284 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART 



His certain life, that never can deceive him; 



Is full of thousand sweets, and rich content ; 

 The smooth'd-leav'd beeches in the field receive him, 



With coolest shade, till noon-tide's heat be spent. 



The dying swan, when years her temples' pierce, 



In musick-strains, breathes out her life and verse; 



And, ehaunting her own dirge, tides on her watry hearse.' 



Purple Island. Canto I. 



The innocence of angling ; the delightful scenes with which it is con- 

 versant; and its associated pleasures of ease, retirement, and meditation; 

 have been a motive to the introduction of a new species of eclogue, 

 where fishers are actors, as shepherds are in the pastoral. Mr. Addison, 

 it is true, has censured Sannazarius for such an attempt : but it is to be 

 remembered, that his are sea-eclogues; the very idea of which is, surely, 

 inconsistent with the calmness and tranquillity of the pastoral life, not 

 to say, that oysters and cray-fish are no very elegant or persuasive bribes 

 to the favour of a mistress. But the ancient writers of Pastoral Bion, 

 TheocritUs, Moschus, and others included, under that species, the man- 

 ners of herdsmen, vine-dressers, and others ; and why those of fishers 

 are to be excluded, the legislators of Pastoral would do well to in- 

 form us. 



Of those who have attempted this kind of poetry, the above-men- 

 tioned Mr. Fletcher is one ; and in the same volume with the Purple 

 Island are several poems, which he calls Piscatory Eclogues, from whence 

 the^following passage is extracted. 



Ah f would thou knew'st how much it better were 



To bide among the simple fisher-swains. 

 No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here; 

 Nor is our simple pleasure mix'd with pains. 

 Our sports begin with the beginning year: 

 In calms to pull the leaping fish to land ; 

 In roughs to sing, and dance along the golden sand, 



1 have a pipe, which once thou lovedst well; 

 (Was never pipe that gave a better sound;) 

 Which, oft, to hear, fair Thetis from her cell 



Thetis, the queen of seas, attended round 

 With hundred nymphs, and many pow'rs that dwell 

 In th' ocean "s rocky walls came up to hear ; 

 And gave me gifts, which scill for thee lie hoarded here. 



Here, with sweet bays, the lovely myrtles grow, 



Where th' ocean's fair-cheek'd maidens oft repair ; 

 Here, to my pipe they dancen on a row. 



No other swains may come to note they're fair: 

 Yet my Amyntas, there, with me shall go. 

 Proteus himself pipes to his flocks hereby, 

 Whom thou shalt kear y ne'er seen by any jealous eye, 



Eclogm I- 



