Love with them does not mean a passion as much as an interest, deep

and silent." I think one prefers them so, and that Englishwomen
should be more like Anne Elliot than Maggie Tulliver. "All the

privilege I claim for my own sex is that of loving longest when
existence or when hope is gone," said Anne; perhaps she insisted on

a monopoly that neither sex has all to itself. Ah, madam, what a
relief it is to come back to your witty volumes, and forget the

follies of to-day in those of Mr. Collins and of Mrs. Bennet! How
fine, nay, how noble is your art in its delicate reserve, never

insisting, never forcing the note, never pushing the sketch into the
caricature! You worked, without thinking of it, in the spirit of

Greece, on a labour happily limited, and exquisitely organised.
"Dear books," we say, with Miss Thackeray--"dear books, bright,

sparkling with wit and animation, in which the homely heroines
charm, the dull hours fly, and the very bores are enchanting."

LETTER--To Master Isaak Walton
Father Isaac,--When I would be quiet and go angling it is my custom

to carry in my wallet thy pretty book, "The Compleat Angler." Here,
methinks, if I find not trout I shall find content, and good

company, and sweet songs, fair milkmaids, and country mirth. For
you are to know that trout be now scarce and whereas he was ever a

fearful fish, he hath of late become so wary that none but the
cunningest anglers may be even with him.

It is not as it was in your time, Father, when a man might leave his
shop in Fleet Street, of a holiday, and, when he had stretched his

legs up Tottenham Hill, come lightly to meadows chequered with
waterlilies and lady-smocks, and so fall to his sport. Nay, now

have the houses so much increased, like a spreading sore (through
the breaking of that excellent law of the Conscientious King and

blessed Martyr, whereby building beyond the walls was forbidden),
that the meadows are all swallowed up in streets. And as to the

River Lea, wherein you took many a good trout, I read in the news
sheets that "its bed is many inches thick in horrible filth, and the

air for more than half a mile on each side of it is polluted with a
horrible, sickening stench," so that we stand in dread of a new

Plague, called the Cholera. And so it is all about London for many
miles, and if a man, at heavy charges, betake himself to the fields,

lo you, folk are grown so greedy that none will suffer a stranger to
fish in his water.

So poor anglers are in sore straits. Unless a man be rich and can
pay great rents, he may not fish in England, and hence spring the

discontents of the times, for the angler is full of content, if he
do but take trout, but if he be driven from the waterside, he falls,

perchance, into evil company, and cries out to divide the property
of the gentle folk. As many now do, even among Parliament-men, whom

you loved not, Father Isaak, neither do I love them more than Reason
and Scripture bid each of us be kindly to his neighbour. But,

behold, the causes of the ill content are not yet all expressed, for
even where a man hath licence to fish, he will hardly take trout in

our age, unless he be all the more cunning. For the fish, harried
this way and that by so many of your disciples, is exceeding shy and

artful, nor will he bite at a fly unless it falleth lightly, just
above his mouth, and floateth dry over him, for all the world like

the natural ephemeris. And we may no longer angle with worm for
him, nor with penk or minnow, nor with the natural fly, as was your

manner, but only with the artificial, for the more difficulty the
more diversion" target="_blank" title="n.转移；消遣">diversion. For my part I may cry, like Viator in your book,

"Master, I can neither catch with the first nor second Angle: I
have no fortune."

So we fare in England, but somewhat better north of the Tweed, where
trout are less wary, but for the most part small, except in the

extreme rough north, among horrid hills and lakes. Thither, Master,
as methinks you may remember, went Richard Franck, that called

himself Philanthropus, and was, as it were, the Columbus of anglers,
discovering for them a new Hyperborean world. But Franck,

doubtless, is now an angler in the Lake of Darkness, with Nero and
other tyrants, for he followed after Cromwell, the man of blood, in

the old riding days. How wickedly doth Franck boast of that leader
of the giddy multitude, "when they raged, and became restless to

find out misery for themselves and others, and the rabble would herd
themselves together," as you said, "and endeavour to govern and act

in spite of authority." So you wrote; and what said Franck, that
recreant angler? Doth he not praise "Ireton, Vane, Nevill, and

Martin, and the most renowned, valorous, and victorious conqueror,
Oliver Cromwell"? Natheless, with all his sins on his head, this

Franck discovered Scotland for anglers, and my heart turns to him
when he praises "the glittering and resolutestreams of Tweed."

In those wilds of Assynt and Loch Rannoch, Father, we, thy
followers, may yet take trout, and forget the evils of the times.

But, to be done with Franck, how harshly he speaks of thee and thy
book. "For you may dedicate your opinion to what scribbling

putationer you please; the Compleat Angler if you will, who tells
you of a tedious fly story, extravagantly collected from antiquated

authors, such as Gesner and Dubravius." Again he speaks of "Isaac
Walton, whose authority to me seems alike authentick, as is the

general opinion of the vulgar prophet," &c.
Certain I am that Franck, if a better angler than thou, was a worse

man, who, writing his "Dialogues Piscatorial" or "Northern Memoirs"
five years after the world welcomed thy "Compleat Angler," was

jealous of thy favour with the people, and, may be, hated thee for
thy loyalty and sound faith. But, Master, like a peaceful man

avoiding contention, thou didst never answer this blustering Franck,
but wentest quietly about thy quiet Lea, and left him his roaring

Brora and windy Assynt. How could this noisy man know thee--and
know thee he did, having argued with thee in Stafford--and not love

Isaak Walton? A pedant angler, I call him, a plaguy angler, so let
him huff away, and turn we to thee and to thy sweet charm in fishing

for men.
How often, studying in thy book, have I hummed to myself that of

Horace -
Laudis amore tumes? Sunt certa piacula quae te

Ter pure lecto poterunt recreare libello.
So healing a book for the frenzy of fame is thy discourse on

meadows, and pure streams, and the country life. How peaceful, men
say, and blessed must have been the life of this old man, how lapped

in content, and hedged about by his own humility from the world!
They forget, who speak thus, that thy years, which were many, were

also evil, or would have seemed evil to divers that had tasted of
thy fortunes. Thou wert poor, but that, to thee, was no sorrow, for

greed of money was thy detestation. Thou wert of lowly rank, in an
age when gentle blood was alone held in regard; yet thy virtues made

thee hosts of friends, and chiefly among religious men, bishops, and
doctors of the Church. Thy private life was not unacquainted with

sorrow; thy first wife and all her fair children were taken from
thee like flowers in spring, though, in thine age, new love and new

offspring comforted thee like "the primrose of the later year." Thy
private griefs might have made thee bitter, or melancholy, so might

the sorrows of the State and of the Church, which were deprived of
their heads by cruel men, despoiled of their wealth, the pious

driven, like thee, from their homes; fear everywhere, everywhere
robbery and confusion: all this ruin might have angered another

temper. But thou, Father, didst bear all with so much sweetness as
perhaps neither natural temperament" target="_blank" title="n.气质；性格">temperament, nor a firm faith, nor the love

of angling could alone have displayed. For we see many anglers (as
witness Richard Franck aforesaid) who are angry men, and myself,

when I get my hooks entangled at every cast in a tree, have come
nigh to swear prophane.

Also we see religious men that are sour and fanatical, no rare thing
in the party that professes godliness. But neither private sorrow

nor public grief could abate thy natural kindliness, nor shake a
religion which was not untried, but had, indeed, passed through the