FLY-FISHING FOR TROUT 105 



catches. And let me tell you this kind of fishing 

 with a dead rod is like putting money to use; for 

 they both work for the owners when they do nothing 

 but sleep, or eat, or rejoice as you know we have 

 done this last hour; and sat as quietly and as free 

 from cares under this sycamore as Virgil's Tityrus 

 and his Meliboeus did under their broad beech- tree. 



130 No life, my honest scholar, no life so happy and so 

 pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for, 

 when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and 

 the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then 

 we sit on cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and 

 possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent 

 silver streams which we now see glide so quietly by 

 us. Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling 

 as Dr. Butler said of strawberries ' Doubtless God 

 could have made a better berry, but doubtless God 



140 never did.' And so, if I might be judge, God never 

 did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than 

 angling. I'll tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this 

 primrose-bank, and looked down these meadows, 

 I thought of them as Charles the Emperor did of the 

 city of Florence, that they were too pleasant to be 

 looked on but only on holidays. But come ! now it 

 hath done raining, let's stretch our legs a little in 

 a gentle walk to the river, and try what interest our 

 angles will pay us for lending them so long to be used 



150 by the trouts lent them, indeed, like usurers, for our 

 profit and their destruction. 



Ven. Oh me ! look you, master ! a fish ! a fish ! 

 Oh, alas ! master ; I have lost her. 



Pise. Ah ! Marry, sir, that was a good fish indeed ! 

 If I had had the luck to have taken up that rod, then 



