the world can make their parts which are naturally sluggish, rise one minute before the hour nature hath appointed. 4. Those that are invincibly dull, and negligent also. Correction may reform the latter, not amend the former. All the whetting in the world can never set a razor's edge on that which hath no steel in it. Such boys he consigneth over to other professions. Shipwrights and boat-makers will choose those crooked pieces of timber which other carpenters refuse. Those inay make excellent merchants and mechanics which will not serve for scholars. He is able, diligent, and methodical in his teaching; not leading them rather in a circle than forwards. He minces his precepts for children to swallow, hanging clogs on the nimbleness of his own soul, that his scholars may go along with him. He is and will be known to be an absolute monarch in his school. If cockering mothers proffer him money to purchase their sons' exemption from his rod (to live, as it were, in a peculiar, out of their master's jurisdiction), with disdain he refuseth it, and scorns the late custom in some places of commuting whipping into money, and ransoming boys from the rod at a set price. If he hath a stubborn youth, correction-proof, he debaseth not his authority by contesting with him, but fairly, if he can, puts him away before his obstinacy hath infected others. He is moderate in inflicting deserved correction. Many a schoolmaster better answereth the name paidotribes than paidagogos, rather tearing his scholars' flesh with whipping than giving them good education. No wonder if his scholars hate the muses, being presented unto them in the shapes of fiends and furies. Such an Orbilius mars more scholars than he makes. Their tyranny hath caused many tongues to stammer which spake plain by nature, and whose stuttering at first was nothing else but fears quavering on their speech at their master's presence. And whose mauling them about their heads hath dulled those who in quickness exceeded their master. He makes his school free to him who sues to him in forma pauperis. And surely learning is the greatest alms that can be given. But he is a beast who, because the poor scholar cannot pay him his wages, pays the scholar in his whipping; rather are diligent lads to be encouraged with all excitements to learning. This minds me of what I have heard concerning Mr Bust, that worthy late schoolmaster of Eton, who would never suffer any wandering begging scholar (such as justly the statute hath ranked in the forefront of rogues) to come into his school, but would thrust him out with earnestness (however privately charitable unto him), lest his schoolboys should be disheartened from their books, by seeing some scholars after their studying in the university preferred to beggary. He spoils not a good school to make thereof a bad college, therein to teach his scholars logic. For, besides that logic may have an action of trespass against grammar for encroaching on her liberties, syllogisms are solecisms taught in the school, and oftentimes they are forced afterwards in the university, to unlearn the fumbling skill they had before. Out of his school he is no way pedantical in carriage or discourse; contenting himself to be rich in Latin, though he doth not gingle with it in every company wherein he comes. To conclude, let this, amongst other motives, make schoolmasters careful in their place-that the eminences of their scholars have commended the memories of their schoolmasters to posterity, who, otherwise in obscurity, had altogether been forgotten. Who had ever heard of R. Bond, in Lancashire, but for the breeding of learned Ascham, his scholar or of Hart Spill not the morning (the quintessence of the day) in recreation; for sleep itself is a recreation. Add not therefore sauce to sauces; and he cannot properly have any title to be refreshed who was not first faint. Pastime, like wine, is poison in the morning. It is then good husbandry to sow the head, which hath lain fallow all night, with some serious work. Chiefly, intrench not on the Lord's day to use unlawful sports; this were to spare thine own flock, and to shear God's lamb. * * It is a vanity to persuade the world one hath much learning by getting a great library. As soon shall I believe every one is valiant that hath a well-furnished armoury. I guess good housekeeping by the smoking, not the number of the tunnels, as knowing that many of them (built merely for uniformity) are without chimneys, and more without fires. * Some books are only cursorily to be tasted of: namely, first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them you look through them, and he that peeps through the casement of the index, sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be excused, who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city-cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied. [Education confined too much to Language.] Our common education is not intended to render us good and wise, but learned: it hath not taught us to follow and embrace virtue and prudence, but hath imprinted in us their derivation and etymology; it hath chosen out for us not such books as contain the soundest and truest opinions, but those that speak the best Greek and Latin; and, by these rules, has instilled into our fancy the vainest humours of antiquity. But a good education alters the judgment and manners. ** 'Tis a silly conceit that men without languages are also without understanding. It's apparent, in all ages, that some such have been even prodigies for ability; for it's not to be believed that Wisdom speaks to her disciples only in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. [Rules for Improving the Memory.] First, soundly infix in thy mind what thou desirest to remember. What wonder is it if agitation of busi ness jog that out of