To the fifth edition of the Complete Angler was added a second part, by CHARLES COTTON, the poet, and translator of Montaigne. It consisted of instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream. Though the work was written in the short space of ten days, Cotton, who had long been familiar with fly-fishing, and was an adopted son of Izaak Walton, produced a treatise valuable for its technical knowledge and accuracy. Walton's form of conveying instruction in dialogues is also preserved, the author being Piscator junior, and his companion a traveller (Viator), who had paid a visit to the romantic scenery of Derbyshire, near which the residence of Cotton was situated. This traveller turns out to be the Venator of the first part, 'wholly addicted to the chase,' till Mr Izaak Walton taught him as good, a more quiet, innocent, and less dangerous diversion. The friends embrace: Piscator conducts his new associate to his beloved river Dove,' extends to him the hospitalities of his mansion, and next morning shews him his fishing-house, inscribed 'Piscatoribus Sacrum,' with the prettily contrived' cipher including the first two letters of father Walton's name and those of his son Cotton. A delicate clear river flowed about the house, which stood on a little peninsula, with a bowling-green_close by, and fair meadows and mountains in the neighbourhood. This building still remains, adding interest to the romantic and beautiful scenery on the banks of the river Dove, and recalling the memory of the venerable angler and his disciple, whose genuine love of nature, and moral and descriptive pages, have silently but powerfully influenced the taste and literature of their native

country.

THOMAS ELLWOOD.

THOMAS ELLWOOD (1639-1713) was a humble but sincere Quaker-anxious to do good, and diligent to acquire knowledge. His father was as averse to the new creed as Admiral Penn. He sometimes beat him with great severity, particularly when the son persisted in remaining covered in his presence. To prevent the recurrence of this offence, he successively took from Thomas all his hats; but there remained another cause of offence; for, whenever I had occasion,' says Ellwood, 'to speak to my father, though I had no hat now to offend him, yet my language did as much; for I durst not say "you" to him, but "thou" or "thee," as the occasion required, and then he would be sure to fall on me with his fists. At one of these times, I remember, when he had beaten me in that manner, he commanded me-as he commonly did at such times-to go to my chamber, which I did, and he followed me to the bottom of the stairs. Being come thither, he gave me a parting blow, and in a very angry tone said: "Sirrah, if ever I hear you say thou or thee to me again, I'll strike your teeth down your throat." I was greatly grieved to hear him say so, and feeling a word rise in my heart unto him, I turned again, and calmly said unto him: "Should it not be just if God should serve thee so, when thou sayest 'thou' or 'thee' to him." Though

tenance fall, and he turned away, and left me standing there.'

wood is his having been a pupil of Milton, and But what has given a peculiar interest to Ellone of those who read to the poet after the loss of his sight. The object of Ellwood in offering his services as a reader was, that he might, in return, obtain from Milton some assistance in his own studies. This was in 1662.

Ellwood's Intercourse with Milton.

He received me courteously, as well for the sake of Dr Paget, who introduced me, as of Isaac Pennington, who recommended me, to both of whom he bore a good respect; and having inquired divers things of me, with respect to my former progressions in learning, he dismissed me, to provide myself of such accommodations as might be most suitable to my future studies.

I went, therefore, and took myself a lodging as near to his house-which was then in Jewin Street-as conveniently I could; and, from thenceforward, went every day, in the afternoon, except on the first day of the him such books, in the Latin tongue, as he pleased to week; and sitting by him in his dining-room, read to hear me read.

At my first sitting to read to him, observing that I used the English pronunciation, he told me if I would have the benefit of the Latin tongue-not only to read and understand Latin authors, but to converse with foreigners, either abroad or at home-I must learn the foreign pronunciation. To this I consenting, he instructed me how to sound the vowels, so different from the common pronunciation used by the English-who speak Anglice their Latin-that, with some few other variations in sounding some consonants, in particular casesas C, before E or I, like Ch; Sc, before I, like Sh, &c. which was delivered as the English generally speak it, -the Latin thus spoken seemed as different from that as if it was another language.

I had, before, during my retired life at my father's, by unwearied diligence and industry, so far recovered the rules of grammar-in which I had once been very ready-that I could both read a Latin author, and of pronunciation proved a new difficulty to me. It after a sort, hammer out his meaning. But this change

was now harder to me to read, than it was before to understand when read. But

'Labor omnia vincit improbus.' Incessant pains the end obtains.

