vi INTRODUCTION. 



accompaniment. Such as are wayfarers on this plane, 

 whether fate or freewill be the reason, when they have 

 arrived at the journey's end will find that if there be some 

 things that have not been gained, they may balance against 

 them the much that has not been lost. Indeed, if life be 

 an inevitable . failure, as some of them may be supposed to 

 uphold, one might argue that the fewer and simpler the 

 transactions, the less will be the discrepancy when the 

 whole is summed up. 



The other manner of life, no doubt, is the nobler; and 

 to those who reach an appreciable success in it will be the 

 greater glory. But to those who make the peaceable mind 

 and the quiet life their aim a more notable attainment may 

 be vouchsafed in virtue of the easier circumstances of their 

 course; and it may be that to them also shall be the meed 

 of renown. 



Now there is a sunny and a sombre kind in these latter 

 natures, the one uncompromisingly reticent, the other un- 

 averse to society. With the isolating tendency there is 

 the eremite, living perhaps in the midst of men, whose 

 endeavour is to contrive the effacement of the adventitious 

 and inessential, to withdraw continually into himself and 

 dwell apart. But to be freed from the trite and trivial 

 embarrassments of our existence is surely to lose in 

 addition the true and wholesome essence of it, to effect 

 an unworthy, though seemingly dignified, retiral, and become 

 less considerable than the trifles one escapes. For though 

 the sequestered nature in his reclusion may believe that he 

 is sufficient unto himself, he must remain inefficient as a 

 man in virtue of his forfeited humanity. 



As presenting a complete and pleasing contrast to such, 

 one could find no better instance than the author of The 

 Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Marts Recreation. 



