188 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART I. 



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 chuse 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 slrep, or, eat, or rejoice, as you know we 

 have done this last hour, and 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 plea- 

 sant, as the life of a well-governed angler ; for when the 

 lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the states- 

 man is preventing, or contriving, plots, then, we sit 

 on cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and possess our- 

 selves in as much quief ness 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, u Doubtless God could have 

 " made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ;" 

 and so, if I might be judge, " God never did make 

 " a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation, than 

 t( angling." 



I'll tell you, scholar ! when I st*t last on this primrose- 

 bank, and looked down these meadows, 1 thought of 

 them as Charles the emperor did of the city of Flo* 

 rence: u That they were too pleasant to be looked on, 

 t( but only on holy-days." As I tljten sat on this very 

 grass, I turned my present Thoughts into verse: 'twas 

 a Wish which 1*11 repeat to you i. 



* The person here mentioned I take4o be Dr. William Butler, an emi- 

 nent physician of our author's time, styled by Fuller in his Worthies, Suf- 

 folk, 67, the ./Esculapius of the age : he invented a medical drink called 

 " Dr. Butler's Ale," which, if not now, was a very few years ago, sold at 

 certain houses in London, that had his head for a sign. One of these was 

 in Ivy-lane, and another in an alley leading from Coleman-street to Ba- 

 siughall-street. He was a great humourist ; a circumstance in his cha- 

 racter, which, joined *o his reputation for skill in his profession, might 

 contribute to render him popular. 



f We have, here, little less than Walton's own word for it, that th 

 following beautiful Stanzas are of^his writing. That he had in his mind *- 



