dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head and broke its stock; and at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces." With the progress of knowledge and discussion many kinds of prose literature, which were not absolutely new, now began to receive wider extension. Of this sort are the _Letters from Italy_, and other miscellanies included in the _Reliquiae Wottonianae_, or remains of Sir Henry Wotton, English embassador at Venice in the reign of James I., and subsequently Provost of Eton College. Also the _Table Talk_--full of incisive remarks--left by John Selden, whom Milton pronounced the first scholar of his age, and who was a distinguished authority in legal antiquities and international law, furnished notes to Drayton's _Polyolbion_, and wrote upon Eastern religions, and upon the Arundel marbles. Literary biography was represented by the charming little _Lives_ of good old Izaak Walton, the first edition of whose _Compleat Angler_ was printed in 1653. The lives were five in number; of Hooker, Wotton, Donne, Herbert, and Sanderson. Several of these were personal friends of the author, and Sir Henry Wotton was a brother of the angle. The _Compleat Angler_, though not the first piece of sporting literature in English, is unquestionably the most popular, and still remains a favorite with "all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in Providence, and be quiet, and go a-angling." As in Ascham's _Toxophilus_, the instruction is conveyed in dialogue form, but the technical part of the book is relieved by many delightful digressions. Piscator and his friend Venator pursue their talk under a honeysuckle hedge or a sycamore-tree during a passing shower. They repair, after the day's fishing, to some honest ale-house, with lavender in the window and a score of ballads stuck about the wall, where they sing catches--"old-fashioned poetry but choicely good"--composed by the author or his friends, drink barley wine, and eat their trout or chub. They encounter milkmaids, who sing to them and give them a draft of the red cow's milk and they never cease their praises of the angler's life, of rural contentment among the cowslip meadows, and the quiet streams of Thames, or Lea, or Shawford Brook.