THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 147 



Prayer in the Church's words as well 

 As sense, of all prayers bears the bell. 1 



CH. HARVIE. 



And now, scholar, I think it will be time to 

 repair to our angle-rods, which we left in the 

 water to fish for themselves ; and you shall choose 

 which shall be yours ; and it is an even lay one 

 of them catches. 



And let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a 

 dead rod, and laying night-hooks, are 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 syca- 

 more as Virgil's Tityrus and his Meliboeus did 

 under their broad beech-tree. 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. Boteler said of strawberries, 

 " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, 



1 These verses were written at or near the time when the Liturgy 

 was abolished by an ordinance of Parliament; and while it was 

 agitating, as a theological question, whether, of the two, pre- 

 conceived or extemporary prayer is more agreeable to the sense 

 of Scripture. 



