art from them in his fervently religious and romantic
temperament, in his richness of representation and ingenuity of
analogy, and in his forcible quaintness of style, as completely as he
did in social status and in personal surroundings. In complete contrast
to the romantic productions of the self-educated tinker of Bedford, the
works of Walton and Evelyn were at any rate influenced by, though they
can hardly be said to have been moulded upon, the style of the preceding
age of old English prose writers ending with Milton. The influence of
the latter is, indeed, plainly noticeable both in the diction and in the
general sentiment of these two great masters of the pure, nervous
English of their period.

It would serve no good purpose to make any attempt here to trace the
points of resemblance between the works of Walton and Evelyn, and then
to note their differences in style. Each has contributed a masterpiece
towards our national literature, and it would be a mere waste of time to
make comparisons between their chief productions. This much, however,
may be remarked, that the conditions under which each worked were
completely different from those surrounding the other. Izaak Walton, the
author of many singularly interesting biographies, and of the quaint
half-poetical _Compleat Angler or the Contemplative Man's Recreation_,
the great classic "Discourse of Fish and Fishing," was a London
tradesman, while his equally celebrated contemporary John Evelyn, author
of _Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees_, the classic of British
Forestry, was a more highly cultured man, who wrote, in the leisure of
official duties and amid the surroundings of easy refinement, many
useful and tasteful works both in prose and poetry, ranging over a wide
variety of subjects. Judging from the number of editions which appeared
of their principal works, they were both held in great favour by the
reading public, though on the whole the advantage in some respects lay
with Evelyn. But during the present century the taste of the public,
judged by this same rough and ready, practical standard, has undoubtedly
awarded the prize of popularity to Izaac Walton.

So far as the circumstances of their early life were concerned there was
greater similarity between Walton and Pepys, than between either of them
and Evelyn. Born in the lower middle class, the son of a tailor in
London, and himself afterwards a member of the Clothworkers' guild,
Pepys was a true Lo