268 THE COMPLETE ANGLER 



I did not expect it so soon ; but now 'tis here, you shall 

 see I will make myself no stranger. 



Pise. Much good do your heart, and I thank you 

 for that friendly word : and now, Sir, my service to 

 you in a cup of More-Lands ale: for you are now in 

 the More-Lands, but within a spit and a stride of the 

 Peak ; fill my friend his glass. 



VIAT. Believe me, you have good ale in the More- 

 Lands, far better than that at Ashborn.* 



Pise. That it may soon be : for Ashborn has, which 

 is a kind of a riddle, always in it the best malt, and the 

 worst ale in England. Come, take away, and bring 

 us some pipes, and a bottle of ale, and go to your own 

 suppers. Are you for this diet, Sir ? 



VIAT. Yes, Sir, I am for one pipe of tobacco ; and I 

 perceive your's is very good by the smell. 



Pise. The best I can get in London, I assure you.f 



* The name of this pretty town is variously written, Ashborn, 

 Ashbourn, Ashborne. The latter is the modern way of spelling it. 

 E. 



t It should seem, by what Walton says, chap. x. part i., that he 

 was a smoker : and the reader sees, by the passage in the text, that 

 Piscator, by whom we are to understand Cotton himself, is so curious 

 as to have his tobacco from London. But our piscatory disciple may 

 do as he pleases. Smoking, or, as the phrase was, taking tobacco, 

 was, in Queen Elizabeth's and her successor's time, esteemed the 

 greatest of all foppery. Ben Jonson, who mortally hated it, has 

 numberless sarcasms against smoking and smokers ; all of which 

 are nothing, compared to those contained in that work of our King 

 James the First, A Counter-blast to Tobacco. Nor was the ordinary 

 conversation of this monarch less fraught with reasons and invectives 

 against the use of that weed, as will appear from the following saying 

 of his, extracted from A Collection of Witty Apophthegms, delivered 

 by him and others, at several times, and on sundry occasions, 

 published in 12mo. 1671. " That tobacco was the lively image and 

 pattern of hell ; for that it had, by allusion, in it all the parts 

 and vices of the world whereby hell may be gained ; to wit : First, 

 It was a smoke ; so are the vanities of this world. Secondly, It 

 delighteth them who take it ; so do the pleasures of the world 

 delight the men of the world. Thirdly, It maketh men drunken and 

 light in the head ; so do the vanities of the world : men are drunken 

 therewith. Fourthly, He that taketh tobacco saith he cannot 

 leave it, it doth bewitch him : even so the pleasures of the world 

 make men loath to leave them, they are for the most part so en- 

 chanted with them. And further, besides all this, it is like hell in 



