Izaak Walton 35 



alist, who would have us see the things just as they really 

 are. What concerns Walton is their effect on him. 



Again, a naturalist would have left the " front and back 

 door " of his mind '' less invitingly open " to the quaint sci- 

 ences of his credulous age. He jots down in all seriousness 

 the intricate theories of learned men who believed most 

 freely that which never was and never could be. Yet he 

 touches these pundits with a hand so deft, that no one can 

 tell whether he believes their words or, with the next cen- 

 tury, laughs at their pretentious nonsense. " Some affirm," 

 he says, " that any bait anointed with the thigh-bone of a 

 horse is a great temptation to any fish. This has not been 

 tried by me, but told me by a friend of note, that pretended 

 to do me a courtesy" " I have been told," he says gravely, 

 "that one hundred and sixty minnows have been found in 

 a trout's belly. Either the trout had devoured so many, or 

 the miller that gave it to a friend of mine, had forced them 

 down his throat after he had taken him." In like vein he 

 tells of the luce or the pike, the tyrant of the waters even 

 as the salmon is king. " 'Tis not to be doubted that they 

 are bred, some by generation and some not, as namely of a 

 weed called pickerel weed, unless the learned Gesner be 

 much mistaken, for, he says of the weed and other glutinous 

 matter, with the help of the sun's heat in some particular 

 months, and some ponds adapted for it by nature, do become 

 pikes. But doubtless divers pikes are bred after this man- 

 ner, or are brought into some ponds, some other such ways 

 as are past man's finding out, of which we have daily testi- 

 monies." 



Here, not a flicker of an eyelid betrays his quiet chuckle 

 at the angling lore of the musty schoolman, and yet he 

 was ready to laugh aloud, though in the most good-natured 

 way, for it is recorded that he was, like his friend Wot- 

 ton, of a most persuasive behavior. 



And for the rest we may borrow the words of Lowell : 



" Izaak Walton was a staunch royalist and churchman, 



