LIFE OF WALTON. XV11 



deuotctly, in sayenge ajfectuously youre customable prayer ; * and, thus 

 doynge, ye shall eschetce and voyde many vices. 



But to return to the last-mentioned work of our author, The Com- 

 plete Angler: it came into the world attended with Encomiastic 

 Verses by several writers of that day ; 2 and had in the title-page, 

 though Walton thought proper to omit it in the future editions, this 

 apposite motto : 

 " SIMON PETER said, I go a fishing ; and they said, we also will go 



withthee." John 21. 3. 



And here occasion is given us to remark, that the circumstance of 

 time, and the distracted state of the kingdom at the period when the 

 book was written, reaching indeed to the publication of the third 

 edition thereof, are evidences of the author's inward temper and dis- 

 position ; 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 Pitcator does ? and this, too, at a time when the whole kingdom 

 was in arms; and confusion and desolation were carried to an ex- 

 treme sufficient to have excited such a resentment against the authors 

 of them, as might have soured the best temper, and rendered it, in no 

 small degree, unfit for social intercourse. 3 



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 gratification, to this it may be an- 

 swered, 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; 

 industrious 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 

 in: must stand acquitted, who appears to have had the strongest at- 

 tachments, 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 fa- 

 voured the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of this country, the 

 subversion whereof, it was his misfortune both to see and feel. See- 

 ing, 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 



(1) A note of the pious simplicity of former times, which united prayer 

 with recreation. 



(2) This is a mistake ; it was upon the publication of the second edition, 

 that the commendatory verses appeared. 



(3) Tins kind of reeiunient we cannot better estimate, than by a com- 

 parison thereof with its opposite affection, whatever we may call it ; which 

 in one instance, to wit, the restoration ot King Charles II. had such an 

 effect upon Mr. Ouphtred, tlu- mathematician, that, for joy on receiving 

 the news that the parliament had voted the king's return, he expired. 