And so did I, which made my reading the more acceptable to my master. He, on the other hand, perceiving with what earnest desire I pursued learning, gave me not only all the encouragement, but all the help he could; for, having a curious ear, he understood, by my tone, when I understood what I read, and when I did not; and accordingly would stop me, examine me, and open the most difficult passages to me....

Some little time before I went to Aylesbury prison, I was desired by my quondam master, Milton, to take a house for him in the neighbourhood where I dwelt, that he might get out of the city, for the safety of himself and his family, the pestilence then growing hot in London (1665). I took a pretty box for him in Giles Chalfont, a mile from me, of which I gave him notice, and intended to have waited on him, and seen him well settled in it, but was prevented by that imprisonment. made a visit to him, to welcome him into the country. But now, being released, and returned home, I soon

After some common discourses had passed between us, he called for a manuscript of his, which, being brought, he delivered to me, bidding me to take it home with me, and read it at my leisure, and, when I had so done, return it to him, with my judgment thereupon.

The following finely-drawn characters of the great Elizabethan dramatists are from the Essay on Dramatic Poesy (1668):

Shakspeare.

To begin, then, with Shakspeare. He was the man who, of all modern, and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul. All the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily. When he describes anything, you more than see it you feel it too. Those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation. He was naturally learned; he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. I cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, I should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. He is many times flat, insipid; his comic wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. But he is always great when some great occasion is presented to him; no man can say he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets,

Quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi.1

The consideration of this made Mr Hales of Eton say, that there was no subject of which any poet ever writ, but he would produce it much better done in Shakspeare; and however others are now generally preferred before him, yet the age wherein he lived, which had contemporaries with him Fletcher and Jonson, never equalled them to him in their esteem. And in the last king's court, when Ben's reputation was at highest, Sir John Suckling, and with him the greater part of the courtiers, set our Shakspeare far above him.

Beaumont and Fletcher.

Beaumont and Fletcher, of whom I am next to speak, had, with the advantage of Shakspeare's wit, which was their precedent, great natural gifts, improved by study; Beaumont especially, being so accurate a judge of plays, that Ben Jonson, while he lived, submitted all his writings to his censure, and, 'tis thought, used his judgment in correcting, if not contriving, all his plots. What value he had for him, appears by the verses he writ to him, and therefore I need speak no farther of it. The first play that brought Fletcher and him in esteem was their Philaster; for before that they had written two or three very unsuccessfully: as the like is reported of Ben Jonson, before he writ Every Man in his Humour. Their plots were generally more regular than Shakspeare's, especially those which were made before Beaumont's death; and they understood and imitated the conversation of gentlemen much better; whose wild debaucheries, and quickness of wit in repartees, no poet before them could paint as they have done. Humour, which Ben Jonson derived from particular persons, they made it not their business to describe; they represented all the passions very lively, but above all, love. I am apt to believe the English language in them arrived to its highest perfection: what words have since been taken in, are rather superfluous than ornamental. Their plays are now the most pleasant and frequent entertainments of the stage; two of theirs being acted through the year, for one of Shakspeare's or Jonson's: the reason is, because there is a certain gaiety in their comedies, and pathos in their more serious plays, which suits generally with all men's humours. Shakspeare's language is likewise a little obsolete, and Ben Jonson's wit comes short of theirs.

Ben Jonson.

