ON THE POPULARITY OF NATURAL HISTORY» 
117 
next opportunity. A skilful author who seeks to charm the world, will take 
every opportunity of thus introducing sketches of and references to scenes familiar 
to his readers, even if they occasionally digress a little from the main purport of 
his treatise, because, like an inequality in the bed of a stream, if the current be 
momentarily impeded, additional beauty is created by the rough mossy stones 
round and over which the chafed waters urge their way with musical reverbera¬ 
tions. No one ever understood this better than good Isaac Walton, who, if he 
had clung closely to his hook and line, might have been forgotten long ere this, 
except by the craft, and would surely never have passed through the varied 
editions he has done. Let us snatch a quotation from him:—“ My friend 
Piscator, you have kept time with my thoughts, for the sun is just rising , and 
I myself just now come down to this place, and the Dogs have just now put 
down an Otter. Look down at the bottom of the hill there in that meadow chequered 
with Water-lilies and Lady-smocks , there you may see what work they make : 
look, look, you may see all busy, men and dogs, dogs and men, all busy.”* Now 
the charm of this allusion is the sun rising on a glorious summers mom, with 
the brook winding in the meadow at the bottom of the hill, its margin covered 
with silver Cuckoo-flowers, and the Water-lilies spreading their broad leaves on 
its verge. This is the picture which Walton has animated with an Otter-hunt, 
although the taking of an Otter might have been described to the initiated in a 
very different manner. 
Again, he remarks—“ Look, under that broad Beech-tree I sat down, when I 
was last this way a-fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have 
a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow 
tree, near to the brow of that Primrose-hill .” Who is not charmed with such a 
reference as this, to which, however, angling, though the main subject of the 
book, is rendered quite subordinate ? The reason is, that any body may go when 
time allows and sit under the broad Beech, and hear the birds, and mark the 
echo in the hollow tree, and the Primrose hill, whether they choose to be anglers 
or not. If inclined for a meditative day, they may so far follow old Isaak as to 
u go to yonder Sycamore-tree,” hide their bottle of drink under the hollow root 
of it, and “ make a brave breakfast with a piece of powdered beef,” without any 
positive necessity of using rod and line, unless they prefer it. 
These general illustrations are the charm of Poetry, which would be utterly 
insipid without them, and even when they appear locally particularized, if skil¬ 
fully managed they become gems of the purest water in the bardie chaplet. 
Take this from Wordsworth— 
Walton’s Angler, in toe* 
R il 
