calypse and the Book of Daniel; and Psychozoia Platonica, or a Platonical Song of the Soul, in four poems, 1642, afterwards published as Philosophical Poems, 1647. His poetry,' says Thomas Campbell, 'is not like a beautiful landscape on which the eye can repose, but may be compared to some curious grotto, whose gloomy labyrinths we might be curious to explore for the strange and mystic associations they excite.' We give two stanzas from the Psychozoia:

The Soul and Body.

Like to a light fast locked in lanthorn dark,
Whereby by night our wary steps we guide
In slabby streets, and dirty channels mark,

Some weaker rays through the black top do glide,
And flusher streams perhaps from horny side.
But when we've passed the peril of the way,
Arrived at home, and laid that case aside,
The naked light how clearly doth it ray,
And spread its joyful beams as bright as summer's day.

Even so the soul, in this contracted state,
Confined to these strait instruments of sense,
More dull and narrowly doth operate;

[hence,

At this hole hears, the sight must ray from thence,
Here tastes, there smells: but when she's gone from
Like naked lamp she is one shining sphere,
And round about has perfect cognoscence
Whate'er in her horizon doth appear:

She is one orb of sense, all eye, all airy ear.

The first two of the prose extracts are from More's Mystery of Godliness, the others from the Divine Dialogues:

Of the Works of God.

Whether therefore our eyes be struck with that more radiant lustre of the sun, or whether we behold that more placid and calm beauty of the moon, or be refreshed with the sweet breathings of the open air, or be taken up with the contemplation of those pure sparkling lights of the stars, or stand astonished at the gushing downfalls of some mighty river, as that of Nile, or admire the height of some insuperable and inaccessible rock or mountain ; or with a pleasant horror and chillness look upon some silent wood, or solemn shady grove; whether the face of heaven smile upon us with a cheerful bright azure, or look upon us with a more sad and minacious countenance, dark pitchy clouds being charged with thunder and lightning to let fly against the earth; whether the air be cool, fresh, and healthful; or whether it be sultry, contagious, and pestilential, so that, while we gasp for life, we are forced to draw in a sudden and inevitable death; whether the earth stand firm, and prove favourable to the industry of the artificer; or whether she threaten the very foundations of our buildings with trembling and tottering earthquakes, accompanied with remugient echoes and ghastly murmurs from below; whatever notable emergencies happen for either good or bad to us, these are the Joves and Vejoves that we worship, which to us are not many, but one God, who has the only power to save or destroy. And therefore, from whatever part of this magnificent temple of his-the world he shall send forth his voice, our hearts and eyes are presently directed thitherward with fear, love, and veneration.

Of the Evidence for the Existence of God. When I say that I will demonstrate that there is a God, I do not promise that I will always produce such arguments that the reader shall acknowledge so strong, as he shall be forced to confess that it is utterly impos sible that it should be otherwise; but they shall be such as shall deserve full assent, and win full assent from any unprejudiced mind.

But

For I conceive that we may give full assent to that which, notwithstanding, may possibly be otherwise; which I shall illustrate by several examples: Suppose two men got to the top of Mount Athos, and there viewing a stone in the form of an altar with ashes on it, and the footsteps of men on those ashes, or some words, if you will, as Optimo Maximo, or To agnosto Theo, or the like, written or scrawled out upon the ashes; and one of them should cry out: Assuredly here have been some men that have done this. the other, more nice than wise, should reply: Nay, it may possibly be otherwise; for this stone may have naturally grown into this very shape, and the seeming ashes may be no ashes, that is, no remainders of any fuel burnt there; but some inexplicable and unperceptible motions of the air, or other particles of this fluid matter that is active everywhere, have wrought some parts of the matter into the form and nature of ashes, and have fringed and played about so, that they have also figured those intelligible characters in the same. But would not anybody deem it a piece of weakness, no less than dotage, for the other man one whit to recede from his former apprehension, but as fully as ever to agree with what he pronounced first, notwithstanding this bare possibility of being otherwise?

So of anchors that have been digged up, either in plain fields or mountainous places, as also the Roman urns with ashes and inscriptions, as Severianus Ful. Linus, and the like, or Roman coins with the effigies and names of the Cæsars on them, or that which is more ordinary, the skulls of men in every churchyard, with the right figure, and all those necessary perforations for the passing of the vessels, besides those conspicuous hollows for the eyes and rows of teeth, the os stylocides, ethoeides, and what not. If a man will say of them, that the motions of the particles of the matter, or some hidden spermatic power, has gendered these, both anchors, urns, coins, and skulls, in the ground, he doth but pronounce that which human reason must admit is possible. Nor can any man ever so demonstrate that those coins, anchors, and urns were once the artifice of men, or that this or that skull was once a part of a living man, that he shall force an acknowledgment that it is impossible that it should be otherwise. But yet I do not think that any man, without doing manifest violence to his faculties, can at all suspend his assent, but freely and fully agree that this or that skull was once a part of a living man, and that these anchors, urns, and coins were certainly once made by human artifice, notwithstanding the possibility of being otherwise.

