not absolutely new, now began to receive wider
extension. Of this sort are the _Letters from Italy_, and other
miscellanies included in the _Reliquiae Wottonianae_, or remains of Sir
Henry Wotton, English embassador at Venice in the reign of James I., and
subsequently Provost of Eton College. Also the _Table Talk_--full of
incisive remarks--left by John Selden, whom Milton pronounced the first
scholar of his age, and who was a distinguished authority in legal
antiquities and international law, furnished notes to Drayton's
_Polyolbion_, and wrote upon Eastern religions, and upon the Arundel
marbles. Literary biography was represented by the charming little
_Lives_ of good old Izaak Walton, the first edition of whose _Compleat
Angler_ was printed in 1653. The lives were five in number; of Hooker,
Wotton, Donne, Herbert, and Sanderson. Several of these were personal
friends of the author, and Sir Henry Wotton was a brother of the angle.
The _Compleat Angler_, though not the first piece of sporting literature
in English, is unquestionably the most popular, and still remains a
favorite with "all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in
Providence, and be quiet, and go a-angling." As in Ascham's
_Toxophilus_, the instruction is conveyed in dialogue form, but the
technical part of the book is relieved by many delightful digressions.
Piscator and his friend Venator pursue their talk under a honeysuckle
hedge or a sycamore-tree during a passing shower. They repair, after the
day's fishing, to some honest ale-house, with lavender in the window and
a score of ballads stuck about the wall, where they sing
catches--"old-fashioned poetry but choicely good"--composed by the
author or his friends, drink barley wine, and eat their trout or chub.
They encounter milkmaids, who sing to them and give them a draft of the
red cow's milk and they never cease their praises of the angler's life,
of rural contentment among the cowslip meadows, and the quiet streams of
Thames, or Lea, or Shawford Brook.

The decay of a great literary school is usually signalized by the
exaggeration of its characteristic traits. The manner of the Elizabethan
poets was pushed into mannerism by their successors. That manner, at its
best, was hardly a simple one, but in the Stuart and Commonwealth
writers it became mere extravagance. Thus Phineas Fletcher--a cousin
of the dramatist--composed a long Spenserian allegory, the _Purple
Island_, descriptive of the human