38 Ifcfngs of tfoe 1Rofc, IRifle, anb Gun 



when I would say with Venator : " Good master, let us go 

 to that house : for the linen looks white, and smells of 

 lavender, and I long to lie in a pair of sheets that 

 smell so." 



Therein lies the perennial charm of " The Compleat 

 Angler " this breath of peace, contentment, quiet, and 

 leisure that it wafts to us, hot and weary with the feverish 

 life of to-day. And then to think that this worthy 

 London tradesman lived this contemplative life, wrote 

 this placid pastoral, and pursued his gentle sport un- 

 ruffled in one of the stormiest periods of English history 

 when King's men and Parliament men were fighting 

 like devils, when all England was seething with civil 

 war and ringing with the clash of arms ! " The Compleat 

 Angler" was first published in 1653, but four years 

 after Charles I. was beheaded at Whitehall, when the 

 memory of the impious murder of " the Lord's Anointed," 

 as Walton must have regarded it, was still fresh in the 

 memory of Royalists. But our good, mild " Father 

 Izaak " was not a fighting man he was the very em- 

 bodiment of the prudent and pacific bourgeois to whom 

 the thought of risking his skin is abhorrent so he let 

 Cavaliers and Roundheads crack one another's crowns 

 to their heart's content, whilst he sensibly but unheroically 

 stuck to his shop and faithfully followed the advice 

 which he gave to "all that are lovers of virtue": 

 " Be quiet and go a-angling." I envy him his serenity 

 and content, whilst I am devoutly thankful that all 

 Englishmen have not been made in the same un- 

 heroic mould. 



The known facts concerning Izaak Walton are, I 



