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where he had been to buy a book which he then had in his hand. We had no inclination to part presently, and therefore turned to stand in a corner under a pent-house, for it began to rain, and immediately the wind rose and the rain increased so much that both became so inconvenient as to force us into a cleanly house, where we had bread, cheese, ale, and a fire for our money. This rain and wind were so obliging to me as to force our stay there for at least an hour, to my great content and advantage. And I gladly remember and mention it as an argument of my happiness and his great humility and condescension."

It is exactly as if he were telling us of it, and this sweet persuasiveness of the living and naturally cadenced voice is never wanting in Walton. It is indeed his distinction, and it is a very rare quality in writers, upon most of whom, if they ever happily forget themselves and fall into the tone of talk, the pen too soon comes sputtering in. The passage is interesting too, because it illustrates both Walton's love of good company and his Boswellian sensitiveness to the attraction of superior men. Much as he loved fishing, it was in the minds of such men that he loved best to fish. And what a memory was his! The place, the sad-colored clothes, the book just bought, the rain, and then the wind, the pent-house, the tavern, the bread, the ale, the fire,- everything is there that makes a picture. Then he reports Sanderson's discourse; and having done that, is reminded that this is a good time to give us a description of his person. In reading Walton's Lives (and no wonder Johnson loved them so *) I have a feeling that I have met him in the street and am hearing them from his own lips. I ask him about Donne, let us say. He begins, but catching sight of some one who passes, gives me in parenthesis an account of him, comes back to Donne, and keeps on with him till somebody else goes by about whom he

* Gray must have loved them too, and his "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" was suggested by a passage in the Life of Wotton.

in one.

has an anecdote to tell; and so we get a leash of biographies It is very delightful, and though more rambling than Plutarch, comes nearer to him than any other life-writing I can think of. Indeed, I should be inclined to say that Walton had a genius for rambling rather than that it was his foible. The comfortable feeling he gives us that we have a definite purpose, mitigated with the license to forget it at the first temptation and take it up again as if nothing had happened, thus satisfying at once the conscientious and the natural man, is one of Walton's most prevailing charms. What vast balances of leisure does he not put to our credit! To read him is to go a-fishing with all its bewitching charms and contingencies. If there be many a dull reach in the stream of his discourse, where contemplation might innocently lapse into slumber, it is full also of nooks and eddies where nothing but our own incompetence will balk us of landing a fine fish. In this story of his meeting with Sanderson there is another point to be noticed. Walton's memory is always discreet, always well-bred. It never blabs. I think that one little fact is purposely omitted here, namely, who paid for the good cheer at the tavern. The scot was paid, to be sure, with our money," but I doubt very much whether the poor country parson's purse were the lighter for it. . . .

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In 1665 Walton wrote his Life of Hooker, less a labor of love than the others, but containing that homely picture of him reading Horace as he tended his scanty sheep, and called away by his wife to rock the cradle. In 1670 came the Life of Herbert, written, he tells us, chiefly to please himself. Some time before 1678, it is uncertain when, his daughter Anne became the wife of the Reverend William Hawkins, one of the prebends of Winchester, and with them he seems to have spent his latter years. In that year he wrote the Life of Sanderson, which, as showing no sign of mental disrepair,

is surely an almost unparalleled feat for a man of eighty-five. Length of days is one of the blessings of the Old Testament, and surely it might be added to the Beatitudes of the New, when, as with Walton, it meant only a longer ripening, a more abundant leisure to look backwards without self-reproach, and forwards with an assured gratitude to God for a future goodness like the past.

He wrote his own will in October, 1683; and on the 15th December of that year, to borrow the words of his granddaughter's epitaph, written no doubt by himself, he died in the ninetieth year "of his innocency."

The character of Walton's friendships and his fidelity to them when prorogued by death bear ample witness to the fine quality of his nature. How amiably human it was he betrays at every turn, yet with all his bonhomie there is a dignity which never forgets itself or permits us to forget it. We may apply to him what he says of Sir Henry Wotton's father: that he was "a man of great modesty, of a most plain and single heart, of an ancient freedom, and integrity of mind," and may, say of him, as he says of Sir Henry himself, that he had "a most persuasive behavior." His friends loved to call him "honest Izaak.” He speaks of his own "simplicity and harmlessness," and tells us that his humor was "to be free and pleasant and civilly merry," and that he "hated harsh censures." He makes it a prime quality of the gentleman to be "communicable." He had no love of money, and compassionates those who are 66 condemned to be rich." staunch royalist and churchman, loved music, painting, good ale, and a pipe, and takes care to tell us that a certain artificial fly "was made by a handsome woman and with a fine hand."

He was a

But what justifies and ennobles these lower loves, what gives him a special and native aroma like that of Alexander,

is that above all he loved the beauty of holiness and those ways of taking and of spending life that make it wholesome for ourselves and our fellows. His view of the world is not of

the widest, but it is the Delectable Mountains that bound the prospect. Never surely was there a more lovable man, nor one to whom love found access by more avenues of sympathy.

THE LIFE OF MR. GEORGE HERBERT.

Izaak Walton.

I HAVE now brought him to the parsonage of Bemerton, and to the thirty-sixth year of his age, and must stop here, and bespeak the reader to prepare for an almost incredible story, of the great sanctity of the short remainder of his holy life; a life so full of charity, humility, and all Christian virtues, that it deserves the eloquence of St. Chrysostom to commend and declare it: a life, that if it were related by a pen like his, there would then be no need for this age to look back into times past for the examples of primitive piety; for they might be all found in the life of George Herbert. But now, alas! who is fit to undertake it? I confess I am not; and am not pleased with myself that I must; and profess myself amazed, when I consider how few of the clergy lived like him then, and how many live so unlike him now. But it becomes not me to censure: my design is rather to assure the reader, that I have used very great diligence to inform myself, that I might inform him of the truth of what follows; and

1 In the year 1629.

though I cannot adorn it with eloquence, yet I will do it with sincerity.

When at his induction he was shut into Bemerton church, being left there alone to toll the bell (as the law requires him), he stayed so much longer than an ordinary time before he returned to those friends that stayed expecting him at the church-door, that his friend Mr. Woodnot looked in at the church-window, and saw him lie prostrate on the ground before the altar; at which time and place (as he after told Mr. Woodnot) he set some rules to himself, for the future manage of his life; and then and there made a vow to labor to keep them.

And the same night that he had his induction, he said to Mr. Woodnot, "I now look back upon my aspiring thoughts, and think myself more happy than if I had attained what then I so ambitiously thirsted for. And I can now behold the court with an impartial eye, and see plainly that it is made up of fraud, and titles, and flattery, and many other such empty, imaginary painted pleasures; pleasures, that are so empty, as not to satisfy when they are enjoyed. But in God, and his service, is a fulness of all joy and pleasure, and no satiety. And I will now use all my endeavors to bring my relations and dependants to a love and reliance on him, who never fails those that trust him. But, above all, I will be sure to live well, because the virtuous life of a clergyman is the most powerful eloquence to persuade all that see it to reverence and love, and at least to desire to live like him. And this I will do, because I know we live in an age that hath more need of good examples than precepts. And I beseech that God, who hath honored me so much as to call me to serve him at his altar, that as by his special grace he hath put into my heart these good desires and resolutions; so he will, by his assisting grace, give me ghostly strength to bring the same to good

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