176 Under the Sycamore. 



me tell you that holy Mr. Herbert says 

 of such days and flowers as these, and 

 then we will thank God that we enjoy 

 them, and walk to the River and sit down 

 quietly, and try to catch the other brace 

 of trouts." And then he quotes Herbert's 

 verses, 



" Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 

 The bridal of the earth and skie, 

 Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 

 For thou must die." 



Walton, in his Life of Herbert, tells us 

 he had seen him, though he was not per- 

 sonally acquainted with him, and makes 

 Venator say he " had heard he loved 

 angling." 



It was while sitting under the sycamore, 

 as, he reminds us, " Virgil's Tityrus and 

 his Melibaeus did under their broad beech- 

 tree," that Walton says, 



" 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 con- 

 triving 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. 