And what I have said of assent is also true in dissent; for the mind of man, not crazed nor prejudiced, will fully and irreconcilably disagree, by its own natural sagacity, where, notwithstanding, the thing that it doth thus resolvedly and undoubtedly reject, no wit of man can prove impossible to be true. As if we should make such a fiction as this-that Archimedes, with the same

individual body that he had when the soldiers slew him, is now safely intent upon his geometrical figures under ground, at the centre of the earth, far from the noise and din of this world, that might disturb his meditations, or distract him in his curious delineations he makes with his rod upon the dust; which no man living can prove impossible. Yet if any man does not as irreconcilably dissent from such a fable as this as from any falsehood imaginable, assuredly that man is next door to madness or dotage, or does enormous violence to the free use of his faculties.

Cuphophron. That's a very odd thing of the men of Arcladam, Euistor: I pray you, what is it?

Euist. When the woman is delivered, she gets out of the bed as soon as she can, and follows the business of the house; but the man lies in for so many days, and does all the offices of a mother to the infant, saving the giving it suck and the neighbours come a-gossiping to the man lying thus in bed, as in other countreys they do to the woman. And they of Arcladam give this reason for this custom, because the mother had a sufficient share of trouble in bearing the child and bringing him forth, and that therefore 'tis fit that the man should ease her now, and take off part of the care to himself, as Paulus Venetus reports.

Cuph. If the men of the country had had milk in their breasts, which several men have had, according to the testimony of many credible writers, philosophers, physicians, and anatomists, the custom had been more plausible. But such as it is, it has its reason, as you see, and it was not a pure piece of sottishness that carried them unto it. And for the gunaikokratoumenoi, in that the women rule them, it is a sign that it is fit they should. For it is in virtue of their strength, wit, or beauty. . . . They chose their kings of old from the beauty of their form, as Lucretius notes. And why do men rule the women, but upon account of more strength or more wisdom? But where the women rule the men, it is a sign they have more strength or wit, and therefore have a right to rule them. And indeed where do they not rule them? insomuch that the whole world in a manner are of the gunaikokratoumenoi. this is no peculiar disorder amongst the Barbarians, such as Mela and Diodorus Siculus mention.

So that

Hylobares. The women are much beholden to you, Cuphophron, for your so kind and careful patronage of them.

Cuph. I am of a large spirit, Hylobares; I love to be civil to all sects, sexes, and persons.

The gunaikokratoumenoi, men ruled by women, are dealt with in Aristotle's Politics. Arcladam is one of several odd spellings in the old Latin of Marco Polo for the region or tribe-located by Yule in western Yunnan-that Ramusio (and Purchas) calls Cardandan, and Yule Zardandan. Purchas, following Marco Polo, says of the people of Cardandan that when a woman is delivered of a child the man lyeth in and keepeth his bed, with visitation of gossips, the space of fortie days.' Purchas also reports the custom of the convade (as it is now called) from Brazil, where, to the joy of anthropologists, it still obtains.

Of the Pagans cruelty to their enemies, and inhuman humanity to their friends. Hyl. Cuphophron swallows all down very glibly. Fa as I remember, there are some direful stories of th Pagans cruelty to their enemies, and inhuman human to their friends, that, methinks, should a little turn s stomach, Euistor.

Euist. There are very savage customes recorded Pomponius Mela touching the Essedones, Axiaca, an. Geloni. The last clothe themselves and their horse with the skins of their slain enemies; with that pert of the skin that covers the head they make a c for themselves, with the rest they clothe their hore. The Essedones celebrate the funerals of their paras with great feasting and joy, eating their flesh mince. and mingled with mutton (which is the manner their burial of them); but tipping their skulls #2 gold, they make drinking-cups of them: as the Axta quaffe in the heads of their slain enemies, as well drink their blood in the field. In Castella del Or the inhabitants also eat their own dead. But in the island Java, as Ludovicus Patritius reports, the chil do not, like the Essedones, eat their parents, but we they are old and useless, sell them to the Anthropopiag as the parents do the children, if desperately a irrecoverably sick in the judgment of the physic For they hold it the noblest kind of burial to a interred in the belly of a man, and not to be eate by worms to which if any expose the body of his dead friend, they hold it a crime not to be expiste by any sacrifice. The laws also of the Sardoans a Berbiccæ, which Elian relates, are very savage; one commanding the sons to knock the fathers o' th head when they are come to dotage, the other prohi'it ing any to live above seventy years.

