shire, by these cobble stones, that we may come to the margin of the PooL, for you see we are stopped on this side by the rocks.

PAINTER.-I am willing to follow you.

ANGLER.-Look well to your footing, and give me the wallet; for I fear you will let that drop into the water, and now your hand-so

PAINTER.-We are well over; and of all places I have seen, this is surpassing in beauty. Surely it is a rocky dell, that is worthy of a poet's praise: now if Petrarch had sung of his Laura by these rocks, they would be thought as fine as Vaucluse; and this stream as bright and nimble as the Sorga itself, which I was once happy enough to visit as I passed by Avignon towards Italy: and was permitted the leisure to sketch some imperfect limnings of the strangely shaped and rugged rocks, from which the mysterious fount of the river gushes into daylight. It is true I may not boast to have caught my brace of trouts in its limpid streams; but I tasted some skilfully drest by the civil hostess of the village inn that is called after the name of the Poet. Oh Sir, if you had there been the companion of my prolonged wanderings, with what delight should we have perused together those unimitable poems of Petrarch! And remember how he says,

" L'acque parlan d'amore, e l'aura e i rami

E gli augeletti, e i pesci, e i fiori, e l'erba, Tutti insieme pregando ch'io sempr'ami.' ANGLER.-Excellentisseme Signore. And be it known to you, Petrarcha was himself a brother of the angle.

PAINTER. Nay, Sir, your authority for this? grant you, the impassioned poet might grave the name of his Laura on the hard rocks, or picture to his imagination her beautiful image reflected in the deep clear caverns of the river;

'Or in forma di Ninfa or d'altra Diva
'Che dal più chiaro fondo di Sorga esca
E pongasi a sedere in su la riva :'

but I cannot be persuaded to believe that so hopeless a lover could be a happy angler. He that was the most learned of his age, and Poet Laureat crowned with the triple garland at Rome, an angler!

ANGLER. Happy or unhappy-learned or unlearned-I may tell you he was a fisher;and be these lines my witness, which you may find in his latin works;

Retia nunc sunt arma mihi, et labyrinthius error 'Vimineâ contextus acu; qui pervius undis

'Piscibus est carcer, nullà remeabilis arte:

'Pro gladiis curvos hamos, fallacibus escis

'Implicitos, tremulasque sudes, parvumque tridentem
'PISCATOR modò factus ego, quò terga natantum
'Sistere jam didici, duroque affigere saxo.
'Primitias en flumineæ transmittimus artis

Et versus quot Clausa domos habet arctaque Vallis, 'Quæ tibi pisiculos et rustica carmina pascit.'*

PAINTER.-Marry, Sir, after those harmonious verses that you have so fixedly treasured up in your memory it is undeniable you may have the honour to claim Petrarcha for one of your fraternity.

ANGLER. And what was more natural than

* Lib. III. Epist. 3.

he should seek an inward consolation for his diseased thoughts in so quiet and sweet a recreation; and on the banks of his loved river indulge his thoughts with those Visions' of the departed Laura, which Master Edmund Spenser* hath rendered from the Italian into harmonious English verse:

Within this wood, out of a rocke did rise A spring of water, mildly rumbling downe, 'Whereto approached not in anie wise

The homely shepheard, nor the ruder clowne; 'But many Muses, and the Nymphes withall, That sweetly in accord did tune their voyce To the soft sounding of the waters fall; 'That my glad hart thereat did much rejoyce. But while herein I tooke my chiefe delight, 'I saw (alas) the gaping earth devoure

'The spring, the place, and all cleane out of sight; 'Which yet aggrieves my hart even to this houre, And wounds my soule with rufull memorie, To see such pleasures gon so suddenly.'

But now look around, and tell me, you that have seen famed VAUCLUSE, if this dell be not more woody and umbrageous than the banks of the Sorga; and look at the doublings and wrenches of the stream, which make it the most singular place that can be imagined for natural beauties; and let me tell you, they have been designed by Mr. Isaac Walton, junior, the son of our master of angling.

PAINTER.-How! has Mr. Walton a son, and a limner too?

*The Visions of Petrarch, formerly translated' by Edmund Spenser, at the age of 14: originally printed in a book of some rarity, The Theatre of JOHN VANDER 'NOODT.' 8° 1569.-ED.

ANGLER.-You may take Mr. Cottons word for that.

PAINTER. Then I shall be inclined to love him for more reasons than one.

ANGLER.-Well, then, you must know, PisCATOR and VIATOR having fished the stream by inches,' came lower down, and then suddenly VIATOR exclaimed, But what have we got here? a rock springing up in the middle ' of the river! This is one of the oddest sights that ever I saw.' To this PISCATOR replied, Why, Sir, from that Pike that you see standing up there, distant from the rock,-that is 'called Pike Pool, and young Mr. Isaac Walton was so pleased with it, as to draw it in landskip, in black and white, in a blank 'book I have at home, as he has done several prospects of my house also, which I keep for a memorial of his favour.'

-

you

PAINTER. A book full of landskips did say! in black and white, and all done by the hand of Mr. Izaak Walton, junior? that were indeed a treasure to possess! But come;let us repose ourselves along these shady banks that Mr. Walton and his son and Mr. Cotton all loved, and that deserve to be loved by every honest angler. See these wild flowers, which spring around, and make a soft cushion for us; here is the wild thyme, the Nottingham catchfly, and coltsfoot, and violets

ANGLER,-And what is no less germaine to the present argument,-a handsome repast! -So let us fall to't.-Here is an excellent cake, and some hang'd martinmas beef; with a

measure or two of mine Host's good ale. Are you prepared?

PAINTER.-I may warrant you, and no wise dainty after our long walk.

ANGLER.-Oh! that we could now possess our dear accomplish'd Civilian, that hath more learning than both you and I together!

PAINTER.-Aye; if he were here reclining with us by the side of PIKE POOL, our entertainment would be complete: and let us not despair to inveigle him hither next month of May.

ANGLER.-Well, I have known stranger things come to pass; and now, if you please, we'll drink his health in a loving cup of barley wine.

PAINTER. A worthy toast! fill to the brim! ANGLER. To the brim.

BOTH.-Here is a health to our polite Mr.

T. O. A.

ANGLER. A true lover of honest Izaak; and to hear him descant on the gentle craft, you might declare him to be a practised disciple.

PAINTER.Then what say you to his books of emblems and engraved pictures of angling? and do not forget that ebony cabinet in his chambers in Lincoln's Inne, furnished with all ancient treatises of your art, and other merry sports and pastimes of England.

ANGLER.-Aye; and I love him the more for his love of my masters: and though he hath never wetted a line, nor soiled his hosen in pursuit of the finny tribes, yet in imagination