IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 49 



write this discourse to please myself but to please 

 others," and he says, " that in writing of it I have 

 made myself a recreation of a recreation," and 

 again : " I write not to get money but for pleasure." 

 In spite of this admission Walton was no fool 

 in the estimation of Dr Johnson, who remarked 

 that "nobody but a fool wrote except for money." 

 A modern thinker ^ has remarked that the desire 

 of posthumous fame, though a very high one, is a 

 very unusual ambition. We rather think with 

 Frederick Robertson, of Brighton, that most of us 

 ''long to be remembered after death." Certainly 

 we must suppose that Walton desired fame in his 

 life and after. We remember his well-known 

 monogram, scratched by him on Isaac Casaubon's 

 tomb in the south transept in Westminster Abbey 

 in 1658, "earliest of those unhappy inscriptions of 

 names of visitors which have since defaced so 

 many a sacred space in the Abbey. 'O si sic 

 omnia ! ' We forgive the Greek soldiers who 

 recorded their journey on the foot of the statue at 

 Ipsumbul ; the Platonist who has left his name in 

 the tomb of Rameses at Thebes ; the Roman Emperor 

 who has carved his attestation of Memnon's music 

 on the colossal knees of Amenophis. Let us in 

 like manner forgive the angler for this mark of 

 himself in Poets' Corner" (Dean Stanley's Memorials 

 of Westminster Ahhey). 



1 Dean Vaughan, Master of the Temple. 

 D 



