alloy. Greatly favoured and blest by Providence will you be, if you should in your lifetime be known for what you are: the contrary, if you should be transformed.

Newton. Better and more decorous would it be perhaps, if I filled up your pause with my reflections: but you always have permitted me to ask you questions; and now, unless my gratitude misleads me, you invite it.

Barrow. Ask me anything: I will answer it, if I can; and I will pardon you, as I have often done, if you puzzle me.

Newton. Is it not a difficult and a painful thing to repulse, or to receive ungraciously, the advances of friendship?

Barrow. It withers the heart, if indeed his heart were ever sound who doth it. Love, serve, run into danger, venture life, for him who would cherish you give him everything but your time and your glory. Morning recreations, convivial meals, evening walks, thoughts, questions, wishes, wants, partake with him. Yes, Isaac! there are men born for friendship; men to whom the cultivation of it is nature, is necessity; as the making of honey is to bees. Do not let them suffer for the sweets they would gather; but do not think to live upon those sweets. Our corrupted state requires robuster food, or must grow more and more unsound.

Newton. I would yet say something; a few words; on this subject . . or one next to it.

Barrow. On Expense then that is the next: Í have given you some warning about it, and hardly know what else to say. Can not you find the place?

Newton. I had it under my hand. If . . that is, provided .. your time, sir!

Barrow. Speak it out, man! Are you in a ship of Marcellus under the mirror of Archimedes, that you fume and redden so? Cry to him that you are his scholar, and went out only to parley.

Newton. Sir! in a word. . ought a studious man to think of matrimony?

Had

Barrow. Painters, poets, mathematicians, never ought: other studious men, after reflecting for twenty years upon it, may. I a son of your age, I would not leave him in a grazing country. Many a man hath been safe among corn-fields, who falls a victim on the grass under an clm. There are lightnings very fatal in such places.

Newton. Supposing me no mathematician, I must reflect then for twenty years!

Barrow. Begin to reflect on it after the twenty: and continue to reflect on it all the remainder; I mean at intervals, and quite leisurely. It will save to you many prayers, and may suggest to you one thanksgiving.

XVI. WALTON, COTTON, AND OLDWAYS.

Walton. God be with thee and preserve thee, old Ashbourne ! thou art verily the pleasantest place upon his earth, I mean from May-day till Michaelmas. Son Cotton, let us tarry a little here upon the bridge. Did you ever see greener meadows than these on either hand? And what says that fine lofty spire upon the left, a trowling-line's cast from us? It says methinks, "Blessed be the Lord for this bounty: come hither and repeat it beside me." How my jade winces! I wish the strawberry-spotted trout, and ashcoloured grayling under us, had the bree that plagues thee so, my merry wench! Look, my son, at the great venerable house opposite. You know these parts as well as I do, or better; are you acquainted with the worthy who lives over there?

Cotton. I can not say I am.

Walton. You shall be then. He has resided here forty-five years, and knew intimately our good Doctor Donne, and (I hear) hath some of his verses, written when he was a stripling or little better, the which we come after.

Cotton. That, I imagine, must be he! the man in black, walking above the house.

Walton. Truly said on both on both counts. Willy Oldways; sure enough; and he doth walk above his house-top. The gardens here, you observe, overhang the streets.

Cotton. Ashbourne, to my mind, is the prettiest town in England. Walton. And there is nowhere between Trent and Tweed a sweeter stream for the trout, I do assure you, than the one our horses are

bestriding. Those in my opinion were very wise men who consecrated certain streams to the Muses: I know not whether I can say so much of those who added the mountains. Whenever I am beside a river or rivulet on a sunny day, and think a little while, and let images warm into life about me, and joyous sounds increase and multiply in their innocence, the sun looks brighter and feels warmer, and I am readier to live, and less unready to die.

Son Cotton! these light idle brooks,

Peeping into so many nooks,

Yet have not for their idlest wave

The leisure you may think they have:
No, not the little ones that run
And hide behind the first big stone,
When they have squirted in the eye
Of their next neighbour passing by;
Nor yonder curly sideling fellow

Of tones than Pan's own flute more mellow,
Who learns his tune and tries it over

As girl who fain would please her lover.
Something has each of them to say,
He says it and then runs away,
And says it in another place,
Continuing the unthrifty chase.

We have as many tales to tell,

And look as gay and run as well,

But leave another to pursue

What we had promised we would do,

Till in the order God has fated,

One after one precipitated,

Whether we would on, or would not on,

Just like these idle waves, son Cotton!

And now I have taken you by surprise, I will have (finished or unfinished) the verses you snatched out of my hand, and promised me another time, when you awoke this morning.

Cotton. If you must have them, here they are.

Walton (reads).

Rocks under Okeover park-paling

Better than Ashbourne suit the grayling.
Reckless of people springs the trout,

Tossing his vacant head about,

And his distinction-stars, as one

Not to be touched but looked upon,

Uor M

And smirks askance, as who should say
"I'd lay now (if I e'er did lay)

"The brightest fly that shines above,
"You know not what I'm thinking of;
"What you are, I can plainly tell,

"And so, my gentles, fare ye well!"

Heigh! heigh! what have we here? a double hook with a bait upon each side. Faith! son Cotton, if my friend Oldways had seen these, not the verses I have been reading, but these others I have run over in silence, he would have reproved me, in his mild amicable way, for my friendship with one who, at two-and-twenty, could either know so much or invent so much about a girl. He remarked to me, the last time we met, that our climate was more backward and our youth more forward than anciently; and, taking out a newspaper from under the cushion of his arm-chair, showed me a paragraph, with a cross in red ink, and seven or eight marks of admiration, some on one side, some on the other, in which there was mention made of a female servant, who, hardly seventeen years old, charged her master's son, who was barely two older

Cotton. Nonsense! nonsense! impossible!

Walton. Why, he himself seemed to express a doubt; for beneath was written, "Qu: if perjured. . which God forbid! May all turn out to his glory !

Cotton. But really I do not recollect that paper of mine, if mine it be, which appears to have stuck against the Okeover-paling lines. Walton. Look! they are both on the same scrap. Truly, son, there are girls here and there who might have said as much as thou, their proctor, hast indited for them: they have such froward tongues in their heads, some of them. A breath keeps them in motion, like a Jew's harp, God knows how long. If you do not or will not recollect the verses on this indorsement, I will read them again, and aloud.

Cotton. Pray do not baulk your fancy.

Walton (reads).