II.

Good God! how sweet are all things here!
How beautiful the fields appear!

How cleanly do we feed and lie!
Lord! what good hours do we keep !
How quietly we sleep!

What peace! what unanimity! How innocent from the lewd fashion Is all our business, all our recreation!

III.

O how happy here's our leisure!

O how innocent our pleasure!

O ye valleys! O ye mountains!

O ye groves, and crystal fountains!

How I love at liberty,

By turns, to come and visit ye!

IV.

Dear Solitude, the soul's best friend,

That man acquainted with himself dost make,

And all his Maker's wonders to entend,

With thee I here converse at will,

And would be glad to do so still;

For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake.

V.

How calm and quiet a delight

Is it alone

To read, and meditate, and write;

By none offended, and offending none!

To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease,

And, pleasing a man's self, none other to displease!

VI.

O my beloved Nymph! fair Dove!

Princess of Rivers! how I love

Upon thy flowery banks to lie,

And view thy silver stream,
When gilded by a summer's beam,
And in it all thy wanton fry

Playing at liberty;

And, with my angle upon them,

The all of treachery

I ever learned industriously to try.

VII.

Such streams, Rome's yellow Tiber cannot show,
The Iberian Tagus, or Ligurian Po;

The Maese, the Danube, and the Rhine,

Are puddle-water all, compared with thine;

And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are

With thine much purer to compare ;

The rapid Garonne, and the winding Seine,
Are both too mean,

Beloved Dove, with thee

To vie priority;

Nay, Thame and Isis when conjoined submit,

And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.

VIII.

O my beloved rocks, that rise

To awe the earth and brave the skies!

From some aspiring mountain's crown,

How dearly do I love,

Giddy with pleasure, to look down,

And from the vales to view the noble heights above!

O my beloved caves! from Dog-star's heat,
And all anxieties, my safe retreat ;

What safety, privacy, what true delight,
In th' artificial night

Your gloomy entrails make,

Have I taken, do I take!

How oft, when grief has made me fly

To hide me from society,

Ev'n of my dearest friends, have I

In your recesses' friendly shade

All my sorrows open laid,

And my most secret woes intrusted to your privacy!

IX.

Lord! would men let me alone,

What an over-happy one

Should I think myself to be,

Might I, in this desert place,

Which most men in discourse disgrace.

Live but undisturbed and free!

Here, in this despised recess,

Would I, maugre Winter's cold,

And the Summer's worst excess,

Try to live out to sixty full years old!

And all the while,

Without an envious eye,

On any thriving under Fortune's smile

Contented live, and then contented die.

C. C.

But, notwithstanding the purity of sentiment contained in these verses, we are compelled to add that the virtuous aspirations of the poet were rendered

vain by a general want of economy in his affairs: thus forming a striking contrast to those of the practical moralist, whom we cannot help wishing he had been able to imitate in a degree more consistent with his truly creditable admiration. Nevertheless, their connection was highly honorable to them both; it is beautiful to fancy the cheerful sage relaxing to accommodate himself to the comparatively dissipated man of fashion, who, on the other hand, seems to have held himself as it were in a course of reformation, in compliment to his indulgent friend: nothing can be finer than his carrying this temper to the length of making his acceptableness to Walton the test of his general worthiness. See Part II. Chap. I.: "My father Walton will be seen twice in no man's company he does not like, and likes none but such as he believes to be very honest men; which is one of the best arguments, or at least one of the best testimonies I have, that I either am, or that he thinks me, one of those, seeing I have not yet found him weary of me."

Yet here we cannot refrain from the remark, that Walton triumphs over his coadjutor as much in the true aims of genius as in moral worth; having immortalized himself by a work which he produced by mere accident! — whilst Cotton, though almost an author by profession, having chosen disgusting topics for many of his original compositions, now lives chiefly in connection with the name of his venerable friend : or, to say the least, the benign influence of a virtuous association was never more strikingly

illustrated, since his devoted attachment to Walton forms the best evidence we have of his naturally amiable disposition, and a more honorable, if not a more certain immortality, is, on his part, the issue of this ever-memorable friendship; and yet it has been recently and justly observed, that a judicious selection of his poems would stamp him as first rate with the present age; though his capacity to vie with the most licentious wits of his own times injured his performances, taken as a whole-his Muse was truly "fond to inspire" if sometimes "ashamed to avow" - he flew to his pen upon all occasions, and was so ready at it, that he could disclose all his troubles, and his own noble, generous, jovial, and even thankful temper in half a score lines, as in the following part of an epistle to his friend Sir Clifford Clifton.

"He's good fellow enough to do every one right,

And never was first that asked what time of night;
His delight is to toss the can merrily round,
And loves to be wet, but hates to be drowned;
He fain would be just, but sometimes he cannot,
Which gives him the trouble that other men ha' not;
He honors his friend, but he wants means to show it,
And loves to be rhyming, but is the worst poet.
Yet among all these vices, to give him his due,
He has virtue to be a true lover of you;

But how much he loves you, he says you may guess it,
Since nor prose nor yet metre he swears can express it!"

Right pithily, also, has honest Charles anticipated