Worthies these of pious name
From your portraying pencil claim
A second life, and strike anew
With fond delight the admiring view.
And thus at once the peopled brook
Submits its captives to your hook,
And we, the wiser sons of men,
Yield to the magic of your pen,
While angling on some streamlet's brink

The muse and you combine to think."

In this volume of "The Complete Angler," which will be always read with avidity, even by those who entertain no strong relish for the art which it professes to teach, we discover a copious vein of innocent pleasantry and good humour. The scenes descriptive of rural life are inimitably beautiful. How artless and unadorned is the language! The dialogue is diversified with all the characteristic beauties of colloquial composition. The songs and little poems, which are occasionally inserted, will abundantly gratify the reader, who has a taste for the charms of pastoral poesy. And, above all, those lovely lessons of religious and moral instruction, which are so repeatedly inculcated throughout the whole work, will ever recommend this exquisitely pleasing performance. It was first printed in 1653, with the figures of the fishes very elegantly engraved, probably by Lombart, on plates of steel; and was so generally read as to pass through five editions during the life of the author. The second edition is dated in 1655, the third in 1661; and in 1668 the fourth appeared with many valuable additions and improvements. The lovers of angling, to whom this treatise is familiar, are apprized, that the art of fishing with the fly is not discussed with sufficient accuracy; the few directions that are given, having been principally communicated by Mr. Thomas Barker, who has written a very entertaining tract on the subject. To remedy this defect, and to give lessons how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream, a fifth and much improved edition was published in 1676, with a second part by Charles Cotton, of Beresford, in Staffordshire, Esq. This gentleman, who is represented as the most laborious trout-catcher, if not the most experienced angler for trout and

grayling that England ever had, to testify his regard for Mr. Walton, had caused the words,

"PISCATORIBUS SACRUM,”

with a cipher underneath, comprehending the initial letters of both their names, to be inscribed on the front of his fishing-house. This little building was situated near the banks of the river Dove, which divides the two counties of Stafford and Derby. Here Mr. Walton usually spent his vernal months, carrying with him the best and choicest of all earthly blessings, a contemplative mind, a cheerful disposition, an active and a healthful body. So beauteous did the scenery of this delightful spot appear to him, that, to use his own words, "the pleasantness of the river, mountains, and meadows about it, cannot be described, unless Sir Philip Sidney, or Mr. Cotton's father were again alive to do it."

In the latter years of the reign of Charles the Second, the violence of faction burst forth with renovated fury. The discontents of the Nonconformists were daily increasing; while Popery assumed fresh hopes of re-establishing itself by fomenting and encouraging the divisions that unhappily subsisted among Protestants. A tract, entitled "The Naked Truth, or the True State of the Church," was published in 1675, and attributed to Dr. Herbert Croft, Bishop of Hereford. Eager to accomplish a union of the Dissenters with the Church of England, and to include them within its pale, this prelate hesitated not to suggest the expediency of proposing several concessions to them, with respect to the rites and ceremonies then in use, and even to comply with their unreasonable demand of abolishing Episcopacy. It may be easily presumed, that these proposals met with no very favourable reception. They were animadverted upon with much spirit and ability, in various publications. In the mean time, animosities prevailed without any prospect of their termination. From fanaticism on one side, and from superstition on the other, real danger was apprehended. Those who exerted themselves in maintaining the legal rights and liberties of the established church, were denominated" Whigs." Most of them were persons eminent for their learning, and very cordially attached to the estab

lished constitution. Others, who opposed the Dissenters, and were thought to be more in fear of a republic, than a Popish successor, were distinguished by the name of "Tories." At this critical period, Izaak Walton expressed his solicitude for the real welfare of his country, not with a view to embarrass himself in disputation, for his nature was totally abhorrent from controversy, but to give an ingenuous and undissembled account of his own faith and practice, as a true son of the Church of England. His modesty precluded him from annexing his name to the treatise, which he composed at this time, and which appeared, first, in 1680, under the title of "Love and Truth, in two modest and peaceable Letters, concerning the Distempers of the present Times; written from a quiet and conformable Citizen of Londen, to two busy and factious Shopkeepers in Coventry. 'But let none of you suffer as a busy-body in other men's matters.' 1 Pet. iv. 15. 1680." The style, the sentiment, the argumentation, are such as might be expected from a plain man, actuated only by an honest zeal to promote the public peace. And if we consider that it was written by him in the 87th year of his age, a period of life when the faculties of the mind are usually on the decline, it will be scarce possible not to admire the clearness of his judgment, and the unimpaired vigour of his memory. The real purport of this work, which is not altogether unapplicable to more recent times, and which breathes the genuine spirit of benevolence and candour, is happily expressed in the author's own words to the person whom he addresses in the second letter.

