ON THE POPULARITY OP NATURAL HISTORY * 117 



next opportunity. A skilful author who seeks to charm the world, will take 

 every opportunity of thus introducing sketches of and references to scenes familiar 

 to his readers, even if they occasionally digress a little from the main purport of 

 his treatise, because, like an inequality in the bed of a stream, if the current be 

 momentarily impeded, additional beauty is created by the rough mossy stones 

 round and over which the chafed waters urge their way with musical reverbera- 

 tions. N» one ever understood this better than good Isaac Walton, who, if he 

 had clung closely to his hook and line, might have been forgotten long ere this, 

 except by the craft, and would surely never have passed through the varied 

 editions he has done. Let us snatch a quotation from him : — " My friend 

 Piscator, you have kept time with my thoughts, for the sun is just rising, and 

 I myself just now come down to this place, and the Dogs have just now put 

 down an Otter. Look down at the bottom of the hill there in that meadoio chequered 

 with Water-lilies and La dy- smocks, there you may see what work they make : 

 look, look, you may see all busy, men and dogs, dogs and men, all busy."""" Now 

 the charm of this allusion is the sun rising on a glorious summer's mom, with 

 the brook winding in the meadow at the bottom of the lull, its margin covered 

 with silver Cuckoo-flowers, and the Water-lilies spreading their broad leaves on 

 its verge. This is the picture which Walton has animated with an Otter-hunt, 

 although the taking of an Otter might have been described to the initiated in a 

 very different manner. 



Again, he remarks — " Look, render that broad Beech-tree I sat down, when I 

 was last this way a-fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have 

 a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow 

 tree, near to the brow of that Primrose-hill." Who is not charmed with such a 

 reference as this, to which, however, angling, though the main subject of the 

 book, is rendered quite subordinate ? The reason is, that any body may go when 

 time allows and sit under the broad Beech, and hear the birds, and mark the 

 echo in the hollow tree, and the Primrose hill, whether they choose to be anglers 

 or not. If inclined for a meditative day, they may so far follow old Isaak as to 

 " go to yonder Sycamore-tree," hide their bottle of drink under the hollow root 

 of it, and " make a brave breakfast with a piece of powdered beef," without any 

 positive necessity of using rod and line, unless they prefer it. 



These general illustrations are the charm of Poetry, which would be utterly 

 insipid without them, and even when they appear locally particularized, if skil- 

 fully managed they" become gems of the purest water in the bardic chaplet. 

 Take this from Wordsworth — 



Walton's Angler, in loc. 

 R2 



