198 FLY FISHING FOE TROUT. 



Cotton, following Walton, was too good an 

 artist to make the mistake of trying to imitate. 

 Consequently, he was driven to the opposite 

 extreme. And perhaps also he wrote under the 

 influence of the sobering respectability of 

 Walton, and had dropped the exuberant frank- 

 ness of his youth. That he required correction 

 no one who has read him will deny. His 

 Scarronnides outraged even the easy standards 

 of the Restoration : but though as a poet he is 

 full of unquotable grossness, his verses have 

 touches of observation of nature, which to tell 

 the truth his Compleat Angler lacks. Indeed, 

 in spite of faults, he was no mean poet : and his 

 Poems on Several Occasions contain a good deal 

 that might be better known than it is. The 

 following lines are possibly his best on fishing : 

 they are from a poem to Izaak Walton.* 



If the all-ruling Power please 



We live to see another May, 

 We'll recompence an age of these 



Foul days in one fine fishing day : 



We then shall have a day or two, 

 Perhaps a week, wherein to try, 



What the best Master's hand can doe 

 With the most deadly killing Flie. 



And these lines, too, from one of those rollick- 

 ing poems which he wrote so well, are perhaps 

 worth quoting.! 



*'To my most dear and worthy Friend, Mr. Isaac Walton,' 

 printed in Poems on Several Occasions, 1689. 



tFrom A Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque, ibid. 