As for Jonson, to whose character I am now arrived, if we look upon him while he was himself-for his last plays were but his dotages-I think him the most learned and judicious writer which any theatre ever had. He was a most severe judge of himself, as well as others. One cannot say he wanted wit, but rather that he was frugal of it. In his works, you find little to retrench or alter. Wit, and language, and humour also in some measure, we had before him; but something of art was wanting to the drama, till he came. He managed his strength to more advantage than any who preceded him. You seldom find him making love in any of his scenes, or endeavouring to move the passions; his genius was too sullen and saturnine to do it gracefully, especially when he knew he came after those who had performed both to such a height. Humour was his proper sphere; and in that he delighted most to represent mechanic people. He was deeply conversant in the ancients, both Greek and Latin, and he borrowed boldly from them; there is scarce a poet or historian among the Roman authors of those times whom he has not translated in Sejanus and Catiline. But he has done his robberies so openly, that one may see he fears not to be taxed by any law. He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets, is only victory in him. With the spoils of these writers he so represents old Rome to us, in its rites, ceremonies, and customs, that if one of their poets had written either of his tragedies, we had seen less of it than in him. If there was any fault in his language, 'twas that he weaved it too closely and laboriously, in his comedies especially: perhaps, too, he did a little too much Romanise our tongue, leaving the words which he translated almost as much Latin as he found them; wherein, though he learnedly followed their language, he did not enough comply with the idiom of ours. If I would compare him with Shakspeare, I must acknowledge him the more correct poet, but Shakspeare the greater wit. Shakspeare was the Homer, or father of our dramatic poets: Jonson was the Virgil, the pattern of elaborate writing; I admire him, but I love Shakspeare. To conclude of him: as he has given us the most correct plays, so, in the precepts which he has laid down in his Discoveries, we have as many and profitable rules for perfecting the stage, as any wherewith the French can furnish us.

Improved Style of Dramatic Dialogue after the Restoration.-From Defence of the Epilogue,' &c. 1672.

I have always acknowledged the wit of our predecessors with all the veneration which becomes me; but, I am sure, their wit was not that of gentlemen; there was ever somewhat that was ill-bred and clownish in it, and which confessed the conversation of the authors.

And this leads me to the last and greatest advantage of our writing, which proceeds from conversation. In the age wherein those poets lived, there was less of gallantry than in ours; neither did they keep the best company of theirs. Their fortune has been much like that of Epicurus in the retirement of his gardens; to live almost unknown, and to be celebrated after their decease. I cannot find that any of them had been conversant in courts, except Ben Jonson; and his genius lay not so much that way, as to make an improvement by it. Greatness was not then so easy of access, nor conversation so free, as it now is. I cannot, therefore, conceive it any insolence to affirm, that by the knowledge and pattern of their wit who writ before us, and by the advantage of our own conversation, the discourse and raillery of our comedies excel what has been written by them. And this will be denied by none, but some few old fellows who value themselves on their acquaintance with the Black Friars; who, because they

saw their plays, would pretend a right to judge

ours...

Now, if any ask me whence it is that our conversation is so much refined, I must freely, and without flattery, ascribe it to the court, and in it, particularly to the king, whose example gives a law to it. His own misfortunes, and the nation's, afforded him an opportunity which is rarely allowed to sovereign princes, I mean of travelling, and being conversant in the most polished courts of Europe; and thereby of cultivating a spirit which was formed by nature to receive the impressions of a gallant and generous education. At his return, he found a nation lost as much in barbarism as in rebellion: and as the excellency of his nature forgave the one, so the excellency of his manners reformed the other. The desire of imitating so great a pattern, first awakened the dull and heavy spirits of the English from their natural reservedness; loosened them from their stiff forms of conversation, and made them easy and pliant to each other in discourse. Thus insensibly, our way of living became more free; and the fire of the English wit, which was before stifled under a constrained melancholy way of breeding, began first to display its force by mixing the solidity of our nation with the air and gaiety of our neighbours. This being granted to be true, it would be a wonder if the poets, whose work is imitation, should be the only persons in the three kingdoms who should not receive advantage by it; or if they should not more easily imitate the wit and conversation of the present age than of the past.

Translations of the Ancient Poets.-From Preface to

the Second Miscellany,' 1685.

