Sylva, Vol. 1 | Page 2

learning, Clarendon and Burnet in history, L'Estrange, Butler, Marvell
and Dryden in miscellaneous prose, and Temple as an essayist, have all
made their mark by prose writings which will endure for all time. But
the names which stand out most prominently in popular estimation as
authors of great masterpieces in the prose of this period are certainly
those of John Bunyan, John Evelyn, and Izaak Walton. And along with

them Samuel Pepys is also well entitled to be ranked as a great
contemporary writer, though he was at pains to try and ensure his being
permitted to remain free from the publicity of authorship, for such time
at least as the curious might allow his Diary to remain hidden in the
cipher he employed.
With the great though untrained genius of Bunyan none of these other
three celebrated prose authors of this time has anything in common. He
stands apart 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 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. His thoughts seem often
tainted with the fumes of the wine-bowl and the reek of the tavern; and
even when he swore off drink, as he frequently did, he soon relapsed
into his customary habits. Educated in London and then at Cambridge,
where his love of a too flowing bowl already got him into trouble more
than once, he was imprudent enough to incur the responsibilities of
matrimony at the early age of twenty-three, with a beautiful girl only
fifteen years old. Trouble soon stared this rash and improvident young
couple in the face, but they were spared the pangs of permanent poverty
through the aid and influence of Sir Edward Montagu, afterwards Earl
of Sandwich, who was a distant relative of Pepys. Acting probably as
Montagu's secretary for some time, he was first appointed to a clerkship
in the Army pay office, and then soon afterwards became clerk of the
Acts of the Navy. Later on, like Evelyn, he held various more
important posts under the Crown, as well as being greatly distinguished
by promotion to non-official positions of the highest honour. His
official career was a very brilliant one, and deservedly so from the
integrity of his work, from his application, despite frequent
immoderation in partaking of wine, and from his business-like methods
of work. As