ion as thine was not, so to say, a mere innocence
of evil in the things of our Belief, but a reasonable and grounded
faith, strong in despite of oppositions. Happy was the man in whom
temper, and religion, and the love of the sweet country and an angler's
pastime so conveniently combined; happy the long life which held in its
hand that threefold clue through the labyrinth of human fortunes! Around
thee Church and State might fall in ruins, and might be rebuilded, and
thy tears would not be bitter, nor thy triumph cruel.

Thus, by God's blessing, it befell thee
Nec turpem senectam
Degere, nec cithara carentem.

I would, Father, that I could get at the verity about thy poems. Those
recommendatory verses with which thou didst grace the Lives of Dr. Donne
and others of thy friends, redound more to the praise of thy kind heart
than thy fancy. But what or whose was the pastoral poem of 'Thealma and
Clearchus,' which thou didst set about printing in 1678, and gavest to
the world in 1683? Thou gavest John Chalkhill for the author's name, and
a John Chalkhill of thy kindred died at Winchester, being eighty years
of his age, in 1679. Now thou speakest of John Chalkhill as 'a friend of
Edmund Spenser's,' and how could this be?

Are they right who hold that John Chalkhill was but a name of a friend,
borrowed by thee out of modesty, and used as a cloak to cover poetry of
thine own inditing? When Mr. Flatman writes of Chalkhill, 't is in words
well fitted to thine own merit:

Happy old man, whose worth all mankind knows
Except himself, who charitably shows
The ready road to virtue and to praise,
The road to many long and happy days.

However it be, in that road, by quiet streams and through green
pastures, thou didst walk all thine almost century of years, and we,
who stray into thy path out of the highway of life, we seem to hold thy
hand, and listen to thy cheerful voice. If our sport be worse, may our
content be equal, and our praise, therefore, none the less. Father, if
Master Stoddard, the great fisher of Tweed-side, be with thee, greet
him for me, and thank him for those songs of his, and perchance he will
troll thee a catch of our dear River.

Tweed! winding and wild! where the heart is unbound,
They know not, they dream not, who linger around,
How the saddened will smile, and the wasted rewin
From thee--the bliss withered within.

Or perhaps thou wilt better love,

The lanesome