Izaak Walton
Overview
 
Izaak Walton was an English writer
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

. Best known as the author of The Compleat Angler, he also wrote a number of short biographies which have been collected under the title of Walton's Lives.
Walton was born at Stafford
Stafford
Stafford is the county town of Staffordshire, in the West Midlands region of England. It lies approximately north of Wolverhampton and south of Stoke-on-Trent, adjacent to the M6 motorway Junction 13 to Junction 14...

; the register of his baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...

 gives his father's name as Gervase
Gervasius and Protasius (disambiguation)
The names Gervasius and Protasius usually refer to the Italian martyrs of that name. However, the names can also refer to other people, who share it as a first name:-Gervase:*Saint Gervase , a bishop of Besancon...

. His father, who was an innkeeper as well as a landlord of a tavern
Tavern
A tavern is a place of business where people gather to drink alcoholic beverages and be served food, and in some cases, where travelers receive lodging....

, died before Izaak was three. His mother then married another innkeeper by the name of Bourne, who would later run the Swan in Stafford.

He settled in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 where he began trading as an ironmonger in a small shop in the upper story of Thomas Gresham
Thomas Gresham
Sir Thomas Gresham was an English merchant and financier who worked for King Edward VI of England and for Edward's half-sisters, Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I.-Family and childhood:...

's Royal Burse or Exchange
Royal Exchange (London)
The Royal Exchange in the City of London was founded in 1565 by Sir Thomas Gresham to act as a centre of commerce for the city. The site was provided by the City of London Corporation and the Worshipful Company of Mercers, and is trapezoidal, flanked by the converging streets of Cornhill and...

 in Cornhill.
Quotations

The great secretary of Nature and all learning, Sir Francis Bacon.

Life of Herbert (1670)

I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing.

Epistle to the Reader

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics that it can never be fully learnt.

Epistle to the Reader

As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.

Epistle to the Reader

I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following discourse; and that if he be an honest angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.

Epistle to the Reader

Angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice

Part I, ch. 1

Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.

Part I, ch. 1

Rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element are made for wise men to contemplate, and for fools to pass by without consideration.

Part I, ch. 1

You will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit and a world of other blessings attending upon it.

Part I, ch. 1

I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business."

Part I, ch. 2

 
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