erally recognized realities; and of propounding some quaint and utterly preposterous theory, as though it were a plain deduction from undeniable truths. The modern humorist is the old humorist plus a consciousness of his own eccentricity, and the old humorist is the modern humorist minus that consciousThe order of his ideas should not (as philosophers would have it) be identical with the order of things, but be determined by odd arbitrary freaks of purely personal association. ness. tem which has its attractive side to some persons of that persuasion), the singular custom is so much a matter of course that a village historian would not think of mentioning it. The man is only induced to exhibit his humor to the world when, by some happy piece of fortune, he has started a hobby not sufficiently appreciated by his neighbors. Then it may be that he becomes a prophet, and in his anxiety to recommend his own pet fancy, unconsciously illustrates also the interesting social stratum in which it This is the kind of originality which sprung to life. The hobby, indeed, is we specially demand from an efficient too often unattractive. When a selfguide to the country; for the country taught philosopher airs some pet means a region where men have not been crotchet, and proves, for example, that ground into the monotony by the fric- the legitimate descendants of the lost tion of our social mill. The secret of tribes are to be found among the Ojibhis charm lies in the clearness with beways, he doubtless throws a singular which he brings before us some quaint, light upon the intellectual peculiarities old-fashioned type of existence. He of his district. But he illustrates chiefly must know and care as little for what the melancholy truth that a half-taught passes in the great world of cities and philosopher may be as dry and as barren parliaments as the family of Tullivers as the one who has been smoke-dried and Dodsons. His horizon should be according to all the rules of art in the limited by the nearest country town, and most learned academy of Europe. his politics confined to the disputes between the parson and the dissenting minister. He should have thoroughly absorbed the characteristic prejudices of the little society in which he lives, till he is unaware that it could ever enter into any one's head to doubt their absolute truth. He should have a share of the peculiarity which is often so pathetic in children-the unhesitating conviction that some little family arrangement is a part of the eternal and immutable system of things, and be as much surprised at discovering an irreverent world outside as the child at the discovery that there are persons who do not consider his papa to be omniscient. That is the temper of mind which should characterize your genuine rustic. As a rule, of course, it condemns him to silence. He has no more reason for supposing that some quaint peculiarity of his little circle will be interesting to the outside world than a frog tor imagining that a natural philosopher would be interested by the statement that he was once a tadpole. He takes it for granted that we have all been tadpoles. In the queer, outlying corners of the world where the father goes to bed and is nursed upon the birth of a child (a sys There are a few familiar books in which a happy combination of circumstances has provided us with a true country idyll, fresh and racy from the soil, not consciously constructed by the most skilful artistic hand. Two of them have a kind of acknowledged preeminence in their own department. The man is not to be envied who has not in his boyhood fallen in love with Izaak Walton and White of Selborne. The boy, indeed, is happily untroubled as to the true source of the charm. He pores over the "Compleat Angler" with the impression that he will gain some hints for beguiling, if not the wily carp, who is accounted the water fox, at least the innocent roach, who "is accounted the water-sheep for his simplicity or foolishness." His mouth waters as he reads the directions for converting the pike-that compound, of mud and needles-into "a dish of meat too good for any but anglers or very honest men," a transformation which, if authentic, is little less than miraculous. He does not ask what is the secret of the charm of the book even for those to whom fishing is an abomination-a charm which induced even the arch-cockney Dr. Johnson, in spite of his famous definition of angling, to prompt the republication of this angler's bible. It is only as he It is only as he grows older, and has plodded through other sporting literature, that he can at all explain why the old gentleman's gossip is so fascinating. Walton, undoubtedly, is everywhere charming for his pure simple English, and the unostentatious vein of natural piety which everywhere lies just beneath the surface of his writing. Now and then, however, in reading the "Lives," we cannot quite avoid a sense that this excellent tradesman has just a touch of the unctuous about him. He is given it is a fault from which hagiographers can scarcely be free-to using the rose-color a little too freely. He holds toward his heroes the relation of a sentimental churchwarden to a revered parish parson. We fancy that the eyes of the preacher would turn instinctively