his
nurse'? It will be seen that the free speculation of his age left him
untouched: perhaps his piety was awakened, from childhood, under the
instruction of a pious mother. Had he been orphaned of both parents (as
has been suggested) he might have been less amenable to authority, and a
less notable example of the virtues which Anglicanism so vainly opposed
to Puritanismism. His literary beginnings are obscure. There exists a
copy of a work, _The Loves of Amos and Laura_, written by S. P.,
published in 1613, and again in 1619. The edition of 1619 is dedicated
to 'Iz. Wa.':--

'Thou being cause _it is as now it is_';

the Dedication does not occur in the one imperfect known copy of 1613.
Conceivably the words, 'as now it is' refer to the edition of 1619, which
might have been emended by Walton's advice. But there are no
emendations, hence it is more probable that Walton revised the poem in
1613, when he was a man of twenty, or that he merely advised the author
to publish:--

'For, hadst thou held thy tongue, by silence might
These have been buried in oblivion's night.'

S. P. also remarks:--

'No ill thing can be clothed in thy verse';

hence Izaak was already a rhymer, and a harmless one, under the Royal
Prentice, gentle King Jamie.

By this time Walton was probably settled in London. A deed in the
possession of his biographer, Dr. Johnson's friend, Sir John Hawkins,
shows that, in 1614, Walton held half of a shop on the north side of
Fleet Street, two doors west of Chancery Lane: the other occupant was a
hosier. Mr. Nicholl has discovered that Walton was made free of the
Ironmongers' Company on Nov. 12, 1618. He is styled an Ironmonger in his
marriage licence. The facts are given in Mr. Marston's Life of Walton,
prefixed to his edition of _The Compleat Angler_ (1888). It is odd that
a prentice ironmonger should have been a poet and a critic of poetry. Dr.
Donne, before 1614, was Vicar of St. Dunstan's in the West, and in Walton
had a parishioner, a disciple, and a friend. Izaak greatly loved the
society of the clergy: he connected himself with Episcopal families, and
had a natural taste for a Bishop. Through Donne, perhaps, or it may be
in converse across the counter, he made acquaintance with Hales of Eton,
Dr. King, and Sir Henry Wotton, himself an angler, and one who, like
Donne and Izaak, loved a ghost story, and had several in his family.
Drayton, the river-poet, author of the _P