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In this friendly genealogy we have omitted the numerous sidebranches or common friendships; but of those we shall give an account by and by. It may be mentioned however, in order not to omit Spenser, that Davenant resided some time in the family of Sir Fulke Greville Lord Brooke, the Friend of Sir Philip Sydney. Spenser's intimacy with Sydney is mentioned by himself, in a letter, still extant, to Gabriel Harvey.

We will now give the authorities for our intellectual pedigree. Sheridan is mentioned in Boswell as being admitted to the celebrated club, of which Johnson, Goldsmith, and others were members. He had then, if we remember, just written his School for Scandal, which made him the more welcome. Of Johnson's friendship with Savage (we cannot help beginning the sentence with his favourite leading preposition), the well-known Life is an interesting and honourable record. It is said that in the commencement of their friendship, they have sometimes wandered together about London for want of a lodging;-more likely for Savage's want of it, and Johnson's fear of offending him by offering a share of his own. But we do not remember how this circumstance is related by Boswell.

Savage's intimacy with Steele is recorded in a pleasant anecdote, which he told Johnson. Sir Richard once desired him, "with an air of the utmost importance," says his biographer, "to come very

early to his house the next morning. Mr. Savage came as he had promised, found the chariot at the door, and Sir Richard waiting for him, and ready to go out. What was intended, and whither they were to go, Savage could not conjecture, and was not willing to enquire; but immediately seated himself with Sir Richard. The coachman was ordered to drive, and they hurried with the utmost expedition to Hyde-park Corner, where they stopped at a petty tavern, and retired to a private room. Sir Richard then informed him that he intended to publish a pamphlet, and that he had desired him to come thither that he might write for him. They soon sat down to the work. Sir Richard dictated, and Savage wrote, till the dinner that had been ordered was put upon the table. Savage was surprised at the meanness of the entertainment, and after some hesitation ventured to ask for wine, which Sir Richard, not without reluctance, ordered to be brought. They then finished their dinner, and proceeded in their pamphlet, which they concluded in the after

noon.

"Mr. Sayage then imagined that his task was over, and expected that Sir Richard would call for the reckoning, and return home; but his expectations deceived him, for Sir Richard told him that he was without money, and that the pamphlet must be sold before the dinner could be paid for, and Savage was therefore obliged to go and offer their new production for sale for two guineas, which with some difficulty he obtained. Sir Richard then returned home, having retired that day only to avoid his creditors, and composed the pamphlet only to discharge his reckoning."

Steele's acquaintance with Pope, who wrote some papers for his Guardian, appears in the letters and other works of the wits of that time. Johnson supposes that it was his friendly interference, which attempted to bring Pope and Addison together after a jealous separation. Pope's friendship with Congreve appears also in his letters. He also dedicated the Iliad to him, over the heads of peers and patrons. Congreve, whose conversation most likely partook of the elegance and wit of his writings, and whose manners appear to have rendered him an universal favourite, had the honour in his youth of attracting singular respect and regard from Dryden. He was publicly hailed by him as his successor, and affectionately bequeathed the care of his laurels. Dryden did not know who had been looking at him in the coffee-house.

Already I am worn with cares and age,
And just abandoning th' ungrateful stage;
Unprofitably kept at Heaven's expense,
I live a rent-charge on his providence.
But you, whom every Muse and Grace adorn,
Whom I foresee to better fortune born,
Be kind to my remains; and O defend,
Against your judgment, your departed friend!
Let not th' insulting foe my fame pursue,

But shade those laurels which descend to you.

Congreve did so with great tenderness.

Dryden is reported to have asked Milton's permission to turn his Paradise Lost into a rhyming tragedy, which he called the State of Innocence, or the Fall of Man; a work, such as might be expected from such a mode of alteration. The venerable poet is said to have answered, "Ay, young man, you may tag my verses, if you will." Be the connection, however, of Dryden with Milton, or of Milton with Davenant as it may, Dryden wrote the alteration of Shakspeare's Tempest, as it is now perpetrated, in conjunction with Davenant. They were great hands, but they should not have touched the pure grandeur of Shakspeare. The intimacy of Davenant with Hobbes is to be seen by their correspondence prefixed to Gondibert. Hobbes was at one time secretary to Lord Bacon, a singularly illustrious instance of servant and master. Bacon is also supposed to have had Ben Jonson for a retainer in some capacity; but it is certain that Jonson had his acquaintance, for he records it in his Discoveries. And had it been otherwise, his link with the preceding writers could be easily supplied through the medium of Greville and Sydney, and indeed of many others of his contemporaries. Here then we arrive at Shakspeare, and feel the electric virtue of his hand. Their intimacy, dashed a little, perhaps, with jealousy on the part of Jonson, but maintained to the last by dint of the nobler part of him and of Shakspeare's irresistible fineness of nature, is a thing as notorious as their fame. Fuller says, "" Many were the wit-combates betwixt

(Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man of war: master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning: solid, but slow in his performances. Shakspeare, with the English man of war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about, and take advantage of all winds, by the quickness of his wit and invention." This is a happy simile, with the exception of what is insinuated about Jonson's greater solidity. But let Jonson shew for himself the affection, with which he regarded one, who did not irritate or trample down rivalry, but rose above it like the quiet and all-gladdening sun, and turned emulation to worship.

