56 LIFE OP WALTON. 



weighed against those of a mind stored, like his, with 

 a great variety of useful knowledge, and a temper that 

 could harbour no malevolent thought or insidious de- 

 sign, nor stoop to the arts of fraud or flattery*, but dis- 

 posed him to love and virtuous friendship, to the enjoy- 

 ment of innocent delights and recreations, to the con- 

 templation of the works of nature, and the ways of Pro- 

 vidence, and to the still sublimer pleasures of rational 

 piety. 



If, possessing all these benefits and advantages, ex- 

 ternal and internal ; together with a mental constitution, 

 so happily attempered as to have been to him a per- 

 petual fountain of chearfulness t; we can entertain a 

 doubt that Walton was one of the happiest of men, 

 we estimate them at a rate too low ; and shew ourselves 

 ignorant of the nature of that felicity to which it is 

 possible even in this life for virtuous and good men, 

 with the blessing of God, to arrive. 



* Vide infra, in his Will. 



\ See his Preface, wherein he declares that though he can be serious at 

 seasonable times, he is a lover of innocent harmless mirth, and that hi" 

 book is ^picture of bis own disposition* 