to Walton's seat when he wished to catch an admiring glance from an upturned face, and to assure himself that he was touching the "sacred fount of sympathetic tears." We imagine Walton lingering near the porch to submit a deferential compliment as to the "florid and seraphical" discourse to which he has been listening, and scarcely raising his glance above the clerical shoe-buckles. A portrait taken from this point of view is apt to be rather unsatisfactory. Yet, in describing the "sweet humility" of a George Herbert or of the saintly Mr. Farrer, the tone is at least in keeping, and is consistent even with an occasional gleam of humor, as in the account of poor Hooker, tending sheep and rocking the cradle under stringent feminine supremacy. It is less satisfactory when we ask Walton to throw some light upon the curiously enigmatic character of Donne, with its strange element of morbid gloom, and masculine passion, and subtle and intense intellect. Donne married the woman he loved in spite of her father and to the injury of his own fortunes. His marriage," however, observes the biographer, was the remarkable error of his life- an error which, though he had a wit able and very apt to maintain paradoxes, yet he was very far from justifying it." From our point of view, the only error was in the desire to justify an action of which he should have been proud. We must NEW SERIES.-VOL. XXXIII., No 2 make allowance for the difference in Walton's views of domestic authority; but we feel that his prejudice disqualifies him from fairly estimating a character of great intrinsic force. A portrait of Donne cannot be adequately brought within the lines accepted by the writer of orthodox and edifying tracts. 66 In spite of this little failing, this rather massive subservience to the respectabilities, the "Lives" form a delightful book; but we get the genuine Walton at full length in his Angler." It was first published in dark days; when the biographer might be glad that his pious heroes had been taken from the sight of the coming evil; when the scattered survivors of his favorite school of divines and poets were turned out of their wellbeloved colleges and parsonages, hiding in dark corners or plotting with the melancholy band of exiles in France and Holland; when Walton, instead of listening to the sound and witty discourses of Donne, would find the pulpit of his parish church profaned by some fanatical Puritan, expounding the Westminster Confession in place of the thirty-nine articles. The good Walton found consolation in the almost religious pursuit of his hobby. He fortified himself with the authority of such admirable and orthodox anglers as Sir Henry Wotton and Dr. Nowel, Dean of St. Paul's. Dr. Nowel had, "like an honest angler, made that good, plain, unperplexed Catechism which is printed with our good old service-book;" for an angler, it seems, is most likely to know that the road to heaven is not through "hard questions." The Dean died at the age of ninety-five, in perfect possession of his faculties; and "'tis said that angling and temperance were great causes of those blessings.' those blessings." Evidently Walton had somehow taken for granted that there is an inherent harmony between angling and true religion, which, of course, for him implies the Anglican religion. does not trust himself in the evil times to grumble openly, or to indulge in more than an occasional oblique reference to the dealers in hard questions and metaphysical dogmatism. He takes his rod, leaves the populous city behind him, and makes a day's march to the banks of the quiet lea, where he can meet a like-minded friend or two; sit in the 14 He sanded parlor of the country inn and listen to the milkmaid singing that "smooth song made by Kit Marlow, now at least fifty years ago," before English fields had been drenched with the blood of Roundheads and Cavaliers; or lie under a tree, watching his float till the shower had passed, and then calling to mind what "holy Mr. Herbert says of such days and flowers as these. Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright! but everybody has learned to share Walton's admiration, and the quotation would now be superfluous. It is nowhere so effective as with Walton's illustrations. We need not, indeed, remember the background of storm to enjoy the quiet sunshine and showers on the soft English landscape, which Walton painted so lovingly. The fact that he was living in the midst of a turmoil, in which the objects of his special idolatry had been so ruthlessly crushed and scattered, may help to explain the intense relish for the peaceful river-side life. His rod was the magic wand to interpose a soft idyllic mist between his eyes and such scenes as were visible at times from the windows of Whitehall. He loved his paradise the better because it was an escape from a pandemonium. But whatever the cause of his enthusiasm, its sincerity and intensity is the main cause of his attractiveness. Many poets of Walton's time loved the country as well as he; and showed it in some of the delicate lyrics which find an appropriate setting in his pages. But we have to infer their exquisite appreciation of country sights and sounds from such brief utterances, or from passing allusions in dramatic