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The Chronicle of 



wifh the proceffion had been lefs multitudinous ; not that there 

 had been fewer reprints, but fewer editors, — What, if we 

 fuggefted that fomething lefs of heavy learning and abftrufe 

 refearch would have been a more merciful difpenfation — that 

 the Pelion of Erudition, piled on the OfTa of Science, is an 

 overwhelming accompaniment under the circumftances ! What 

 — to throw afide all refervation — if we were to opine that 

 Walton's pretty paftoral had been hardly dealt with, and that it 

 may be neither good tafte nor found judgment to flood the ob- 

 fcurity of our antique literature with the gariih noonday of the 

 nineteenth century — to bring the two into collifion — the flamed 

 oriel, on the one hand, with its beautiful dapplings of many 

 coloured luftre, and the broad, white cafement on the other, 

 dazzling, without fleck or flaw ! What, again — but our herefy 

 may be running away with us, it is better we fhould draw rein. 

 We have not averred thefe things — we have merely dropped 

 them, with a f peradventure'... have our readers anything to fay? 

 One avowal we will make, however, c out and out.' Modern 

 critics there are, who have indulged in many thin-lipped fneers 

 at old Izaak's fuperftition and fond credulity. Againft this 

 we put in our proteft, lined and underlined. Walton was 

 effentially a man of his time, walking by the lights of his time ; 

 we have no right to exact from him the wide-awake knowing- 

 nefs and fcepticifm of later days. Superftition, befides, (truck 

 its roots deep in the organization of the angler of that period ; it 

 was lord and mafterover him, in fact. It made choice of the 

 time when he fhould fifh, and of the path he fhould take. It 

 had fomething to fay of the ordering of his apparel, and much 



