240 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART n. 



stronger tackle, and allow a nearer approach to the stream, I may 

 peradventure give you some instructions that may be of use even 

 in your own rivers, and shall bring you acquainted with more 

 flies and show you how to make them, and with what dubbing 

 too, than he has taken notice of in his COMPLETE ANGLER.* 



VIATOR. I beseech you, Sir, do ; and if you will lend me 

 your steel, I will light a pipe the while, for that is, commonly, 

 my breakfast in a morning, too.t 



PlSCATOR. WHY then, Sir, to begin methodically, as a master 



in any art should do, and I will not deny but that I think myself 



a master in this, I shall divide Angling for Trout, 



or Grayling, into these three ways : at the top ; at 



the bottom ; and in the middle. Which three ways, though they 



are all of them, as I shall hereafter endeavour to make it appear, 



in some sort common . to both those kinds of fish ; yet are they 



not so generally and absolutely so, but that they will necessarily 



require a distinction, which, in due place, I will also give you. 



That which we call angling at the top, is with a fly ; at the 

 bottom, with a ground-bait ; in the middle, with a minnow or 

 ground-bait. 



Angling at the top is of two sorts ; with a quick J fly, or with 

 an artificial fly. 



That we call Angling at the bottom, is also of two sorts ; by 

 hand, or with a cork or float. 



That we call Angling in the middle, is also of two sorts ; with 

 a Minnow, for a Trout, or with a ground-bait for a Grayling. 



* See Part I. chap. v. p. 100. 



t It should seem by what Walton says, chap, x., 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, was also, and so curious as to have his tobacco from London. Vide p. 235. 



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 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 i2mo, 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 enchanted with them. And further, besides all this, It is like hell in the 

 very substance of it, for it is a stinking loathsome thing; and so is hell. And further, his 

 Majesty professed that, were he to invite the devil to dinner, he should have three dishes : 

 i. A pig ; 2. A pole of ling and mustard ; and 3. A pipe of tobacco for digesture." 



t Living. 



