Master Piscator.
What Walton saw in angling was not that delight in the consciousness of accomplishment and intelligence which sends the true fisherman to the river and keeps him there, rejoicing in his strength, whether he kill or go empty away. It was rather the pretext—with a worm and perhaps a good supper at one end and a contemplative man at the other—of a day in the fields: where the skylark soared, and the earth smelled sweet, and the water flashed and tinkled as it ran, while hard by some milk-maid, courteous yet innocent, sang as she plied her nimble fingers, and not very far away the casement of the inn-parlour gleamed comfortable
promises of talk and food and rest. That was the Master Piscator who, being an excellent man of letters, went out to ‘stretch his legs up Tottenham Hill’ in search of fish, and came home with immortal copy; and that was the Izaak Walton who ‘ventured to fill a part’ of Cotton’s ‘margin’ with remarks not upon his theory of how to angle for trout or grayling in a clear stream but ‘by way of paraphrase for your reader’s clearer understanding both of the situation of your fishing house, and the pleasantness of that you dwell in.’ He had the purest and the most innocent of minds, he was the master of a style as bright, as sweet, as refreshing and delightful, as fine clean home-spun some time in lavender; he called himself an angler, and he believed in the description with a cordial simplicity whose appeal is more persuasive now than ever. But he was nothing if not the citizen afield—the cockney aweary of Bow Bells and rejoicing in ‘the sights and sounds of the open landscape.’ After all it is only your town-bred poet who knows anything of the country, or is moved to concern himself in anywise for the sensations and experiences it yields. Milton was born in Bread Street, and Herrick in Cheapside. Yet Milton gave us the Allegro and the Penseroso and the scenery in Comus and the epic; while as for Herrick—the Night-Piece, the lovely and immortal verses To Meadows, the fresh yet sumptuous and noble To Corinna Going a-Maying,
these and a hundred more are there to answer for him. Here Walton is with Herrick and Milton and many ‘dear sons of Memory’ besides; and that is why he not only loved the country but was moved to make art of it as well.
HERRICK
His Muse.
In Herrick the air is fragrant with new-mown hay; there is a morning light upon all things; long shadows streak the grass, and on the eglantine swinging in the hedge the dew lies white and brilliant. Out of the happy distance comes a shrill and silvery sound of whetting scythes; and from the near brook-side rings the laughter of merry maids in circle to make cowslipballs and babble of their bachelors. As you walk you are conscious of ‘the grace that morning meadows wear,’ and mayhap you meet Amaryllis going home to the farm with an apronful of flowers. Rounded is she and buxom, cool-cheeked and vigorous and trim, smelling of rosemary and thyme, with an appetite for curds and cream and a tongue of ‘cleanly wantonness.’ For her singer has an eye in his head, and exquisite as are his fancies he dwells in no land of shadows. The more clearly he sees a thing the better he sings it; and provided that he do see it nothing is beneath the caress of his muse. The bays and rosemary that wreath the hall at Yule, the log itself, the Candlemas box, the hock-cart and the maypole, nay,
‘See’st thou that cloud as silver clear,
Plump, soft, and swelling everywhere?
Tis Julia’s bed!’—
And not only does he listen to the ‘clecking’ of his hen and know what it means: he knows too that the egg she has laid is long and white; so that ere he enclose it in his verse, you can see him take it in his hand, and look at it with a sort of boyish wonder and delight. This freshness of spirit, this charming and innocent curiosity, he carries into all he does. He can turn a sugared compliment with the best, but when Amaryllis passes him by he is yet so eager and unsophisticate that he can note that ‘winning wave in the tempestuous petticoat’ which has rippled to such good purpose through so many graceful speeches since. So that though Julia and Dianeme and Anthea have passed away, though Corinna herself is merely ‘a fable, song, a fleeting shade,’ he has saved enough of them from the ravin of Time for us to love and be grateful for eternally. Their gracious ghosts abide in a peculiar nook of the Elysium of Poesy. There ‘in their habit as they lived’ they dance in round, they fill their laps with flowers, they frolic and junket sweetly, they go for ever maying. Soft winds blow round them, and in their clear young voices they sing the verse of the rare artist who called them from the multitude and set them for ever where they are.