thy head, which was there rather tacked than fastened? whereas those notions which get in by violenta possessio,' will abide there till ejectio firma,' sickness, or extreme age, dispossess them. It is best knocking in the nail over night, and clinching it the next morning. Overburden not thy memory to make so faithful a servant a slave. Remember Atlas was weary. Have as much reason as a camel, to rise when thou hast thy full load. Memory, like a purse, if it be over full that it cannot shut, all will drop out of it: take heed of a gluttonous curiosity to feed on many things, lest the greediness of the appetite of thy memory spoil the digestion thereof. Beza's case was peculiar and memorable; being above fourscore years of age, he perfectly could say by heart any Greek chapter in St Paul's epistles, or anything else which he had learnt long before, but forgot whatsoever was newly told him; his memory, like an inn, retaining old guests, but having no room to entertain new. Spoil not thy memory by thine own jealousy, nor make it bad by suspecting it. How canst thou find that true which thou wilt not trust? St Augustine tells us of his friend Simplicius, who, being asked, could tell all Virgil's verses backward and forward, and yet the same party avowed to God that he knew not that he could do it till they did try him. Sure there is concealed strength in men's memories, which they take no notice of. Marshal thy notions into a handsome method. One will carry twice more weight trussed and packed up in bundles, than when it lies untoward flapping and hanging about his shoulders. Things orderly fardled up under heads are most portable. Adventure not all thy learning in one bottom, but divide it betwixt thy memory and thy note-books. He that with Bias carries all his learning about him in his head, will utterly be beggared and bankrupt, if a violent disease, a merciless thief, should rob and strip him. I know some have a common-place against common-place books, and yet, perchance, will privately make use of what they publicly declaim against. A common-place book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field on competent warning. [Terrors of a Guilty Conscience.] Fancy runs most furiously when a guilty conscience drives it. One that owed much money, and had many creditors, as he walked London streets in the evening, a tenterhook catched his cloak: At whose suit?' said he, conceiving some bailiff had arrested him. Thus guilty consciences are afraid where no fear is, and count every creature they meet a sergeant sent from God to punish them. [Marriage.] Deceive not thyself by over-expecting happiness in the married state. Look not therein for contentment greater than God will give, or a creature in this world can receive, namely, to be free from all inconveniences. Marriage is not like the hill Olympus, wholly clear, without clouds. Remember the nightingales, which sing only some months in the spring, but commonly are silent when they have hatched their eggs, as if their mirth were turned into care for their young ones. [Conversation.] The study of books is a languishing and feeble motion, that heats not; whereas conference teaches and exercises at once. If I confer with an understanding man and a rude jester, he presses hard upon me on both sides; his imaginations raise up mine to more than * ordinary pitch. Jealousy, glory, and contention, stimulate and raise me up to something above myself; and a consent of judgment is a quality totally offensive in conference. But, as our minds fortify themselves by the communication of vigorous and regular understandings, 'tis not to be expressed how much they lose and degenerate by the continual commerce and frequentation we have with those that are mean and low. There is no contagion that spreads like that. I know sufficiently, by experience, what 'tis worth a yard. I love to discourse and dispute, but it is with few men, and for myself; for to do it as a spectacle and entertainment to great persons, and to vaunt of a man's wit and eloquence, is in my opinion very unbecoming a man of honour. Impertinency is a scurvy quality; but not to be able to endure it, to fret and vex at it, as I do, is another sort of disease, little inferior to impertinence itself, and is the thing that I will now accuse in myself. I enter into conference and dispute with great liberty and facility, forasmuch as opinion meets in me with a soil very unfit for penetration, and wherein to take any deep root: no propositions astonish me, no belief offends me, though never so contrary to my own. There is no so frivolous and extravagant fancy that does not seem to me suitable to the product of human wit. * The contradictions of judgments, then, do neither offend nor alter, they only rouse and exercise me. We evade correction, whereas we ought to offer and present ourselves to it, espe cially when it appears in the form of conference, and not of authority. At every opposition, we do not consider whether or no it be just, but right or wrong how to disengage ourselves; instead of extending the arms, we thrust out our claws. I could suffer myself to be rudely handled by my friend, so much as to tell me that I am a fool, and talk I know not of what. I love stout expressions amongst brave men, and to have them speak as they think. We must fortify and harden our hearing against this tenderness of the ceremonious sound of words. I love a strong and manly familiarity in conversation; a friendship that flatters itself in the sharpness and vigour of its communica tion, like love in biting and scratching. It is not vigorous and generous enough if it be not quarrelsome; if civilised and artificial, if it treads nicely, and fears the shock. When any one contradicts me, he raises my attention, not my anger; I advance towards him that controverts, that instructs me. The cause of truth ought to be the common cause both of one and the other. * I embrace and caress truth in what hand soever I find it, and cheerfully surrender myself and my conquered arms, as far off as I can discover it; and, provided it be not too imperiously, take a pleasure in being reproved; and accommodate myself to my accusers, very often more by reason of civility than amendment, loving to gratify and nourish the liberty of admonition by my facility of submitting to it. In earnest, I rather choose the frequentation of those that ruffle me than those that fear me. 