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 piscatoribus 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 



