LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. 



[1678, 



Whilst all the ills are so improv'd 

 Of this dead quarter of the year, 

 That even you, so much belov'd, 

 We would not now wish with us here ; 



In this estate, I say, it is 



Some comfort to us to suppose, 



That in a better clime than this 



You, our dear friend, have more repose ; 



And some delight to me the while, 

 Though nature does now weep in rain, 

 To think that I have seen her smile, 

 And haply may I do again. 



If the all-ruling Power please 

 We live to see another May, 

 We'll recompense an age of these 

 Foul days in one fine fishing-day ; 



We then shall have a day or two, 

 Perhaps a week, wherein to try, 

 What the best Master's hand can do 

 With the most deadly killing fly. 



A day without too bright a beam, 

 A warm but not a scorching sun, 

 A southern gale to curl the stream, 

 And, Master, half our work is done. 



There whilst behind some bush we wait, 

 The scaly people to betray, 

 We'll prove it just, with treach'rous bait, 

 To make the preying trout our prey ; 



And think ourselves in such an hour 

 Happier than those, though not so high, 

 Who, like leviathans, devour 

 Of meaner men, the smaller fry. 



This, my best friend, at my poor home 

 Shall be our pastime and our theme ; 

 But then should you not deign to come, 

 You make all this a flatt'ring dream." 5 



Notwithstanding Walton's very advanced age might, as he him- 

 self says, have procured him " a writ of ease," he continued to 

 employ himself in literary pursuits ; and at a period of life to 

 which few men attain, and at which still fewer are capable of 

 intellectual exertion, he commenced the Life of Robert Sanderson, 

 Bishop of Lincoln, a work requiring as much vigour of mind as 

 any he had written, and which he completed with equal success. 

 The volume was published about May i678, 6 and like the Memoir 

 of Hooker, and the collected edition of the Lives of Donne, Wotton, 

 Hooker, and Herbert, was inscribed to Dr Morley, whose continued 

 favours demanded a new testimony of his gratitude. As this was 

 Walton's last work, and as whatever relates to him at so advanced 



5 Cotton's Poems, ed. 1689, p. 1 14. 



6 The imprimatur is dated on the 7th of May 1678. 



