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 Londoner.

His tastes were centred entirely in the town, and his pleasures were never sought either among woods or green fields, or by the banks of trout streams and rivers.