scenes. Nobody can doubt that Shakespeare loved daffodils, or a bank of wild thyme, or violets, as keenly as Wordsworth. When he happens to mention them, his voice trembles with fine emotion. But none of the poets of the time dared to make a passion for the country the main theme of their more pretentious song. They thought it necessary to idealize and transmute; to substitute an indefinite Arcadia for plain English fields, and to populate it with piping swains and nymphs, Corydons and Amorets and Phyllises. Poor Hodge or Cis were only allowed to appear when they were minded to indulge in a little broad comedy. The coarse rustics had to be washed and combed before they could present themselves before an aristocratic audience; and plain English hills and rivers to be provided with tutelary gods and goddesses, fitted for the gorgeous pageantry of a country masque. Far be it from mewith the fear of æsthetic critics before my eyes-to say that very beautiful poems might not be produced under these conditions. It is proper, as I am aware, to admire Browne's, Britannia's Pastorals," and to speak reverently of Fletcher's "Faithful Shepherdess," and Ben Jonson's "Sad Shepherd." I only venture to suggest here that such work is caviare to the multitude; that it requires a fine literary sense, a happy superiority to dull realistic suggestion, and a power of accepting the conventional conditions which the artist has to accept for his guidance. Possibly I may go so far as to hint without offence that the necessity of using this artificial apparatus was not in itself an advantage. A great master of harmony, with a mind overflowing with majestic imagery, might achieve such triumphs as "Comus" and "Lycidas," in which even the Arcadian pipe is made to utter the true organtones. We forgive any incongruities or artificialities when they are lost in such a blaze of poetry. The atmosphere of Arcadia was not as yet sickly enough to asphyxiate a Milton; but it was ceasing to be wholesome; and the weaker singers who imbibed it suffered under distinct attacks of drowsiness. There is Walton's good sense, or his humility, or, perhaps, the simple ardor of his devotion to his hobby, encouraged him to deal in realities. He gave the genuine sentiment which his contemporaries would only give indirectly, transfigured and bedizened with due ornaments of classic or romantic pattern. just a faint touch of unreality, a barely. perceptible flavor of the sentimental, about his personages; but only enough to give a permissible touch of pastoral idealism. Walton is painting directly from the life. The "honest alehouse,' where he finds a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall," was standing then on the banks of the Lea, as in quiet country nooks, here and there, occasional representatives of the true angler's rest are still to be found, not entirely and tearing out his corrupted by the modern tourist. The good man is far too much in earnest to be aiming at literary ornament; he is a genuine simple-minded enthusiast, revealing his kindly nature by a thousand unconscious touches. The common objection is a misunderstanding. Everybody quotes the phrase about using the frog" as though you loved him;" and it is the more piquant as following one of his characteristically pious remarks. The frog's mouth, he tells, grows up for six months, and he lives for six months without eating, "sustained, none but He whose name is Wonderful knows how." He reverently admires the care taken of the frog by Providence, without drawing any more inference for his own conduct than if he were a modern physiologist. It is just this absolute unconsciousness which makes his love of the sport attractive. He has never looked at it from the frog's point of view. Your modern. Your modern angler has to excuse himself by some scientific hypothesis as to feeling in the lower animals, and thereby betrays certain qualms of conscience which had not yet come to light in Walton's day. He is no more cruel than a schoolboy, he grows to pity." He is simply discharging his functions as a part of na- Mr. Lowell, in one of the most charnıture, like the pike or the frog; and con- ing essays ever written about a garden, vinced, at the very bottom of his heart, takes his text from White of Selborne, that the angler represents the most emi- and admirably explains the charm of that nent type of enjoyment, and should be worthy representative of the Waltonian the humble inheritor of the virtues of spirit. "It is good for us now and the fishers of Galilee. The gentlest and then," says Mr. Lowell, "to converse most pious thoughts come naturally into in a world like Mr. White's, where his mind while his worm is wriggling on man is the least important of animals ;" his hook to entice the luckless trout. It to find one's whole world in a garden, is particularly pleasant to notice the beyond the reach of wars and rumors of quotations, which give a certain air of wars. White does not give a thought to learning to his book. We see that the the little troubles which were disturbing love of angling had become so ingrained the souls of Burke and George III. The in his mind as to direct his reading as "natural term of a hog's life has more well as to provide him with amusement. interest for