timent and rhetorical argument, by means of which the poet himself describes an action. They are without force of invention, without man ners, without poetry, and without pathos. Among the English, Otway and Rowe have been compared with Euripides and Sophocles. The former is below the standard, and the latter has little but his "golden lines" to countenance his affinity. The elder poets have alone strength to stand the trial. In Shakspeare, the traits of connatural genius are striking. If Shakspeare must rank with Eschylus, perhaps Ford and Massinger may complete the parallel trium VIDA. virate. ANGLING AND IZAAK WALTON. "Oh the gallant Fisher's life! Tis full of pleasure, void of strife, Are but toys, For our skill Breeds no ill, But content and pleasure." MAY is born-and the fishing season is now come on; they who find pleasaunce at the water side, in tender greenmeadows, or at the troublous tail of a noisy mill-may leave the busy, crowded parts of the earth, and betake themselves to the solitary streams to diet off that "content and pleasure," which only angling gives. "Oh, the gallant fisher's life!" What can compare with it? The huntsman's is a maddening and a fearful sport: the shooter is but an armed pedestrian :-the cocker feeds on a vicious joy :-only the angler parleys with nature, and cultivates that skill which "breeds no ill." He is your only pure liver! He it is, who, according to his own account, contemplates heaven in the clear rivers, who tunes his life to the calmness of their course, and who asks no other society but The silver scaled fish that softly swim stream. Happy must that man be, the thread of whose life is "a silken line," who finds nothing more crooked in existence than the hook upon which he wreathes his fly,- and who covets but To meditate his time away, There are two kinds of anglers, as there are two kinds of poets; there is the angler who adores the artless pursuit for its own dear sake, and who finds its own exceeding great reward in it:-and there is the angler who has read himself into a watery-inspiration, and who commits himself to his lines, because he sees so much beauty in the art, as laid down by those who have tenderly expounded it. There are very few honest brothers of the angle in this world, we verily believe;-for to be a real fisherman, a man must be rarely made about the heart, and innocently, not craftily, qualified in the mind. He must be quiet, persevering, passionless. He must be He must healthy-and unwearying. love early hours at night and morning. He must be no speculatistand yet greedy of solitude. true angler must be one who can quit his warm bed, when the morning covers the streams with its first cold pearly light, who can steal quietly about his house, break his fast with a crust and a cup of chill milk-hang his basket at his back, and sally forth alone to rivers The He must be able to plash about in the wet reeds, and the long dank grass in the meadows, toiling after the prowling pike or the darting trout. He must be willing to divorce himself from the human voice, from the social pleasures of life, and be satisfied with returning at evening, hungry and wet, and with spreading on the dresser one or two fast-fading speckled trout, fished a second time, with difficulty, out of their bed of wet and fresh-scented grass. A man thus qualified, must surely, like the poet, be born, and not made; it is the would-be-angler, as well as the would-be-poet, that is imperfectly built out of books. Izaak Walton has much to answer for in the way of converting men into anglers. He is at the head of that sect of water-Quakers, who profess peace and simplicity, and who covet none but drab-coloured pleasures. He gave the epithet of "gentle," to anglers, and set forth the patient contentment of the art in language that readeth like artlessness itself. He it was who showed how necessary it was for a man to pass his life by the side of a winding river, or up to his ancles in the shallows, in or der to the well fitting his mind for virtuous and soothing contemplation. He was the wight who proved that truth did not lie in a well, but in running waters. It is next to impossible for a man to read Walton's Complete Angler, and not to sigh for a day by the Lea River; a struggle with "a logger-headed chub," a discourse on the dressing of a silver eel, and a taste of honest Maudlin's voice, in one of her sweetest milking songs," that smooth song which was made by Kit Marlow." The language of the book is not mere language, not poor dead words, but words living and winding as the sil ver Dee; for the very babbling of the waters seems to have crept into itand the air of fresh fishing-days breathes in every sentence. The latest edition of Walton's artless book, is, perhaps, one of the most interesting publications that has appeared since that honest old man was wont to leave his ricketty house in Fleet-street, and to unthread the lazy, silent Lea for days together. All that could be done to make it the Complete Angler has been done. Every thing in the book is of the fish,-fishy. The simple gills of Master Izaak bask quietly beneath the shadow of the first leaf-and every honest angling character,fishing spot,-or trolling incident,— is illustrated by the artist in graven pictures, which hold the subjects in lines, fine and powerful as those which the fly-fisher casts over the gallant river. The trout, the pike, the perch, and the salmon, never had their portraits taken at full length before they seem alive and just out of the water, and laid on the fresh leaves for the lover of the angle to look at. The spots-the streaksthe pearled lustre of life is upon them; and, if old Izaak could "see himself so enriched, he would stare to find fish so well and cunningly dressed. The views of Amwell—of the Lea River--Ware--and the sketches of