LIFE OF JZAAK WALTON. 11 



when the book was written, reaching, indeed, to the publication 

 of the 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 cheerfulness, could delineate such a character as that of 

 the principal interlocutor in this dialogue ; and make him 

 reason, contemplate, instruct, converse, jest, sing, and recite 

 verses, with that sober pleasantry, that unlicentious hilarity, 

 that Piscator does ; and this, too, at a time when the whole 

 kingdom was in arms ; and confusion and desolation were 

 carried to an extreme sufficient to have excited such a resent- 

 ment 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 gratifi- 

 cation, to this it may be answered, that the person 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 industrious tradesman ; indus- 

 trious in collecting biographical memoirs and historical facts, 

 and in rescuing from oblivion the memory and writings of 

 many of his learned friends : and surely, against the suspicion 

 of insensibility HE must stand acquitted, who appears to 

 have had the strongest attachments that could consist with 

 Christian charity, both to opinions and men ; to episcopacy, 

 to the doctrines, discipline, and the liturgy of the established 

 church ; and to those divines and others that favoured the 

 civil and ecclesiastical constitution of this country, the sub- 

 version whereof it was his misfortune both to see and feel. 

 Seeing, therefore, that amidst the public calamities, and in a 

 state of exile from that city where the earliest and dearest of 

 his connections had been formed, he was thus capable of 

 enjoying himself in the manner he appears to have done ; 

 patiently submitting to those evils which he could not prevent, 

 we must pronounce him to have been an illustrious 

 exemplar of the private and social virtues, and, upon the whole, 

 a wise and good man. 



To these remarks, respecting the moral qualities of Walton, 

 I add, that his mental endowments were so considerable as to 

 merit notice. It is true, that his stock of learning, properly so 

 called, was not great; yet were his attainments in literature 

 far beyond what could be expected from a man bred to trade, 



