IZAAK WALTON. By guiltless guile the spotted trout to snare, These were thy simple pastimes, kind old man, These are thy fame: yet would I praise thee more For the rich treasure of a childlike heart That longs to compass all the good it can, Tender and self-forgetful, gushing o'er With cheerful thoughts and generous feelings when Loving thou yearnest on thy fellow-men. It would be very unjust to account of honest Izaak as a mere angler. He is far higher to be considered as a fisher of men. The "quiet study" of his gentle craft is but one phase of a happy, contented, and contemplative mind; and no one can read his charming book on Angling,-(we must waive those necessary cruelties common to man as a predatory animal,)—without being more humanized, nay, more Christianized by the perusal. To the beautiful biographies written by Walton of Donne, Wootton, Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson, the same remark will apply with double force; for their style is equally simple and graphic, while the character of the subjects enable their author to rise to high and holy themes. The witty sarcasm of Johnson in his ill-deserved definition of angling has often been repeated, but the libel should be silenced for ever, now that the sportsman of the streams can number among his brethren not Walton only, the patriarch of amiability, nor Cotton his right-minded disciple, but also the exemplary Paley, the late eminent Dr. Babington, and that giant of science, Sir Humphrey Davey.— Angling is an art of the remotest antiquity, and one universally distributed: the light and taper Us tonson or Chevalier, with its almost invisible line, well-bent Kirby, and other "its assigns, very dear to fancy, very responsive to the touch, most delicate, and of very liberal conceit," has its prototype in the iron-wood paddle, strip of hide, and bone fish-hook of the savage New-Zealander, or emaciated dweller on the Columbia. It would appear as if the intellects of fishes themselves were sharpened by approximation with civilized man, for assuredly, in our seas, but few of the finny people would be entrapped by such clumsy devices. Walton's quiet shrewdness, and Cotton's expert activity, whether by float or fly, would be wasted on those dullards of the Oahoorage, and the perch of the Lea, or grayling of the Dove would scorn the little skill of united Polynesia. With respect to the high antiquity of this universal craft, which the genius of the draper of Cornhill has made his airy mausoleum, we read in the book of Job, xli. 1, of the capture of the crocodile by angling, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with a hook, or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down?" and whether Moses, or Ayoub himself be the author, the date of that book cannot be later than that of the Pentateuch; in fact, it is the most ancient, as it is the most sublime, of all extant compositions. In Isaiah we find similar allusions, although probably ch. xxxvii. 29, " the hook in thy nose, and bridle in thy lips," which is capable in the original of another meaning, has reference to the Eastern mode of harnessing oxen. In Matthew, xvii. 27, we find," Cast a hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up: "Horace tells us, 66 occultum decurrit piscis ad hamum ;" and we somewhere read of a Roman emperor,-a Tiberius, a Domitian, or a Heliogabalus, who, not satisfied with chance successes in his favourite sport, was accustomed to employ expert divers to carry down and fix on his imperial tackle the huge tunnies which he delighted to land. But a word of Walton, before we have done. There can be no doubt that, in his way, he was a literary genius: with few of the advantages of education, his works excite the admiration of the learned: he had the glory of raising his favourite pastime almost into a science, and has embalmed his holiday amusements in a classic. For biographical composition, his simplicity was well adapted; and in the happy selection of his subjects, Walton's natural charity had full scope for unqualified and unflattering praise. In his day, a day which but for Herbert must be regarded "a day of small things," he was accounted a very fair poet; and he executed without discredit some fugitive commendatory pieces. But his highest eulogy is to be found in the habit of his mind, that cheerfulness which can accompany nothing but innocency of life, and patient hope of immortality. It is the fortune of Walton, as of Petrarch, to have become known to posterity chiefly for his lighter qualities; the Christian and the sage N are forgotten in the angler, and the lover: a caricature is often more like than a soberly intended portrait: the world in general prefer amusement to instruction, and in our day especially a laughterloving wisdom is the vogue; philosophy, with a merry face instead of wrinkles, no longer bearded, and laurelled, and in flowing robes, is content to cheat men into good by walking in the garb of folly; a pleasant invention, which may profit the thinking few, but full of danger to the heedless many. There is " a time to weep, and a time to laugh," but the latter is so much the more delightful, that it needs little encouragement. To a good mind, the follies and meannesses of society have more in them to pity than to ridicule. Although Heraclitus and Democritus, as opposite extremes, might be equally in error, yet the disciple of our Great Exemplar, (of whom we read that He wept, but,-in the letter to Abgarus,—that he was never seen to laugh,) will eschew indeed a cheerless ascetism, but for a habit, cannot do otherwise in sober wisdom than prefer the house of mourning to the house of feasting. A light heart has little in common with a light head: the leer of folly must not be mistaken for the cherub smile of innocence: the glad face of cheerfulness differs as much from the flashing eye of humour as steady sunshine from the sparks of a furnace. |