authority, as he finds it established in his own country, unless he has
the learning and genius of a Donne. To these, or equivalents for these
in a special privy inspiration, 'the common people' of his day, and ever
since Elizabeth's day, were pretending. This was the inevitable result
of the translation of the Bible into English. Walton quotes with
approval a remark of a witty Italian on a populace which was universally
occupied with Free-will and Predestination. The fruits Walton saw, in
preaching Corporals, Antinomian Trusty Tompkinses, Quakers who ran about
naked, barking, Presbyterians who cut down old yew-trees, and a
Parliament of Saints. Walton took no kind of joy in the general
emancipation of the human spirit. The clergy, he confessed, were not
what he wished them to be, but they were better than Quakers, naked and
ululant. To love God and his neighbour, and to honour the king, was
Walton's unperplexed religion. Happily he was saved from the view of the
errors and the fall of James II., a king whom it was not easy to honour.
His social philosophy was one of established rank, tempered by equity and
Christian charity. If anything moves his tranquil spirit, it is the
remorseless greed of him who takes his fellow-servant by the throat and
exacts the uttermost penny. How Sanderson saved a poor farmer from the
greed of an extortionate landlord, Walton tells in his Life of the
prelate, adding this reflection:--

'It may be noted that in this age there are a sort of people so unlike
the God of mercy, so void of the bowels of pity, that they love only
themselves and their children; love them so as not to be concerned
whether the rest of mankind waste their days in sorrow or shame;
people that are cursed with riches, and a mistake that nothing but
riches can make them and theirs happy.'

Thus Walton appears, this is 'the picture of his own disposition,' in the
_Lives_. He is a kind of antithesis to John Knox. Men like Walton are
not to be approached for new 'ideas.' They will never make a new world
at a blow: they will never enable us to understand, but they can teach us
to endure, and even to enjoy, the world. Their example is alluring:--

'Even the ashes of the just
Smell sweet, and blossom in the dust.'

THE COMPLEAT ANGLER

Franck, as we saw, called Walton 'a plagiary.' He was a plagiary in the
same sense as Virgil and Lord Tennyson and Robert Burns, and, indeed,
H