154 IZAAK WALTON AND ANOTHER 



charm, captivating the fancy and holding the affection 

 of one generation after another, even of those who never 

 straightened a line across a river reach. Even in that 

 angry, thunderous seventeenth century, when half of 

 England was at the throats of the other half, and Scot- 

 land and Ireland vied in the work of civil carnage, Izaak's 

 placid theme attracted so many readers, that he himself 

 lived to revise a fifth edition, in collaboration with Charles 

 Cotton, whose Instructions how to Angle for Trout and 

 Grayling in a Clear Stream, hardly less delightful than 

 Walton's own treatise, imparted instruction beyond the 

 elder fisher's experience, and thenceforward has remained 

 inseparable from The Compleat Angler. 



Even the Laureate of the Lakes, he who exhorted men 



' Never to blend their pleasures or their pride 

 With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels,' 



fell so entirely under the Waltonian spell as to pencil 

 his well-known sonnet on a blank page of The Compleat 

 Angler. 



' While flowing rivers yield a blameless sport, 

 Shall live the Name of Walton : Sage benign ! 



Fairer than life itself, in this sweet Book 



The cowslip bank and shady willow-tree ; 



And the fresh meads where flowed, from every nook 



Of his full bosom, gladsome Piety.' 



No fleeting fascination has Walton's proved to be; not 

 one book in fifty thousand nay, five hundred thousand 

 has stood so well the test of centuries. Moses Brown 

 had a cunning flair for good literature when he brought 

 out the sixth edition in 1750 (the first after the 

 author's death) 'at the instigation of an ingenious and 

 learned friend whose judgment of men and books is 



