having touched a chord in the human heart which
still vibrates without hint of cessation wherever English is spoken.

Izaak Walton was born at Stafford, on the 9th of August, 1593. In his
earlier life he was a linen-draper, but he had made enough for his frugal
wants by his shop to enable him to retire from business in 1643, and then
he quietly assumed a position as _pontifex piscatorum_. His fishing-rod
was a sceptre which he swayed unrivalled for forty years. He gathered
about him in his house and on the borders of fishing streams an admiring
and congenial circle, principally of the clergy, who felt it a privilege
to honor the retired linen-draper. There must have been a peculiar charm,
a personal magnetism about him, which has also imbued his works. His first
wife was Rachel Floud, a descendant of the ill-fated Cranmer; and his
second was Anne Ken, the half-sister of the saintly Bishop Ken. Whatever
may have been his deficiencies of early education, he was so constant and
varied a reader that he made amends for these.

THE COMPLETE ANGLER.--His first and most popular work was _The Complete
Angler, or, The Contemplative Man's Recreation_. It has been the delight
of all sorts of people since, and has gone through more than forty
respectable editions in England, besides many in America. Many of these
editions are splendidly illustrated and sumptuous. The dialogues are
pleasant and natural, and his enthusiasm for the art of angling is quite
contagious.

HIS LIVES.--Nor is Walton less esteemed by a smaller but more appreciative
circle for his beautiful and finished biographies or _Lives_ of Dr.
Donne, Wotton, Richard Hooker, George Herbert, and Bishop Robert
Sanderson.

Here Walton has bestowed and received fame: the simple but exquisite
portraitures of these holy and worthy men have made them familiar to
posterity; and they, in turn, by the virtues which Walton's pen has made
manifest, have given distinction to the hand which portrayed them.
Walton's good life was lengthened out to fourscore and ten. He died at the
residence of his son-in-law, the Reverend William Hawkins, prebendary of
Winchester Cathedral, in 1683. Bishop Jebb has judiciously said of his
_Lives_: "They not only do ample justice to individual piety and learning,
but throw a mild and cheerful light upon the manners of an interesting
age, as well as upon the venerable features of our mother Church." Less,
however, than any of his contemporaries can