him than that of an emWe fancy him poring on winter evenings pire;" he does not trouble his head over the pages of Aldrovandus and Ges- about diplomatic complications while he ner and Pliny and Topsell's histories of is discovering that the odd tumbling of serpents and four-footed beasts, and hum- rooks in the air is caused by their turnbly accepting the teaching of more ing over to scratch themselves with one learned men, who had recorded so many claw. The great events of his life are strange facts unobserved by the simple his making acquaintance with a stilted angler. He produces a couple of bish- plover, or his long-for it was protracted ops, Dubravius and Thurso, as eye-wit- over ten years and finally triumphant nesses, to testify to a marvellous anec- passion for "an old family tortoise. dote of a frog jumping upon a pike's head White of Selborne is clearly not the ideal 66 ere parson of George Herbert's time; nor the parson of our own day-a poor atom whirled about in the distracting eddies of two or three conflicting movements. He is merely a good, kindly, domestic gentleman, on friendly terms with the squire and the gamekeeper, and ready for a chat with the rude forefathers of the hamlet. His horizon, natural and unnatural, is bounded by the soft round hills and the rich hangers of his beloved Hampshire country. There is something specially characteristic in his taste for scenery. Though "I have now travelled the Sussex Downs upward of thirty years," he says, "I still investigate that chain of majestic mountains with fresh admiration year by year; and he calls Mr. Ray" to witness that there is nothing finer in any part of Europe. "For my own part, he says, "I think there is somewhat peculiarly sweet and amusing in the shapely-figured aspects of chalk hills in preference to those of stone, which are rugged, broken, abrupt, and shapeless." I, for my part, agree with Mr. White-so long, at least, as I am reading his book. The downs have a singular charm in the exquisite play of long, gracefully undulating lines which bound their gentle edges. If not a "majestic range of mountains," as judged by an Alpine standard, there is no want of true sublimity in their springing curves, especially when harmonized by the lights and shadows under cloud-masses driving before a broad south-westerly gale; and when you reach the edge of a great down, and suddenly look down into one of the little hollows where a village with a gray church tower and a grove of noble elms nestles amid the fold of the hills, you fancy that in such places of refuge there must still be relics of the quiet domesticities enjoyed by Gilbert White. Here, one fancies, it must be good to live; to discharge, at an easy rate, all the demands of a society which is but a large family, and find ample excitement in studying the rambles of a tortoise, forming intimacies with moles, crickets, and field mice, and bats, and brown owls, and watching the swifts and the night-jars wheeling round the old church tower, or hunting flies at the edge of the wood in the quiet summer evening. In rambling through the lanes sacred to the memory of White, you may (in fancy, at least) meet another figure not at first sight quite in harmony with the clerical Mr. White. He is a stalwart, broad-chested man in the farmer's dress, even ostentatiously representing the old British yeoman brought up on beer and beef, and with a certain touch of pugnacity suggestive of the retired prizefighter. He stops his horse to chat with a laborer breaking stones by the roadside, and informs the gaping rustic that wages are made bad and food dear by the diabolical machinations of the Tories, and the fundholders, and the boroughmongers, who are draining away all the fatness of the land to nourish the portentous "wen" called London. He leaves the man to meditate on this suggestion, and jogs off to the nearest country town, where he will meet the farmers at their ordinary, and deliver a ranting radical address. The squire or the parson who recognizes William Cobbett in this sturdy traveller will mutter a hearty abjurgation, and wish that the disturber of rustic peace could make a closer acquaintance with the neighboring horse-pond. Possibly most readers who hear his name have vaguely set down Cobbett as one of the demagogues of the anti-reforming days, and remember little more than the fact that he dabbled in some rather questionable squabbles, and brought back Tom Paine's bones from America. But it is worth while to read Cobbett, and especially the "Rural Rides, not only to enjoy his fine homespun English, but to learn to know the man a little better. Whatever the deserts or demerits of Cobbett as a political agitator, the true man was fully as much allied to modern Young England and the later type of conservatism as to the modern radical. He hated the Scotch "feelosophers"— as he calls them-Parson Malthus, the political communists, the Manchester men, the men who would break up the old social system of the country, at the bottom of his heart; and, whatever might be his superficial alliances, he loved the old quiet country life when Englishmen were burly, independent yeomen, each equal to three frog-eating Frenchmen. He remembered the relics of the system in the days of his youth; |