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We do not mean

The anglers are a race of men who puzzle us. for their patience, which is laudable; nor for the infinite non-success of some of them, which is desirable. Neither do we agree with the good old joke attributed to Swift, that angling is always to be considered as 66 a stick and a string, with a fly at one end and a fool at the other." Nay, if he had books with him and a pleasant day, we can even account for the joyousness of that prince of all punters, who having been seen in the same identical spot one morning and evening, and asked both times whether he had had any success, said No; but in the course of the day he had had "a glorious nibble."

But the anglers boast of the innocence of their pastime; yet it puts fellow-creatures to the torture. They pique themselves on their meditative faculties; and yet their only excuse is a want of thought. It is this that puzzles us. Old Isaac Walton, their patriarch, speaking of his inquisitorial abstractions on the banks of a river, says,

Here we may
Think and pray,
Before death

Stops our breath.

Other joys

Are but toys,

And to be lamented.

So saying, he "stops the breath" of a trout, by plucking him up into an element too thin to respire, with a hook and a tortured worm in his jaws.

Other joys

Are but toys.

If you ride, walk, or skate, or play at cricket, or at rackets, or enjoy a ball or a concert, it is "to be lamented." To put pleasure into the faces of half a dozen agreeable women, is a toy unworthy of the manliness of a worin-sticker. But to put a hook into the gills of a carp,-there you attain the end of a reasonable being; there you shew yourself truly a lord of the creation. To plant your feet oççasionally in the mud, is also a pleasing step. So is cutting your

ancles with weeds and stones.

Other joys-
Are but toys.

The book of Isaac Walton upon angling is undoubtedly a delightful performance in some respects. It smells of the country air, and of the flowers in cottage windows. Its pictures of rural scenery, its simplicity, its snatches of old songs, are all good and refreshing; and his prodigious relish of a dressed fish would not be grudged him, if he had killed it a little more decently. He really seems to have a respect for a piece of salmon; to approach it, like the grace, with his hat off. But what are we to think of a man, who in the midst of his tortures of other animals, is always valuing himself on his wonderful harmlessness; and who actually follows up one of his most complacent passages of this kind with an injunction to impale a certain worm twice upon the hook, because it is lively, and might get off? All that can be said of such an extraordinary inconsistency is, that having been bred up in an opinion of the innocence of his amusement, and possessing a healthy power of exercising voluntary thoughts (as far as he had any), he must have dozed over the opposite side of the question, so as to become almost, perhaps quite insensible to it. And angling does indeed seem the next thing to dreaming. It dispenses with loco motion, reconciles contradictions, and renders the very countenance null and void. A friend of ours,

who is an admirer of Walton, was struck, just as we were, with the likeness of the old angler's face to a fish. It is hard, angular, and of no expression. It seems to have been "subdued to what it worked in;" to have become native to the watery element. One might have said to Walton, "Oh flesh, how art thou fishified!" He looks like a pike, dressed in broad cloth instead of butter.

The face of his pupil and follower, or as he fondly called himself, son, Charles Cotton, a poet and a man of wit, is more goodnatured and uneasy.* Cotton's pleasures had not been confined to fishing. His sympathies indeed had been a little superabundant; and left him perhaps not so great a power of thinking as he pleased. Ac

* The reader may see both the portraits in the late editions of Walton,

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cordingly, we find more symptoms of scrupulousness upon the subject of angling in his writings, than in those of his father.

Walton says, that an angler does no hurt but to fish; and this he counts as nothing. Cotton argues, that the slaughter of them is not to be "repented;" and he says to his father (which looks as if the old gentleman sometimes thought upon the subject too)

There whilst behind some bush we wait

The scaly people to betray,

We'll prove it just with treacherous bait
To make the preying trout our prey.

This argument, and another about fish's being made for "man's pleasure and diet," are all that anglers have to say for the innocence of their sport. But they are both as rank sophistications as can be ; mere beggings of the question. To kill fish outright is a different matter. Death is common to all; and a trout, speedily killed by a man, may suffer no worse fate than from the jaws of a pike. It is the mode, the lingering cat-like cruelty of the angler's sport, that renders it unworthy. If fish were made to be so treated, then men were also made to be racked and throttled by Inquisitors. Indeed among other advantages of angling, Cotton reckons up a tame fishlike acquiescence to whatever the powerful chuse to inflict.

We scratch not our pates,

Nor repine at the rates

Our superiors impose on our living;

But do frankly submit,

Knowing they have more wit

In demanding than we have in giving.

Whilst quiet we sit,

We conclude all things fit,

Aquiescing with hearty submission, &c.

And this was no pastoral fiction. The anglers of those times, whose pastimes became famous from the celebrity of their names, chiefly in divinity, were great fallers in with passive obedience. They seemed to think (whatever they found it necessary to say now and then upon that point) that the great had as much right to prey upon men, as the small had upon fishes; only the men luckily had not hooks put into their jaws, and the sides of their cheeks torn to pieces. The two most famous anglers in history are Antony and Cleopatra. These extremes of the angling character are very edifying.

We should like to know what these grave divines would have said to the heavenly maxim of "Do as you would be done by." Let us imagine ourselves, for instance, a sort of human fish. Air is but a rarer fluid; and at present, in this November weather, a supernatural being who should look down upon us from a higher atmosphere, would have some reason to regard us as a kind of pedestrian carp. Now fancy a Genius fishing for us. Fancy him baiting a great hook

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