servant, who, hardly seventeen years old, charged her master's son, who was barely two older. .. COTTON. Nonsense! nonsense! WALTON. Why, he himself seemed to express a doubt; for beneath was written Qu: if perjured.. which God forbid! May all turn out to his glory! COTTON. But really I do not recollect that paper of mine, if mine it be. WALTON. Truly, son, thou hast not succeded in this; and yet there are girls here and there who might have said as much; they have such froward tongues in their heads, some of 'em. A breath keeps them in motion, like a Jew's harp, God knows how long. Cats forsooth! Owls, and cry you mercy! Have they no better words than those for civil people! VOL. II. M M Here I stretch myself along*, Strawberries, curds, or what I please, Shake, and off to blindman's buff : Ever come across my way, They so puzzle one!.. that tongue * I cannot but think that I am indebted to a beautiful little poem of Redi, for the train of these ideas, tho without a consciousness of it while I was writing. His sonnets are among the worst in the language: there is but one exception. I am likely to be a bad translator; and moreover I must inform the reader that I am designedly an unfaithful one in the second line, of which the literal and entire version is "who pass thro Pity-street." I have taken the elegiac measure as more becoming the subject. Ye gentle souls, ye tenderer of the fair, There was a woman to whose hallowed breast Faith had retired, and Honour fixed his throne.. Her form was fill'd with beauty from her face; In the church to our right lie the Cockaynes. Whole races of men have been exterminated by wars and pestilences; families and names have slipt down and lost themselves by slow and imperceptible decay; but I doubt whether any breed of fish, with heron and otter and angler in pursuit of it, hath been extinguished since the Heptarchy. They might humble our pride a whit, methinks, tho they hold their tongues. The people here entertain a strange prejudice against the nine eyes. COTTON. What, in the name of wonder, is that? WALTON. It is a tiny At your years do not you know? kind of lamprey, a finger long; it sticketh to the stones by its sucker, and if you are not warier, and more knowing than folks in general from the south, you might take it for a weed; it wriggles its whole body to and fro so regularly, and is of that dark colour which subaqueous weeds are often of, as tho they were wet thro, which they are not, any more than land-weeds, if one may believe doctor Plott, who told me so in confidence. Hold my mare, son Cotton. I will try whether my whip can reach the window, when I have mounted the bank. COTTON. Curious thing! the middle of a street to be lower than the side by several feet. People would not believe it in London or Hull. WALTON. Ho! lass! tell the good parson your master, or his wife if she be nearer at hand, that two friends would dine with him; Charles Cotton, kinsman of Mistress Cotton of the Peak, and his humble servant Izaac Walton. GIRL. If you are come, gentles, to dine with my master, I will make another kidney-pudding first, while I am about it, and then tell him .. not but we have enough and to spare, yet master and mistress love to see plenty, and to welcome with no such peascods as words. WALTON. Go, thou hearty jade, trip it, and tell him. COTTON. I will answer for it, thy friend is a good soul, altho I know but little of him and have not met him for years. WALTON. He wants nothing, yet he keeps the grammarschool, and is ready to receive, as private tutor, any young gentleman in preparation for Oxford or Cambridge; but only one. They live like princes, converse like friends, and part like lovers*. * I pay this tribute to my worthy old tutor, Mr. Langley of Ashbourne, under whose tuition I passed a year between COTTON. Here he comes: I never saw such a profusion of snow-white hair. WALTON. Let us go up and meet him. OLDWAYS. Welcome, my friends! will you walk back into the house or sit awhile in the shade here? WALTON. We will sit down in the grass, on each side of your arm-chair, good master William. Why, how is this? here are tulips and other flowers by the thousand growing out of the turf, You are all of a piece, my sunny saint; you are always concealing the best things about you, except your raisin-wine and your money. OLDWAYS. The garden was once divided by borders: a young gentleman, my private pupil, was fond of leaping: his heels ruined my choicest flowers, ten or twenty at a time. I remonstrated: he patted me on the shoulder, and said, My dear Mr. Oldways, in these borders if you miss a flower you are uneasy; now if the whole garden were in turf, you would be delighted to discover one. Rugby and Oxford. He would take only one private pupil, and never had but me. The kindness of him and his wife to me was parental. They died nearly together; about fiveand-twenty years ago. |