142 EASY-CHAIR MEMORIES 



Swift vein ; so, in future, I hope all anglers will 

 shift the joke to his shoulders. 



The rest of Hunt's essay is not flattering to 

 Izaak Walton or to anglers in general. This is 

 the way he speaks of Walton : 



" A friend of ours, who is an admirer of 

 Walton, was struck, just as we were, with the 

 likeness of the old angler's face to a fish. It is 

 hard, angular, and of no expression. It seems 

 to have been ' subdued to what it worked in,' 

 to have become native to the watery element. 

 One might have said of Walton, * O flesh, how 

 art thou fishified ! ' He looks like a pike dressed 

 in broadcloth instead of butter." 



I remember Leigh Hunt very well : his slender, 

 upright figure and long white hair made him 

 conspicuous and notable as he strolled along 

 Fleet Street ; in his writings he has left behind 

 him much that is delightful to read both in 

 prose and verse. He has been dead now nearly 

 fifty years, and of the dead nothing but good 

 should be said; but one might have asked him, 

 or his ghost, if one met it in Fleet Street, how 

 it has happened that this old Izaak Walton, 

 whom he despised, who was born more than 

 300 years ago, still lives in the hearts of all good 