Hyl. Stop there, Euistor: let's hear what excuse the advocate of the Paynims can devise for these horr

customs.

The meaning of Providence in permitting such horrid usages in the world.

Sophron. That is very profitably and seasonably note, O Cuphophron: and tho' my judgment is not so curto as to criticize on the perpetual exactness of your app tions of the sad miscarriages of the civilized parts of: world to those gross disorders of the Barbarians; yet your comparisons in the general have very much pressed that note of Philotheus upon my spirit, the more external and gross enormities committed the barbarous nations, are as it were a reprehe satyr of the more fine and hypocritical wickedne of the civilized countries; that these civilized sinnar abominating those wilder extravagancies, may with give sentence against their own no-less wickednes but only in a less-ugly dress Whence it cannot be s great wonder that Providence lets such horrid use emerge in the world, that the more affrightful face s sin in some places might quite drive out all sim 2 and appearance of it in others.

Bathynous. True, Sophron; but this also I conce've may be added, That divine Providence having the comprehension of all the periods of ages, and the see i of things succeeding in these periods, in her as permitted at first and afterwards some parts of te lapsed creation to plunge themselves into a r palpable darkness, that a more glorious light m

succeed and emerge.

The lovely splendor of which Divine dispensation would not strike the beholder so vigorously, did he not cast his eyes also upon that region of blackness and sad tyranny of the devil in preceeding ages over deluded mankind, such as Euistor has so plentifully discovered. All these things therefore seem to have been permitted in design to advance the glory and adorn the triumph of the promised Messias, the true Son of God and Saviour of the world.

The Opera Omnia of More, containing the Latin text of all the works, whether published originally in Latin or in English, appeated in 1679. See the Life by Richard Ward (1712), and Tulloch's Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy (vol. ii. 1874).

Izaak Walton,

'the father of angling,' was born at Stafford in 1593. He was 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. As author, he had a power of natural description and lively dialogue that has rarely been surpassed. His Compleat Angler is a rich storehouse of rural pictures and pastoral poetry, of quaint but wise thoughts, of pleasing and humorous fancies, and of truly apostolic purity and kindliness. A tincture of superstitious credulity and innocent eccentricity gives the book a special flavour and zest, without detracting from its higher power to soothe, instruct, and delight. Of Walton's education or his early years nothing is related; but according to Anthony Wood, he acquired a modest competency as a sempster or linen-draper in London. He had a shop in the Royal Burse in Cornhill, which was seven feet and a half long, and five wide. He had therefore the intellectual advantage certified to by Lord Bacon in his observation that a small room helps a studious man to condense his thoughts. He had a more pleasant and spacious study, however, in the fields and rivers in the neighbourhood of London, 'in such days and times as he laid aside business, and went a-fishing with honest Nat. and R. Roe.' From the Royal Burse, Izaak-for so he always wrote his name-removed to Fleet Street, where he had one half of a shop, the other half being occupied by a hosier.

He married in 1626

Rachel Floud, who died in 1640; in 1647 he married again, his second wife being Anne, halfsister of Bishop Ken. This brought Walton the acquaintance of the eminent men and dignitaries of the Church, at whose houses he spent much of his time in his later years, especially after the death of his second wife in 1662, 'a woman of remarkable prudence, 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 that great man'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.' Thus it was that he produced one of the most delightful miniature biographies in all English literature. He next wrote a brief and charming Life of Sir Henry Wotton (1651), and edited his literary remains. In 1652 he published a small work, a translation by Sir John Skeffington from the Spanish, The Heroe of Lorenzo, to which he prefixed a short affectionate notice of his friend, the translator. His principal production, The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation, appeared in 1653. Walton also wrote Lives of Richard Hooker (1662), George Herbert (1670), and Bishop Sanderson (1678). The Lives of Donne, Wotton, Hooker, and Sanderson-all exquisitely simple, touching, and impressive-were collected into one volume, which was one of Dr Johnson's favourite books. Though no man seems to have possessed his soul more patiently during the troublous times in which he lived, the venerable Izaak was tempted, in 1680, to write and publish. anonymously two letters on the Distempers of the Times, 'written from a quiet and comformable citizen of London to two busie and factious shopkeepers in Coventry.' In 1683, when in his ninetieth year, he published the Thealma and Clearchus of Chalkhill (see page 443), and he died at Winchester on the 15th December of the same year, in the house of his son-in-law, Dr Hawkins, prebendary of Winchester.