'Tis a dull and hurtful pleasure to have to do with people who admire us, and approve of all we say. * * [Domestic Economy.] The most useful and honourable knowledge for the mother of a family, is the science of good housewifery. I see some that are covetous, indeed, but very few that are saving. 'Tis the supreme quality of a woman, and that a man ought to seek after beyond any other, as the only dowry that must ruin or preserve our houses. Let men say what they will, according to the experience I have learned, I require in married women the economical virtue above all other virtues; I put my wife to't as a concern of her own, leaving her, by my absence, the whole government of my affairs. I see, and am ashamed to see, in several families I know, monsieur about dinner time come home all dirt, and in great disorder, from trotting about amongst his husbandmen and labourers, when madam is perhaps scarce out of her bed, and afterwards is pouncing and tricking up herself, forsooth, in her closet. This is for queens to do, and that's a question too. 'Tis ridiculous and unjust that the laziness of our wives should be maintained with our sweat and labour. [Miscellaneous Aphorisms.] It is dangerous to gather flowers that grow on the banks of the pit of hell, for fear of falling in: yea, they which play with the devil's rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword; and from making of sport, they come to doing of mischief. Heat gotten by degrees, with motion and exercise, is more natural, and stays longer by one, than what is gotten all at once by coming to the fire. Goods acquired by industry prove coinmonly more lasting than lands by descent. A public office is a guest which receives the best usage from them who never invited it. Scoff not at the natural defects of any, which are not in their power to amend. Oh ! 'tis cruelty to beat a cripple with his own crutches. Anger is one of the sinews of the soul: he that wants it hath a maimed mind. Generally, nature hangs out a sign of simplicity in the face of a fool, and there is enough in his countenance for a hue and cry to take him on suspicion; or else it is stamped in the figure of his body: their heads sometimes so little, that there is no room for wit; sometimes so long, that there is no wit for so much .00m. They that marry ancient people, merely in expectation to bury them, hang themselves, in hope that one will come and cut the halter. Learning hath gained most by those books by which the printers have lost. Is there no way to bring home a wandering sheep but by worrying him to death? Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl-chain of all virtues. IZAAK WALTON. One of the most interesting and popular of our early writers was IZAAK WALTON, an English worthy of the simple antique cast, who retained in the heart of London, and in the midst of close and successful application to business, an unworldly simplicity of character, and an inextinguishable fondness for country scenes, pastimes, and recreations. He had also a power of natural description and lively dialogue that has rarely been surpassed. His Complete Angler is a rich storehouse of rural pictures and pastoral poetry, of quaint but wise thoughts, of agreeable and humorous fancies, and of truly apostolic purity and benevolence. The slight tincture of superstitious credulity and innocent eccentricity which pervades his works gives them a finer zest, and original flavour, without detracting from their higher power to soothe, instruct, and delight. Walton was born in the town of Stafford in August 1593. Of his education or his early years nothing is related; but according to Anthony Wood, he acquired a moderate competency, by following in London the occupation of a sempster or linen-draper. He had a shop in the Royal Burse in Cornhill, which was seven feet and a-half long, and five wide. Lord Bacon has a punning remark, that a small room helps a studious man to condense his thoughts, and certainly Izaak Walton was not destitute of this intellectual succedaneum. He had a more pleasant and spacious study, however, in the fields and rivers in earth, and sings as she ascends higher into the air; and having ended her heavenly employment, grows then mute and sad, to think she must descend to the dull earth, which she would not touch but for necessity. How do the blackbird and throssel (song-thrush), with their melodious voices, bid welcome to the cheerful spring, and in their fixed mouths warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can reach to ! Nay, the smaller birds also do the like in their particular seasons, as, namely, the laverock (skylark), the titlark, the little linnet, and the honest robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead. and of the primitive piety.' Walton retired from business in 1643, and lived forty years afterwards in uninterrupted leisure. His first work was a Life of Dr Donne, prefixed to a collection of the doctor's sermons, published in 1640. Sir Henry Wotton was to have written Donne's life, Walton merely collecting the materials; but Sir Henry dying before he had begun to execute the task, Izaak reviewed his forsaken collections, and resolved that the world should see the best plain picture of the author's life that