Translation is a kind of drawing after the life; where every one will acknowledge there is a double sort of likeness, a good one and a bad. It is one thing to draw the outlines true, the features like, the proportions exact, the colouring itself perhaps tolerable; and another thing to make all these graceful, by the posture, the shadowings, and chiefly by the spirit which animates the whole. I cannot, without some indignation, look on an ill copy of an excellent original; much less can I behold with patience Virgil, Homer, and some others, whose beauties I have been endeavouring all my life to imitate, so abused, as I may say, to their faces by a botching interpreter. What English readers, unacquainted with Greek or Latin, will believe me or any other man, when we commend these authors, and confess we derive all that is pardonable in us from their fountains, if they take those to be the same poets whom our Oglebies have translated? But I dare assure them that a good poet is no more like himself in a dull translation, than his carcass would be to his living body. There are many who understand Greek and Latin, and yet are ignorant of their mother-tongue. The proprieties and delicacies of the English are known to few; it is impossible even for a good wit to understand and practise them without the help of a liberal education, long reading, and digesting of those few good authors we have amongst us; the knowledge of men and manners, the freedom of habitudes and conversation with the best company of both sexes; and, in short, without wearing off the rust which he contracted while he was laying in a stock of learning. Thus difficult it is to understand the purity of English, and critically to discern, not only good writers from bad, and a proper style from a corrupt, but also to distinguish that which is pure in a good author, from that which is vicious and corrupt in him. And for want of all these requisites, or the greatest part of them, most of our ingenious young men take up some cried-up English poet for their model; adore him, and imitate him, as they think, without knowing wherein he is defective, where he is boyish and trifling, wherein either his thoughts are improper to his subject, or his expressions unworthy of his thoughts, or the turn of both is

unharmonious.

Thus it appears necessary that a man should be a nice critic in his mother-tongue before he attempts to translate in a foreign language. Neither is it sufficient that he be able to judge of words and style, but he must be a master of them too: he must perfectly understand his author's tongue, and absolutely command his own; so that to be a thorough translator, he must be a thorough poet. Neither is it enough to give his author's sense, in good English, in poetical expressions, and in musical numbers; for, though all these are exceeding difficult to perform, yet there remains a harder task; and it is a secret of which few translators have sufficiently thought. I have already hinted a word or two concerning it; that is the maintaining the character of an author, which distinguishes him from all others, and makes him appear that individual poet whom you would interpret. For example, not only the thoughts, but the style and versification of Virgil and Ovid are very different; yet I see, even in our best poets, who have translated some parts of them, that they have confounded their several talents; and by endeavouring only at the sweetness and harmony of numbers, have made them both so much alike, that if I did not know the originals, I should never be able to judge by the copies which was Virgil and which was Ovid. It was objected against a late noble painter, that he drew many graceful pictures, but few of them were like. And this happened to him, because he always studied himself more than those who sat to him. In such translators I can easily distinguish the hand which performed the work, but I cannot distinguish their poet from another. Suppose two authors are equally sweet; yet there is as great distinction to be made in sweetness, as in that of sugar, and that of honey. I can make the difference more plain, by giving you-if it be worth knowing-my own method of proceeding, in my translations out of four several poets in this volume-Virgil, Theocritus, Lucretius, and Horace. In each of these, before I undertook them, I considered the genius and distinguishing character of my author. I looked on Virgil as a succinct and grave majestic writer; one who weighed not only every thought, but every word and syllable; who was still aiming to crowd his sense into as narrow a compass as possibly he could; for which reason he is so very figurative, that he requiresI may almost say-a grammar apart to construe him. His verse is everywhere sounding the very thing in your ears whose sense it bears; yet the numbers are perpetually varied, to increase the delight of the reader, so that the same sounds are never repeated twice together. On the contrary, Ovid and Claudian, though they write in styles differing from each other, yet have each of them but one sort of music in their verses. All the versification and little variety of Claudian is included within the compass of four or five lines, and then he begins again in the same tenor, perpetually closing his sense at the end of a verse, and that verse commonly which they call golden, or two substantives and two adjectives, with a verb betwixt them to keep the peace. Ovid, with all his sweetness, has as little variety of numbers and sound as he; he is always, as it were, upon the hand-gallop, and his verse runs upon carpet ground. He avoids, like the other, all synalæphas, or cutting off one vowel when it comes before another in the following word; so that, minding only smoothness, he wants both variety and majesty. But to return to Virgil: though he is smooth where smoothness is required, yet he is so far from affecting it, that he seems rather to disdain it; frequently makes use of synalæphas, and concludes his sense in the middle of his verse. He is everywhere above conceits of epigrammatic wit and gross hyperboles; he maintains majesty in the midst of plainness; he shines, but glares not; and is stately without ambition.

He who excels all other poets in his own language, were it possible to do him right, must appear above them in our tongue, which, as my Lord Roscommon justly observes, approaches nearest to the Roman in its majesty; nearest, indeed, but with a vast interval