Izaak Walton

The Compleat Walton. Edited by Geoffrey Keynes. (The Nonesuch Press. 3 guineas.) IT is time that a being, by Providence specially adapted with twelve bibliophilic senses, should be inspired to write about the Nonesuch Press and its achievements. We should love to do it ourselves, for this last production has caused our enthusiasm to bubble over. Here surely is the bbokiest book produeed since the days of the Kelmscott Press. It is like an-oil-painting by Holbein of a book in the cell. of a Greek-crazy Benedictine : an epitome of the Scholastic Age. The type, the paper, the

copper plates, the native-dyed Niger covers, together make a perfect presentation of the personality of Izaak Walton.

And how he deserves it ! - In this man's character and life of ninety years is the sweetness of England, the quality that makes it singular in the glory of European peoples. This sweetness is indefinable : it compriies simplicity with dignity, prejudice with tolerance, local shyness with easy manners, riparian colour and movement with the silence and melancholy of monster-haunted waters. For the simplicity, we must compare Walton with our own lovely poet, W. H. Davies, for both have a gift for arch argument that brooks no oppo- sition by logic. Walton pleads, for example, that angling is the divinest of all the arts because the three disciples whom Christ chose to accompany him to the scene of the Trans- figuration were all fishermen ! As a proof of the Earth's febundity he reminds us that at the feast given by Cleopatra.

tor:;Antony, nine hogs were consumed : and he says that we English ought to :be..grateful for the existence of the ocean, since without- it how could we cross to visit the glory of Rome, or the tomb of our Lord'at Jerusalem ? Such arguments are irfefutable by their sWiftness. They move in the ninth dimension.

In spite of this masterly forensic, however, we are not always convinced by Walton's science or scholarship. Here is an instance where the one betrays the other. He quotes Du Bartas on two occasions which are, to Our mind, contradictory. In the first he approves " this industrious searcher into the secrets of nature," who says :-

" The Adultrous Sargus"doth not only change

Wifes every day in the deep streams, but (strange) As if the honey of Sea-love delight Could not suffice his ranging appetite, Goes courting she-Goats on the grassie shore, Horning their husbands that had horns before."

Later, however; we again find. him quoting Du Bartas on the virtue of the niullet. -

" But for chaste, love the Mullet hath no peer ; For, if the Fisher hath seiprized her pheer ; As mad with wo, to shore she followeth, Prest to consort him both in life and death."

Who then, was that infamous Sargus ? We know that safgos is the Greek for mullet. Does the same fellow lead a dofible life ? Perhaps a piscatorial reader will solve this finny problem.

hiaving enjoyed this pedantic quibble, let us think of the man himself, and try to discover what is the quality which has made his treatise on a hobby run into 170 editions, since it first appeared in 1653. In his preface " to all readers " he says, " as no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler." He is therefore treating of an occupation which exceeds the possibility of perfection, and can move in his subject with complete freedom, believing that he will never exhaust its potentialities for 'sylhbolism. In such circum-

ces, artistis happy, knowing_ hirnself,to be a Croesus- Wa ion was dilly conscious of his good iortUne in liairing

joyful faith in his subject : he respected his own riches, and pitied

" money-getting-men, men that spend all their time first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it ; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busie or discontented : for these poor-rich-

• men, we Anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thoughts to think ourselves happy."

So this treatise on fishing is really a devout allegory of the holy blessedness of contemplation, built round Mr. Davies' text :—

" What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare."

Like most of those happy few who stand and stare, Walton looked through the terrestrial object into the joyous field of , Eternity, at the spectacle of himself greeting the undying; creatures of Light. He inherited the Earth. hy_his meekness, but also he advanced to those meetings and friendships beyond`: the Earth. In the light of their revelation he was able to write his essays on the lives of such different men as Donne, Hooker, and George Herbert ; calm and love-enriched inter- pretations of the mystery of human personality. He had a' genius for friendship ; and it was a 'genius that thrived as,

much in the crowded company of solitude as in the slower' • communications of the flesh. )

How he expressed these adventures' in quietism leads us to consider his position in the history of the art of English prose; We recently discussed here some of the difficulties that beset theElizakethans : their prose trammelled by- verse rhythms. Th, ey suffered, too, from their virtues; for the lovely April lyricism of their art was attained by an attitude too artificial and conventionalized to permit of a clear personal note. At writers became less intoxicated with the novelty of their medium, that Renaissance drunkenness on words, the indi- vidual was able to emerge. He wandered off alone ; he looked, away from town and Court. Thus in the quiet of nature, without- the excitement of fashion-stimulated emotions, Walton came upon subtler and cooler rhythms, as free as the music of those " little nimble musicians of the air, that warble: forth their curious Ditties, with which Nature bath furnished them to the shame of Art." It must be remembered that the- effort was deliberate, for Walton was a townsman, spending most of his life in and about Chancery Lane, while he was in constant intimacy with the most cultured men of the day. The perfect cadence which support's the following prose passage was not achieved without the distilling of much sophisticated artistry :— " But the Nightingale (another of my Airy Creatures), breathes sal sweet lewd 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 aires, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, Lord, what Musick hest Thou provided for the Saints in Heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such "musick on earth ? " •

-If you have missed the measure of that passage, try this one : --

" And for the Dogs that we use, who can commend their excel- lency to that height which they deserve ? How perfect is the Hound at 'smelling, who never leaves or forsakes his sent; but follows it thorow so many changes and varieties of other Bents, even over and in the water, and into the earth ? What musique cloth a pack of Dogs then make to any man, whose heart and ears are so happy as to be set to the tune of such instruments ? How will a right Greyhound fix his eye on the best Buck in a heard, single him out and follow him, and him onely through a whole heard of Rascal game, and still know and kill him ? For my Hounds I know the language of them, and they know the language and meaning of one Another as perfectly as We know the voices of thong with whom we discourse daily."

You can- see -how--he is expeeimenting--with-punctuation, reaching out for the nice-tempo-distinction in the use of colon and semi-colon ; finding balance of sound and sense by use of contrasted pause' and periodic halt. See how he thus learns to manipulate the long sentence, that test of a good prose writer—one which modern journalism has taught us to shirk :— _ - . - . --

" 0 Sir, doubt not but that Angling is an Art, and an Art worth your learning : the Question is rather whether you be capable- of learning it ? for Angling is somewhat like Poetry, men are to be born so : I mean, with inclinations to it, though-both may be heightened by practice and experience : but he that hopes to bo a good Angler must not o-nelj bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the Art it self ; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but Angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove like Vertue, a reward to it self."

With such artistry, he was able to show England at its best, before the creeping poison of industrial success had polluted the countryside : when the angler could take his day's catch to be dressed by a hostess at an inn attractive with " cleanly rooms, lavender in the windows, and twenty Ballads stuck about the wall-" That .is, a desirable picture for us who drag our poisoned bodies about a petrol-drenched ,world, vainly seeking silence between one noise and another noise.

RICHARD CHURCH.