332 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART I. 



fore, be thankful for health ; and, a competence ; and, 

 above all, for a quiet conscience. 



Let me tell you, scholar ! that Diogenes walked, on a 

 day, with his friend, to see a country* fair : where, he 

 saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, 

 and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gim- 

 cracks ; and having observed them, and all the other 

 finnimbruns* that make a compleat country-fair ho 

 said to his friend : {< Lord how many things are there 

 " in this world of which Diogenes hath no need !" And 

 truly it is so, or might be so, with very many who vex 

 and toil themselves to get what they have no need of. 

 Can any man charge God, that he hath not given him 

 enough to make his life happy? No, doubtless; for 

 nature is content with a little. And yet you shall 

 Lardly meet with a man, that complains not of some 

 want : though he, indeed, wants nothing but his will 

 it may be, nothing but his will of his poor neigh- 

 bour, for not worshipping, or not flattering him : 

 And, thus, when we might be happy anil quiet, we 

 create trouble to ourselves. I have heard of a man 

 that was angry with himself because he was no taller ; 

 and of a woman that broke her looking-glass because it 

 would not shew her face to be as young and hand- 

 some as her next neighbour's was. And I knew another 

 to whom God had given health and plenty : but a 

 wife that nature had made peevish, and her husband's 

 riches had made purse r proud ; and, must because she 

 was rich, and for no other virtue sit in the highest 

 pew in the church : which being denied her, she en- 

 gaged her husband into a contention for it, and at last 

 into a law-suit, with a dogged neighbour who was 

 as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse- 

 proud as the other : And this law-suit begot higher op- 

 positions, and actionable words, and more vexations and 

 law-suits ; for you must remember that both were rich, 

 and must therefore have their will: Well! this wilful,, 

 purse-proud law-suit, lasted during the life of the first 

 husband; after which, his wife vext and chid, and 



* I take this to be a word of the author's own invention ; for I cannot 

 find it in any dictionary. 



