20 LIFE OF WALTON. 



thought proper to omit it in the future editions, this 

 apposite motto: 



" SIMON PETER said, I go a fishing; and they said, 

 ts we also will go with thee." John 21. 3. 



And here occasion is given us to remark, that the cir- 

 cumstance of time, and the distracted state of the king- 

 dom at the period when the book was written, reaching 

 indeed to the publication of tlie third edition thereof, are 

 evidences of the author's inward temper and disposition; 

 for who but a man whose mind was the habitation of 

 piety, prudence, humility, peace and chearfulness 

 could delineate such a character as that of the principal 

 interlocutor in this dialogue ; and make him reason, con- 

 template, instruct, converse, jest, sing, cLndrecite verses , 

 with that sober pleasantry, that unlicentious hila- 

 rity that Piscator does ? and this, too, at a time when 

 the whole kingdom was in arms ; and confusion and deso- 

 lation were carried to an extreme sufficient to have excited 

 such a resentment against the authors of them, as might 

 have soured the best temper, and rendered it, in no small 

 degree, unfit for social intercourse *. 



If it should be objected, that what is here said may be 

 equally true of an indolent man, or of a mind insensible 

 to all outward accidents, and devoted to its own ease and 

 gratification, to this it may be answered, that the per- 

 son here spoken of was not such a man : on the contrary, 

 in sundry views of his character, he appears to have 

 been endowed both with activity and industry ; an in- 

 dustrious tradesman, industrious in collecting biographi- 

 cal memoirs and historical facts, and in rescuing from 

 oblivion the memory and writings of many of his learn- 

 ed friends : and, surely, against the suspicion ofinscn- 

 bility HE must stand acquitted, who appears to have 

 had the strongest attachments, that could consist with 



* This kind of resentment we cannot better estimate, than by a com- 

 parison thereof with its opposite affection, whatever we m*y call it; 

 which in one instance, to wit, the restoration f king Charles II. had sch 

 an effect upon Mr. Oughtred, the mathematician, that, for joy on re- 

 ceiving the news that the parliament had voted the king's return, he e* 

 pired, 



