226 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



Our floods' queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd ; 



And stately Severn for her shore is praised ; 

 The crystal Trent, for fords and fish renown'd ; 



And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised. 



Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee ; 



York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ; 

 The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be ; 



And Kent will say, her Medway doth excel. 



Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame ; 



Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood ; 

 Our western parts extol their Willy's fame ; 



And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.* 



These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, 

 and my old deceased friend, Michael Drayton ; and 

 because you say you love such discourses as these, of 

 rivers and fish and fishing, I love you the better, and love 

 the more to impart them to you. Nevertheless, scholar, 

 if I should begin but to name the several sorts of strange 

 fish that are usually taken in many of those rivers that 

 run into the sea, I might beget wonder in you, or unbelief, 

 or both ; and yet I will venture to tell you a real truth 

 concerning one lately dissected by Dr. Wharton, a man 

 of great learning and experience, and of equal freedom 

 to communicate it ; one that loves me and my art ; one 

 to whom I have been beholden for many of the choicest 

 observations that I have imparted to you. This good 

 man, that dares do anything rather than tell an untruth, 

 did, I say, tell me he had lately dissected one strange fish, 

 and he thus described it to me : 



" The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that 

 length ; his mouth wide enough to receive, or take 

 into it, the head of a man ; his stomach, seven or eight 



* The Danes, in the time of King Alfred, entered the Lea ; and 

 ascending it in their small ships to a distance of twenty miles, built 

 a castle upon its banks near Hertford or Ware : hence the allusion, 

 " Danish blood." E. 



