But what to me is always most
seductive in the book is, that to this edition (not copy, of course) of
1651 Master Izaak Walton, when he came, in his _Compleat Angler_ of
1653, to discuss such abstract questions as the transmission of sound
under water, and the ages of carp and pike, must probably have referred.
He often mentions "Sir Francis Bacon's" _History of Life and Death_,
which is included in the volume. No doubt it would be more reasonable
and more "congruous" that Bacon's book should suggest Bacon. But there
it is. That illogical "succession of ideas" which puzzled my Uncle Toby,
invariably recalls to me, not the imposing folio to be purchased "next
to the Mytre Tauerne" in Fleet Street, but the unpretentious
eighteenpenny octavo which, two years later, was on sale at Richard
Marriot's in St. Dunstan's churchyard hard by, and did no more than
borrow its erudition from the riches of the Baconian storehouse.
Life, and its prolongation, is again the theme of the next book (also
mentioned, by the way, in Walton) which I take up, though unhappily it
has no inscription. It is a little old calf-clad copy of Lewis Cornaro's
_Sure and Certain Methods of attaining a Long and Healthful Life_, 4th
ed., 24mo, 1727; and was bought at the Bewick sale of February, 1884, as
having once belonged to Robert Elliot Bewick, only son of the famous old
Newcastle wood-engraver.
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