SOURCE: Marshall, W. Gerald. “Time in Walton's Lives,” in Studies in English Literature, 32, No. 3 (Summer, 1992): 429-42.

In the essay below, Marshall analyzes Walton's use of time in his biographies by which he heightens the apparent piousness of his subjects.

It is clear from the prefaces to a number of his later biographies that Izaak Walton becomes increasingly aware of time, especially as regards the long duration of his own life and the inherent burdens of growing old. He writes that “especially at this time of my Age … for I am now past the Seventy of my Age,” the compiling of his biography of Richard Hooker has become a “work of much labour to enquire, consider, research and determine what is needful to be known concerning him.” In his Life of Dr. Sanderson, Walton suggests that writing lives has become burdensome and that “my Age might have procur'd for...