134 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



There is an amusing letter to Walton, written 

 by Mr Andrew Lang in his Letters to Bead Authors 

 (Longmans, 1896), which recognises Walton's 

 kindliness and acknowledges the stability of 

 his religion. 



It has been much debated whether Walton 

 smoked. Some infer by a curious construction, 

 as it seems to me, of a sentence in TJie Com- 

 plete Angler that he did ; others again quote 

 the line in his elegy on Donne, ''as poison'd 

 fumes do waste the braine," to show he did 

 not. The poet and the man are often very 

 different beings ! We know from ' his own 

 words that Cotton obtained his tobacco from 

 London, but he wrote a crushing satire against 

 its use. Walton tells us that Wotton had 

 taken tobacco "somewhat immoderately." He 

 and Isaac Barrow are both instances of men 

 who died "of the poisons that most sweetly 

 slay." ' 



I fear we must for ever guess in vain on how 

 many of the " prints and pickters " and " littell 

 things " specifically bequeathed to his son the 

 Canon, Walton had emblazoned his name or 

 initials. One likes to know that Virgil wore 

 patched shoes, that Horace had no gilt cornices 



1 Barrow called tobacco his " Travcpap/xaKoi'." He is supposed to 

 liave learned the use of it where he found the opium which killed him 

 at last, in Turkey (see his Life hy James Hamilton, 1839). 