his artless pencil, guided by the hand of truth, could present.' The memoir is circumstantial and deeply interesting. He next wrote a Life of Sir Henry But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, Wotton, and edited his literary remains. His prin- breathes such sweet loud music out of her little incipal production, The Complete Angler, or Contem-strumental throat, that it might make mankind to plative Man's Recreation, appeared in 1653, and think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, four other editions of it were called for during his when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as life, namely, in 1655, 1664, 1668, and 1676. Walton I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, also wrote a Life of Richard Hooker (1662), a Life the natural rising and falling, the doubling and reof George Herbert (1670), and a Life of Bishop doubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, Sanderson (1678). They are all exquisitely simple, and say, "Lord, what music hast thou provided for the touching, and impressive. Though no man seems saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such to have possessed his soul more patiently during the music on earth !'” troublous times in which he lived, the venerable The lover of hunting next takes his turn, and Izaak was tempted, in 1680, to write and publish comments, though with less force (for here Walton anonymously two letters on the Distempers of the himself must have been at fault), on the perfection of Times, written from a quiet and conformable citizen smell possessed by the hound, and the joyous music of London to two busie and factious shopkeepers in made by a pack of dogs in full chase. Piscator then Coventry. In 1683, when in his ninetieth year, he unfolds his long-treasured and highly-prized lore on published the Thealma and Clearchus of Chalkhill, the virtues of water-sea, river, and brook; and on which we have previously noticed; and he died at the antiquity and excellence of fishing and angling. Winchester on the 15th December of the same year, The latter, he says, is somewhat like poetry: men while residing with his son-in-law, Dr Hawkins, must be born so.' He quotes Scripture, and numbers prebendary of Winchester cathedral. the prophets who allude to fishing. He also remembers with pride that four of the twelve apostles were fishermen, and that our Saviour never reproved them for their employment or calling, as he did the Scribes and money-changers; for 'He found that the hearts of such men, by nature, were fitted for contemplation and quietness; men of mild, and sweet, and peaceable spirits, as, indeed, most anglers are.' The idea of angling seems to have unconsciously mixed itself with all Izaak Walton's speculations on goodness, loyalty, and veneration. Even worldly enjoyment he appears to have grudged to any less gifted mortals. A finely-dressed dish of fish, or a rich drink, he pronounces too good for any but anglers or very honest men: and his parting benediction is upon vidence, and be quiet, and go a-angling.' The last condition would, in his ordinary mood, when not peculiarly solemn or earnest, be quite equivalent to any of the others. The rhetoric and knowledge of Piscator at length fairly overcome Venator, and make him a convert to the superiority of angling, as compared with his more savage pursuit of hunting. He agrees to accompany Piscator in his sport, adopts him as his master and guide, and in time becomes initiated into the practice and mysteries of the gentle craft. The angling excursions of the pair give occasion to the practical lessons and descriptions in the book, and elicit what is its greatest charm, the minute and vivid painting of rural objects, the display of character, both in action and conversation, the flow of generous sentiment and feeling, and the associated recollections of picturesque poetry, natural piety, and examples and precepts of morality. Add to this the easy elegance of Walton's style, sprinkled, but not obscured, by the antiquated idiom and expression of his times, and clear and sparkling as one of his own favourite summer streams. Not an hour of the fishing day is wasted or unimproved. The master and scholar rise with the early dawn, and after four hours' fishing, breakfast at nine under a sycamore that shades them from the sun's heat. The Complete Angler' of Walton is a production unique in our literature. In writing it, he says he made a recreation of a recreation,' and, by mingling innocent mirth and pleasant scenes with the graver parts of his discourse, he designed it as a picture of his own disposition. The work is, indeed, essentially autobiographical in spirit and execution. A hunter and falconer are introduced as parties in the dialogues, but they serve only as foils to the venerable and complacent Piscator, in whom the interest of the piece wholly centres. The opening scene lets us at once into the genial character of the work and its hero. The three interlocutors meet accidentally on Tottenham hill, near London, on a fine fresh May morning.' They are open and cheerful as the day.all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in ProPiscator is going towards Ware, Venator to meet a pack of other dogs upon Amwell hill, and Auceps to Theobald's, to see a hawk that a friend there mews or moults for him. Piscator willingly joins with the lover of hounds in helping to destroy otters, for he 'hates them perfectly, because they love fish so well, and destroy so much.' The sportsmen proceed onwards together, and they agree each to 'commend his recreation' or favourite pursuit. Piscator alludes to the virtue and contentedness of anglers, but gives the precedence to his companions in discoursing on their different crafts. The lover of hawking is eloquent on the virtues of air, the element that he trades in, and on its various winged inhabitants. He describes the falcon making her highway over the steepest mountains and deepest rivers, and, in her glorious career, looking with contempt upon those high steeples and magnificent palaces which we adore and wonder at.' The singing birds, those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art,' are descanted upon with pure poetical feeling and expression. 