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Even the Winter Palace, the Admiralty, and the Izaak Church lose much of their grandeur in the surrounding deserts of space from the absence of contrast with familiar and tangible objects. It is only by a careful examination in detail that one can become fully sensible of their extraordinary magnificence.
It is the same with every other great name one can think of, be it Bunyan or Heine, Schopenhauer or Izaak Walton. One has but to cast one's eyes over one's shelves to realize, as we see the familiar names, how literally the books that bear them are living men, merely transmigrated from their fleshly forms into the printed word.
And the background was no less wonderful; a grand old house, dark-eaved and venerable, that must have looked down on this garden when ruffled dandies were borne in sedan chairs through the court, and gentle Izaak Walton, stealing forth from his shop in Fleet Street, strolled up Fetter Lane to "go a-angling" at Temple Mills.
"A Servant with this clause Makes drudgery divine; Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws Makes that and th' action fine. "This is the famous stone That turneth all to gold; For that which God doth touch and own Cannot for less be told."* *Counted. I have told you the story about Herbert and the poor man in the words of Izaak Walton, the first writer of a life of George Herbert.
Now this was the way in which the boy came into possession of his undreaded rod. He was by nature and heredity one of those predestined anglers whom Izaak Walton tersely describes as "born so." His earliest passion was fishing. His favourite passage in Holy Writ was that place where Simon Peter throws a line into the sea and pulls out a great fish at the first cast.
I hooked myself instead of the fish, tangled my line in every tree, lost my bait, broke my rod, until I gave up the attempt in despair, and passed the day under the trees reading old Izaak, satisfied that it was his fascinating vein of honest simplicity and rural feeling that had bewitched me, and not the passion for angling. My companions, however, were more persevering in their delusion.
I thought as Izaak Walton, the vicar's favourite, had thought before me that I would cheerfully sacrifice all hopes of worldly advancement, all dreams of fortune, all future success, problematical though each and all appeared
"Then, do you remember our pleasant walks to Enfield, and Potter's Bar, and Waltham, when we had a holyday holydays, and all other fun, are gone, now we are rich and the little hand-basket, in which I used to deposit our day's fare of savory cold lamb and salad and how you would pry about at noon-tide for some decent house, where we might go in, and produce our store only paying for the ale that you must call for and speculate upon the looks of the landlady, and whether she was likely to allow us a table-cloth and wish for such another honest hostess, as Izaak Walton has described many a one on the pleasant banks of the Lea, when he went a fishing and sometimes they would prove obliging enough, and sometimes they would look grudgingly upon us but we had cheerful looks still for one another, and would eat our plain food savorily, scarcely grudging Piscator his Trout Hall?
Izaak Walton had got to the left of Sir Thomas Browne, and the poet Burns was wedged disconsolately between two volumes of Hazlitt. Moreover a receipted bill which I had stuck in the Pilgrim's Progress to mark my place had been moved. Someone had been going through my belongings. A moment's reflection convinced me that it couldn't have been Mrs Jimson.
"You spoke the truth then, Miss Viola. My friend Izaak never put a statement more plainly. And that's the theory I always go on. Now then, let me have all the facts in your possession. And you too," he added, turning to Bartlett. "You might remain while Miss Carwell talks to me, and you can add anything she may forget, while she can do the same in your case.
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