bought some land. Here the last forty years of his long life were spent
in ease and recreation. When not angling or visiting friends, mostly
brethren of the angle, he engaged in the light literary work of
compiling biographies and in collecting material for the enrichment of
his _Compleat Angler_. Published in 1653, this ran through five editions
in 23 years, besides a reprint in 1664 of the third edition (1661).

In spite of the many similarities between Evelyn and Pepys as to
university education, official position, political partisanship, and
social and scientific status in London, there are yet such essential
differences between what has been bequeathed to us by these two friends
that comparison between them is almost impossible. They are both
authors: but it was by chance rather than by design that Pepys
ultimately acquired repute as an author, whereas Evelyn at once achieved
the literary fame he desired and wrote for. Neither of the two works
published by Pepys, _The Portugal History_ (1677) and the _Memories of
the Royal Navy_ (1690), procured for him the gratification of revising
them for a second edition, and it is indeed open to question if the
_Diary_ upon which his undying fame rests was ever intended by him to be
published after his death. This is a point that is never likely to be
settled satisfactorily. The fact of its having been written in cipher
looks as if it had been compiled solely for private amusement, and not
with a