第4章 HIS LIFE(4)

'So note,the true character of an industrious angler more deservedly falls upon Merrill and Faulkner,or rather Izaak Ouldham,a man that fished salmon with but three hairs at hook,whose collections and experiments were lost with himself,'--a matter much to be regretted.It will be observed,of course,that hair was then used,and gut is first mentioned for angling purposes by Mr.Pepys.Indeed,the flies which Scott was hunting for when he found the lost Ms.of the first part of Waverley are tied on horse-hairs.They are in the possession of the descendants of Scott's friend,Mr.William Laidlaw.The curious angler,consulting Franck,will find that his salmon flies are much like our own,but less variegated.Scott justly remarks that,while Walton was habit and repute a bait-fisher,even Cotton knows nothing of salmon.Scott wished that Walton had made the northern tour,but Izaak would have been sadly to seek,running after a fish down a gorge of the Shin or the Brora,and the discomforts of the north would have finished his career.In Scotland he would not have found fresh sheets smelling of lavender.

Walton was in London 'in the dangerous year 1655.'He speaks of his meeting Bishop Sanderson there,'in sad-coloured clothes,and,God knows,far from being costly.'The friends were driven by wind and rain into 'a cleanly house,where we had bread,cheese,ale,and a fire,for our ready money.The rain and wind were so obliging to me,as to force our stay there for at least an hour,to my great content and advantage;for in that time he made to me many useful observations of the present times with much clearness and conscientious freedom.'

It was a year of Republican and Royalist conspiracies:the clergy were persecuted and banished from London.

No more is known of Walton till the happy year 1660,when the king came to his own again,and Walton's Episcopal friends to their palaces.Izaak produced an 'Eglog,'on May 29:-'The king!The king's returned!And now Let's banish all sad thoughts,and sing:

We have our laws,and have our king.'

If Izaak was so eccentric as to go to bed sober on that glorious twenty-ninth of May,I greatly misjudge him.But he grew elderly.In 1661he chronicles the deaths of 'honest Nat.and R.Roe,--they are gone,and with them most of my pleasant hours,even as a shadow that passeth away,and returns not.'On April 17,1662,Walton lost his second wife:she died at Worcester,probably on a visit to Bishop Morley.

In the same year,the bishop was translated to Winchester,where the palace became Izaak's home.The Itchen (where,no doubt,he angled with worm)must have been his constant haunt.

He was busy with his Life of Richard Hooker (1665).The peroration,as it were,was altered and expanded in 1670,and this is but one example of Walton's care of his periods.One beautiful passage he is known to have rewritten several times,till his ear was satisfied with its cadences.In 1670he published his Life of George Herbert.'I wish,if God shall be so pleased,that I may be so happy as to die like him.'In 1673,in a Dedication of the third edition of Reliquiae Wottonianae,Walton alludes to his friendship with a much younger and gayer man than himself,Charles Cotton (born 1630),the friend of Colonel Richard Lovelace,and of Sir John Suckling:the translator of Scarron's travesty of Virgil,and of Montaigne's Essays.Cotton was a roisterer,a man at one time deep in debt,but he was a Royalist,a scholar,and an angler.The friendship between him and Walton is creditable to the freshness of the old man and to the kindness of the younger,who,to be sure,laughed at Izaak's heavily dubbed London flies.'In him,'says Cotton,'I have the happiness to know the worthiest man,and to enjoy the best and the truest friend any man ever had.'We are reminded of Johnson with Langton and Topham Beauclerk.Meanwhile Izaak the younger had grown up,was educated under Dr.Fell at Christ Church,and made the Grand Tour in 1675,visiting Rome and Venice.In March 1676he proceeded M.A.and took Holy Orders.In this year Cotton wrote his treatise on fly-fishing,to be published with Walton's new edition;and the famous fishing house on the Dove,with the blended initials of the two friends,was built.