THOMAS KEN AND IZAAK WALTON 83 



I not fished in the Lea ? Have I not followed in 

 his footsteps through the lovely windings of Dove 

 Dale ? Have I not more than once made a 

 pilgrimage to the Walton and Cotton Fishing- 

 House ? Have I not seen the interior of that 

 renewed but venerable old house ? An interior, 

 by the way, which, as I have shown in the text, my 

 venerable old friend himself never saw complete ; 

 for there is not a scrap of evidence that he ever 

 saw more than a sketch at Beresford Hall, or when 

 " it was not raised so high as the dore." 



Again, have I not fished with him on the 

 Itchen, the Test, and the Wiltshire Avon ? 

 Walton was sixty-nine before he went to live at 

 Winchester, and therefore, in all probability before 

 he ever fished the Itchen ; I, too, had nearly reached 

 that age before I ever saw or fished the Itchen. 



Ah ! the delightful days, never to be recalled, 

 that I have spent on the banks of the Itchen, 

 below Winchester, and in our old fishing-house ; 

 for we, too, had a resort piscatoribtis sacrum. The 

 good doctor, who at the age of nearly ninety has 

 long since gone to his last long home — he who used 

 to drive up from Southampton of a morning, his 

 pockets filled with sweets, which he scattered to the 

 village children by the way ; always accompanied 



