'Lycidas,' in which even the Arcadian pipe is made to utter the true organ-tones. We forgive any incongruities or artificialities when they are lost in such a blaze of poetry. The atmosphere of Arcadia was not as yet sickly enough to asphyxiate a Milton; but it was ceasing to be wholesome; and the weaker singers who imbibed it suffered under distinct attacks of drowsiness. Walton's good sense, or his humility, or perhaps the simple ardour of his devotion to his hobby, encouraged him to deal in realities. He gave the genuine sentiment which his contemporaries would only give indirectly, transfigured and bedizened with due ornaments of classic or romantic pattern. There is just a faint touch of unreality—a barely perceptible flavour of the sentimental—about his personages; but only enough to give a permissible touch of pastoral idealism. Walton is painting directly from the life. The 'honest alehouse,' where he finds 'a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall,' was standing then on the banks of the Lea, as in quiet country nooks, here and there, occasional representatives of the true angler's rest are still to be found, not entirely corrupted by the modern tourist. The good man is far too much in earnest to be aiming at literary ornament; he is a genuine simple-minded enthusiast revealing his kindly nature by a thousand unconscious touches. The common objection is a misunderstanding. Everybody quotes the phrase about using the frog 'as though you loved him;' and it is the more piquant as following one of his characteristically pious remarks. The frog's mouth, he tells, grows up for six months, and he lives for six months without eating, 'sustained, none but He whose name is Wonderful knows how.' He reverently admires the care taken of the frog by Providence, without drawing any more inference for his own conduct than if he were a modern physiologist. It is just this absolute unconsciousness which makes his love of the sport attractive. He has never looked at it from the frog's point of view. Your modern angler has to excuse himself by some scientific hypothesis as to feeling in the lower animals, and thereby betrays certain qualms of conscience which had not yet come to light in Walton's day. He is no more cruel than a schoolboy, 'ere he grows to pity.' He is simply discharging his functions as a part of nature, like the pike or the frog; and convinced, at the very bottom of his heart, that the angler represents the most eminent type of enjoyment, and should be the humble inheritor of the virtues of the fishers of Galilee. The gentlest and most pious thoughts come naturally into his mind whilst his worm is wriggling on his hook to entice the luckless trout. It is particularly pleasant to notice the quotations, which give a certain air of learning to his book. We see that the love of angling had become so ingrained in his mind as to direct his reading as well as to provide him with amusement.