'At first the lark, when she means to rejoice, to cheer herself and those that hear her, she then quits the Old Piscator reads his admiring scholar a lesson on fly-fishing, and they sit and discourse while a 'smoking shower' passes off, freshening all the meadow and the flowers. And now, scholar, I think it will be time to repair to our angle rods, which we left in the water to fish for themselves; and you shall choose which shall be vours; and it is an even lay, one of them catches. And, let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a dead rod, and laying night hooks, are like putting money to use; for they both work for their owners when they do nothing but sleep, or eat, or rejoice, as you know we have done this last hour, and sat as quietly and as free from cares under this sycamore, as Virgil's Tityrus and his Melibus did under their broad beech tree. No life, my honest scholar, no life so happy and so pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams which we now see glide so quietly by us. Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling as Dr Boteler said of strawberries, "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ;" and so (if I might be judge) "God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling." I'll tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this primrose bank, and looked down these meadows, I thought of them as Charles the Emperor did of the city of Florence, "that they were too pleasant to be looked on but only on holidays." As I then sat on this very grass, I turned my present thoughts into verse: 'twas a wish, which I'll repeat to you :— The Angler's Wish. I in these flowery meads would be ; Sit here, and see the turtle-dove Here, hear my Kenna sing a song; Thus, free from law-suits and the noise And angle on; and beg to have A quiet passage to a welcome grave.' The master and scholar, at another time, sit under a honeysuckle hedge while a shower falls, and encounter a handsome milkmaid and her mother, who sing to them that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlow' when sport and instruction are over, they repair to the little alehouse, well-known to Piscator, where they find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall.' The hostess is cleanly, handsome, and civil, and knows how to dress the fish after Piscator's own fashion (he is learned in cookery); and having made a supper of their gallant trout, they drink their ale, tell tales, sing ballads, or join with a brother angler who drops in, in a merry catch, till sleep overpowers them, and they retire to the hostess' two beds, the linen of which looks white and smells of lavender.' All this humble but happy painting is fresh as nature herself, and instinct with moral feeling and beauty. The only speck upon the brightness of old Piscator's benevolence is one arising from his entire devotion to his art. He will allow no creature to take fish but the angler, and concludes that any honest man may make a just quarrel with swan, geese, ducks, the sea-gull, heron, &c. His directions for making livebait have subjected him to the charge of cruelty,* and are certainly curious enough. Painted flies seem not to have occurred to him; and the use of snails, worms, &c., induced no compunctious visitings. For taking pike he recommends a perch, as the longest lived fish on a hook, and the poor frog is treated with elaborate and extravagant inhumanity : And thus use your frog, that he may continue long alive: put your hook into his mouth, which you may easily do from the middle of April till August; and then the frog's mouth grows up, and he continues so for at least six months without eating, but is sustained none but He whose name is Wonderful knows how. I say, put your hook, I mean the arming wire, through his mouth and out at his gills; and with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg, with only one stitch, to the arming wire of your hook; or tie the frog's leg above the upper joint to the armed wire; and, in so doing, use him as though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possible, that he may live the longer.' Modern taste and feeling would recoil from such experiments as these, and we may oppose to the aberrations of the venerable Walton the philosophical maxim of Wordsworth Never to blend our pleasure or our pride If this observation falls into the opposite extreme (seeing that it would, if rigidly interpreted, suppress field sports and many of the luxuries and amusements of life), we must claim, that it is an excess more amiable than that into which Piscator was led by his attachment to angling. Towards the conclusion of his work, Walton indulges in the following strain of moral reflection and admonition, and is as philosophically just and wise in his counsels, as his language and imagery are chaste, beautiful, and animated. [Thankfulness for Worldly Blessings.] 'Well, scholar, having now taught you to paint your rod, and we having still a mile to Tottenham High Cross, I will, as we walk towards it in the cool shade of this sweet honeysuckle hedge, mention to you some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we met together. And these thoughts shall be told you, that you also may join with me in thankfulness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift for *And angling, too, that solitary vice, Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says; |