"This I beseech you to consider seriously; and, good cousin, let me advise you to be one of the thankful and quiet party; for it will bring peace at last. Let neither your discourse nor practice be to encourage or assist in making a schism in that church, in which you were baptized and adopted a Christian; for you may continue in it with safety to your soul; you may in it study sanctification, and practise it to what degree God, by his grace, shall enable you. You may fast as much as you will; be as humble as you will; pray both publicly and privately as much as you will; visit and comfort as many distressed and dejected families as you will; be as liberal and charitable to the poor as you think fit and are able. These, and all other of those undoubted

Christian graces that accompany salvation, you may practise either publicly or privately, as much and as often as you think fit; and yet keep in the communion of that church, of which you were made a member by your baptism. These graces you may practise, and not be a busy-body in promoting schism and faction; as God knows your father's friends, Hugh Peters and John Lilbourn did, to the ruin of themselves and many of their disciples. Their turbulent lives and uncomfortable deaths are not, I hope, yet worn out of the memory of many. He that compares them with the holy life and happy death of Mr. George Herbert, as it is plainly, and, I hope, truly writ by Mr. Izaak Walton, may in it find a perfect pattern for an humble and devout Christian to imitate. And he that considers the restless lives and uncomfortable deaths of the other two (who always lived, like the salamander, in the fire of contention), and considers the dismal consequences of schism and sedition, will (if prejudice and a malicious zeal have not so blinded him that he cannot see reason) be so convinced, as to beg of God to give him a meek and quiet spirit; and that he may, by his grace, be prevented from being a busy-body, in what concerns him not."

Such admonitions as these could only proceed from a heart overflowing with goodness; a heart, as was said concerning that of Sir Henry Wotton, "in which peace, patience, and calm content did inhabit."

His intercourse with learned men, and the frequent and familiar conversations which he held with them, afforded him many opportunities of obtaining several valuable anecdotes relafive to the history of his contemporaries. The following literary curiosity is preserved in the Ashmolean Museum, at Oxford:

"For your friend's queries this:

"I only knew Ben Jonson; but my lord of Winton knew him very well, and says he was in the sixth, that is, the uppermost form in Westminster school, at which time his father died, and his mother married a bricklayer, who made him (much against his will) help him in his trade; but in a short time, his schoolmaster, Mr. Camden, got him a better employment, which was to attend or accompany a son of Sir Walter Raleigh's in his travels.

Within a short time after their return, they parted (I think not in cool blood) and with a love suitable to what they had in their travels (not to be commended). And then Ben began to set up for himself in the trade by which he got his subsistence and fame, of which I need not give any account. He got in time to have a hundred pounds a year from the king, also a pension from the city, and the like from many of the nobility and some of the gentry, which was well paid, for love or fear of his railing in verse or prose, or both. My lord told me, he told him he was (in his long retirement and sickness, when he saw him, which was often) much afflicted, that he had profaned the Scripture in his plays, and lamented it with horror; yet that, at that time of his long retirement, his pension (so much as came in) was given to a woman that governed him (with whom he lived and died near the Abbey in Westminster); and that neither he nor she took much care for next week; and would be sure not to want wine; of which he usually took too much before he went to bed, if not oftener and sooner. My lord tells me, he knows not, but thinks he was born in Westminster. The question may be put to Mr. Wood very easily upon what grounds he is positive as to his being born there; he is a friendly man, and will resolve it. So much for brave Ben. You will not think the rest so tedious as I do this.

"For your second and third queries of Mr. Hill, and Billingsley, I do neither know nor can learn any thing worth telling you.

"For your two remaining queries of Mr. Warner, and Mr. Harriott, this:

"Mr. Warner did long and constantly lodge near the waterstairs, or market, in Woolstable. Woolstable is a place not far from Charing-Cross, and nearer to Northumberland-house. My lord of Winchester tells me, he knew him, and that he said, ho first found out the circulation of the blood, and discovered it to Dr. Harvey (who said that it was he himself that found it), for which he is so memorally famous. Warner had a pension of forty pounds a year from that Earl of Northumberland that lay so long a prisoner in the Tower, and some allowance from Sir Thomas Aylesbury, and with whom he usually spent his summer