attempts at this sentence, each of them very far from the concise beauty to which he at last constrained himself. In his prayer-book are to be found his studies for his wife's epitaph, and his account of the death of Hooker and the Lives generally received considerable retouching. We have seen him working at The Compleat Angler till the last; and if it was artlessness that planned his pastoral, managed his dialogues, and introduced his variations from his chosen theme, it was that artlessness which is one with art. So much nature was never got into a book without a corresponding outlay of art—and has any one else brought the singing of birds, the fragrance of meadows, the meditative peace of the riverside, into a book, with so undying a freshness as he? And how well he knew daintily to set a sprig of “old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good," here and there among his pages, poetry thus immortalised by the association for no other writer so hallows his quotations. But it is in vain we strive by critical reagents to analyse the unfading charm of this old book; is it not simply that the soul of a good man still breathes through its pages like lavender? I IV. Charles Cotton HAVE elsewhere ventured to express the opinion that Cotton's so-called "second part" of The Compleat Angler, whatever the literary skill with which the style of Walton is imitated, not to say parodied, whatever its illustrative and associative value, or its importance as a contribution to the art and science of fly-fishing, is nevertheless-printed as an integral part of that charming classic -an impertinence. Its proper place is an appendix, whither I should have relegated it in this edition, had not tradition been too strong to be gainsaid. Whom fame has joined together let no man put asunder. Yet, as I have said, I cannot be "the only reader of the book for whom it ends with that gentle benediction: 'And upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his providence, and be quiet, and go a Angling'; and that sweet exhortation from 1 Thess. iv. 11, 'Study to be quiet.' "After the exquisite quietism of this farewell, it is distracting to come precipitately upon the fine gentleman with the great wig and the Frenchified airs." But I resent the arbitrary wedlock for Cotton, too. It has caused him to be preached at for years by sententiously pious editors, who, it is plain, feel him no fit company for Walton, and only tolerate him at all because Walton's affection "pleads against oblivion for his name." Dr. Bethune's sanctimonious horror on the matter is so delicious that I cannot forbear quoting him: The friendship which our venerated Walton had for Cotton, besides his being the author of the following amusing and excellent treatise, will naturally lead the reader to desire a better knowledge of him; but, it must be confessed, that the duty thus laid upon the editor is by no means so pleasant as he could wish. The character of the adopted son differs so widely from that of his pure-minded father, as to make it a mystery how even a common taste for angling could have made the friend of Wotton bear with the habits of the younger man. Perhaps the friendship Walton had for Cotton's father was affectionately entailed upon the offspring; perhaps similarity of political opinions may have biased even the very sober judgment; perhaps a charitable hope to do the reckless wit good by a close association made the merciful heart more tolerant ; no doubt the venerable presence restrained the tongue from the licence of the pen which the burlesque poet made a second nature; but however it came about, an affectionate intercourse was maintained between them, as the reader already knows, and will soon know further. Let us hope that Walton's serious occupations and intercourse with pious men of learning kept him happily away from companions where loose writings would be named; and that, ignorant of Cotton's vicious folly, he judged him rather by the truly beautiful sentiments breathed through the "Stanzes Irreguliers." One would like to hear "hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton's " laughter and remarks-on this passage. The incongruity of the friendship is obvious, and we may be sure, with Lowell, that "there must have been delicately understood and mutually respectful conventions of silence in an intimacy between the placidly believing author of the Lives and the translator of him who created the essay." But saint and sinner have been friends before and after Walton and Cotton, and the likeableness of a friend is more important to a friendship than his opinions, or even his morals. Besides, if Walton was a saint, he had plainly not forgotten the good gospel advice given to unpractical children of light, and Lowell no doubt indicates one bond. between him and Cotton, when he says that "Walton loved a gentleman of the blood as honestly as Johnson did, and was, I am sure, as sturdily independent withal . . . . himself of obscurest lineage, there was nothing he relished more keenly than the long pedigrees of other people." When that gentleman of the blood was an angler, with one of the best trout streams in England rippling through his lands, a man of taste, a staunch cavalier, a loyal Churchman, and a kind, hearty, good-natured young man, reverent to age and respectful towards sanctities, if perhaps a thought too gay and giddy in his life and poems, as young men will be—well, why shouldn't even the Bishop of Chichester's "Honest Izaak," take him for his friend? For Cotton Walton probably had that charm of antithesis which is so attractive to men of the world, who by a sort of intellectual urbanity often understand and interpret goodness and purity better than the good and pure themselves. Probably he had the man of the world's delight in character for its own sake, independent of the particular type's likeness or unlikeness to himself. There must have been times when, mentally, Walton made him yawn tremendously; times when he would smother his smiles at the old man's prudishness; times even when he may have been tempted to "damn" his sententiousness. The same happens with Walton's readers to this day, but they go on loving him all the same; and so it was, no doubt, with Cotton. Besides, it must not be forgotten that Walton had been a friend of the father before the son, a father so closely repeated in the son, that the same description will almost literally serve for both-though, of the two, the father seems to have been the more brilliant man. That description, stately yet almost tender, is supplied by Lord Clarendon in the following passage, quoted from his autobiography: Charles Cotton was a gentleman born to a competent fortune, and so qualified in his person and education, that for many years he continued the greatest ornament of the town, in the esteem of those who had been best bred. His natural parts were very great, his wit flowing in all the parts of conversation; the superstructure of learning not raised to a considerable height: but having passed some years in Cambridge, and then in France, and conversing always with learned men, his expressions were ever proper and significant, and gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argument; so that he was thought by those who were not intimate with him, to have been much better acquainted with books than he was. He had all those qualities which in youth raise men to the reputation of being fine gentlemen; such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delightfulness in conversation, that no man, in court or out of it, appeared a more accomplished person: all these extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraordinary a clearness of courage and fearlessness of spirit, of which he gave too often manifestation. Some unhappy suits in law, and waste of his fortune in those suits, made some impression on his mind which, being impaired by domestic afflictions, and those indulgences to himself which naturally attend those afflictions, rendered his age less reverenced than his youth had * In Cotton's poem to Walton quoted in the appendix, he says, à propos of the lives of Donne and Wotton : How happy was my father, then, to see Those men he lov'd, by him he lov'd, to be |