The Compleat Angler of Walton is 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 part of his discourse, he designed it as a picture of his own disposition. His statements about fish are not always accurate, and his advice to anglers on their art by no means unexceptionable; the best part of his work is the idyllic and self-revealing element. The original edition had but thirteen chapters; the fourth (1676) had twenty-one, and a Second Part' by Chartes Cotton. To the two original interlocutors, Piscator and Viator (the Fisherman and the Wayfarer), Walton had added in the second and greatly enlarged edition (1655) the Falconer (Auceps), and changed Viator into Venator (Hunter). The Hunter and Falconer serve in the dialogues 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. Piscator is going towards Ware, Venator to meet a pack of otter dogs upon Amwell Hill, and Auceps to Theobalds, 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 per

fectly, 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 eager 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 expres

sion.

The Singing
Birds.

As first the lark, when she means to rejoyce, to chear herself and those that hear her, she then quits the earth, and sings as she

voice, might well be lifted above earth and say: 'Lori, what musick hast thou provided for the saints in heave when thou affordest bad men such musick on earth!'

The lover of hunting next takes his turn, and comments, though with less force-for here Walton himself must have been at fault-on the perfection of smell possessed by the hound, and the joyous music made by a pack of dogs in full chase. Piscator then unfolds his long-treasured and highly prized lore on the virtues of water-sea, river, and

ascends higher into the air; and having ended her heavenly imployment, 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, with their melodious voices, bid welcome to the chearful 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 leverock [skylark], the titlark, the little linnet, and the honest robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead.

But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breaths such sweet loud musick out of her little instrumental throat that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her

brook- and on the antiquity and excellence of fishing and angling. Angling, he says, is somewhat like poetry: men must be born so. He quotes Scripture, and numbers the prophets who allude to fishing. He cannot but remember 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 peace

able 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 'all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in Providence, and be quiet, and go a-angling.' The last condition would, to his ord nary mood, when he is not peculiarly solemn or earnest, seem at least as significant as 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, the style of which is as clear and sparkling as one of his own favourite summer streams. The discourse is interspersed with scraps of dialogue, moral reflections, quaint old verses, songs and sayings, and idyllic glimpses of country-life, and the whole. breathes such cheerful piety and contentment, such sweet freshness and simplicity, as to give the book a perennial charm altogether its own. Walton loved God and man with an unaffected simplicity of mind which cast a radiant atmosphere of happiness around all the idyllic pictures that he saw, for the charm of the book is not so much in the matter, or even the manner, as the unconscious picture of the writer's own disposition. The book was the delight of Charles Lamb's childhood. Writing to Coleridge, he says: 'It breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of heart. . . . It would sweeten a man's temper at any time to read it; it would Christianise discordant every angry passion.' And the tone and temper of the Angler have silently but powerfully influenced English tastes and English literature. 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. 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 chuse which shall be yours; 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 the owners when they do nothing but sleep, or eat, or rejoyce, as you know we have done this last hour, and sate 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 our selves 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'le tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this primrose bank, and look'd down these meadows, I thought of them as Charles the Emperor did of the city of Florence, 'that they were too pleasant to be look'd on but only on holy-days.' As I then sate on this very grass, I turn'd my present thoughts into verse: 'twas a wish which I'le repeat to you:

The Angler's Wish.

I in these flow'ry meads wou'd be ;
These chrystal streams should solace me;
To whose harmonious bubbling noise,
I with my angle wou'd rejoice;

Sit here, and see the turtle-dove
Court his chast mate to acts of love;

Or on that bank feel the west wind
Breath health and plenty; please my mind
To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flowers,
And then washt off by April showers;

Here hear my Kenna sing a song;
There see a blackbird feed her young,

Or a leverock build her nest :
Here give my weary spirits rest,
And raise my low pitcht thoughts above
Earth, or what poor mortals love:

Thus, free from lawsuits and the noise
Of Princes courts, I wou'd rejoyce.
Or with my Bryan and a book,
Loyter long days near Shawford brook;
There sit by him and eat my meat,
There see the sun both rise and set;
There bid good-morning to next day,
There meditate my time away;

And angle on, and beg to have

A quiet passage to a welcome grave.

his dog

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 :'

Come live with me, and be my love; and the answer to it, 'which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days' (see above at page 352). At night, 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's two beds, 'the linen of which looks white and smells of lavender.' All this humble but happy picture is in colour fresh as Nature herself, and instinct with moral feeling and beauty. The only flaw in the perfection of old Piscator's benevolence arises 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, sea-gulls, and herons, &c.; and the use of live snails and worms as bait seems to have caused him no compunctions. His directions for making live-bait have subjected him to the charge of cruelty, probably not altogether serious, from Lord Byron (in Don Juan, Canto xiii.):