^ET. 62.] LIFE OF IZAAK IV ALTON. Ivii 



scholar's attention to the appearance of the fields, and introduced 

 Herbert's poem, which is scarcely exceeded in beauty and pathos 

 by any similar composition in our language, commencing 



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

 The bridal of the earth and sky, 

 Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 

 For thou must die." 



Venator's praise of these verses induces him to repeat others by 

 Christopher Harvie, on the Book of Common Prayer, which he 

 says his scholar will like the better because the author " is a friend 

 of mine, and I am sure no enemy to Angling/' Their rods during' 

 this time are " left in the water to fish for themselves," which, he 

 says, is " like putting money to use, for they work for the owners 

 when they do nothing but sleep, or eat, or rejoice." " You know," 

 he observes, " that we have during this last hour, sat as quietly 

 and as free from cares under this sycamore, 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, we 

 sit on cowslip banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in 

 as much quietness as these silver streams which we now see glide 

 by us." 



Piscator then enlivens their conversation by relating an anecdote 

 of some gipsies, and recites a song that was written about forty \ 

 years before by Francis Davison, which he says he heard sung by 

 one of the said gipsies, " the youngest and veriest virgin of the 

 company." They afterwards go to their rods, and fish until the 

 rain again drives themjojhe sycamore-tree ; when Piscator con- 

 tinues his observations on his art, and adverts to the prevalent 

 fashion of women placing patches on their faces, of which custom 

 he does not seem to disapprove : he says that " when the trout or 

 salmon is in season, they have at their first taking out of the water 

 (which continues during life) their bodies adorned, the one with 

 such red spots, and the other with such black or blackish spots, 

 which gives them such an addition of natural beauty, as I (that 

 am yet no enemy to it) think, was never given to any woman by 

 the artificial paint or patches in which they so much pride them- 

 selves in this age." 



After a protracted dissertation Piscator becomes somewhat 

 exhausted, as " he had almost spent his spirits with talking so 

 long ; " and apprehending that his discourse " grows both tedious 