Dove-Dale, have a spirit and beauty in them, worthy of the spirit and beauty which mark the descriptions in the work itself. Nature sees herself reflected in the book, as in a brook; and no reader can help angling about the pages, so long as the smallest vignette remains to be caught. We can only say that those who love a delightful book— delightfully got up, ought to have Major's edition of Izaak Walton. At the same time, we must say, that the purse will not close with the purchase of this completest edition of the Complete Angler; for we will defy the reader, after perusing it, and dwelling on the illustrations, to avoid buying a rod-a reel-a line-a plumb-a dozen hooks-gymp-gut and a gentle-box: we will defy him to abstain from rambling about the fresh waters, near Tottenham Cross, with peace at his heart, and a basket at his back; we will defy him to sleep quietly in his bed, on a likely morning, when the wind is south, and the May-fly is expected to unfurl his cowslip-coloured wing over the waters. We grow poetical. We must draw in our lines. Our readers must pardon us. Two of our body, it must The Complete Angler of Izaak Walton, and Charles Cotton, extensively embellished with engravings on copper and wood, from original paintings and drawings, by first-rate artists, &c. Major, Fleet Street, 1823. * Master Izaak was not mighty in fly-fishing. In this branch of the art he was worsted by Cotton, 1 SONNET:-DEATH. It is not death, that some time in a sigh This eloquent breath shall take its speechless flight; In sunlight to the sun, shall set in night; That this warm conscious flesh shall perish quite, That verse shall cease, and the immortal spright So duly and so oft; and when grass waves T. ST. PAUL'S CHARACTER OF THE ANCIENT CRETANS, EXEMPLIFIED BY AN INTERESTING STORY FROM POLYBIUS. THE Cretans, from very early times, have had the misfortune to be stig matised as a vicious nation. Their character for falsehood in particular was so firmly established, as to become a proverb; so that, to play the Cretan was another phrase to signify lying. With this vice especially, and with some others, they were reproached by Epimenides, one of their own countrymen. And though ancient history has not left us a large ac count of them, we may yet collect e nough to understand that his character of them was at least as good as they got from the rest of the world. The common saying, that was current in the world respecting them, joined the Cretans with the Cilicians and the Cap padocians (the names beginning all with the same letter), and pronounced them to be the three worst people existing. What it might be that entitled the Cappadocians to such a distinction I know not; but the Cilicians were a villanous tribe, who were situated on the southern shores of Asia Minor, and infested all that part of the Mediterranean with their piracies. Polybius has related some thing more specific of the Cretan manners. "Their laws (says he) allow them to possess land to an unlimited extent; and they count it to be not only a necessary, but a most honourable acquisition to get as much as they can. În short, sordid avarice is so general and inherent there, that, of all mankind, the Cretans are the only people who think no gain what ever to be disgraceful." The same author describes another part of their character in these terms: "The Cretans, for ambushes on land or sea, for attacks by night, and for any thing of stratagem, are superior to all others; but for a set battle, face to face, they have neither courage nor steadiness. In all those qualities the Achæans and the Macedonians are directly opposite to them." The evidence of Epimenides against the Cretans is cited by St. Paul; and his manner of doing so renders it double: for to the words of Epimenides he adds, this witness is true. We may therefore rely upon it that he had acquaintance enough JUNE, 1823. with their character to warrant him in joining his testimony to that of the Cretan sage. Whether or no the commentators have brought forward any historical facts to corroborate St. Paul's statement, I am not sufficiently conversant with them to say; but this I will venture to assert, that the story to be detailed in these pages from the history of Polybius, confirms the Cretan character for falsehood, treachery, and deliberate wickedness, beyond any other upon record. INTRODUCTION. To render the following story intelligible, it is necessary to premise a few circumstances relating to the persons engaged in it, and the state of the country in which it happened. Seleucus the younger succeeded his father, of the same name, in that extensive portion of Alexander's conquests, then denominated the kingdom of Syria, which included some considerable provinces on the western side of Mount Taurus. Soon after his accession, he marched with a large army against Attalus, King of Pergamus, who, a few years before, had invaded and possessed himself of those provinces. But while he was upon his march he was treacherously murdered; the command of the expedition then fell to his near relation, by name Achæus; whose conduct was so able and successful, that the troops proposed to make him king. This for the present he refused, acknowledging as his sovereign, Antiochus, the next brother of Seleucus: but, not long after, having regained all that Attalus had taken, and reduced that monarch to extre mity, and having beside subdued all the country around, he assumed the royal title and diadem; and still continuing to govern with great ability and energy, his alliance was courted by divers states, and he was esteemed the most formidable potentate of Asia Minor. Meanwhile, Antiochus had no leisure to disturb him; for he was employed in putting down a rebellion in a different part of his dominions, and otherwise engaged in a war with Ptolomy Philopator, 2 U |