63 THE COMPLETE ANGLER, 



Ven. a match, good Master : let's go to tliat house, for the 

 linen looks white, and smells of lavender, and I long to lie in a 

 pair of sheets that smell so : let's be going, good Master, for I am 

 hungry again with fishing. 



Pisc. Nay, stay a little, good Scholar, I caught my last trout 

 with a worm, now I will put on a minnow and try a quarter of 

 an hour about yonder trees for another, and so walk towards our 

 lodging. Look you. Scholar, thereabout we shall have a bite 

 presently, or not at all. Have with you, Sir ! o' my word I have 

 hold of him. Oh it is a great logger-headed chub ; come, hang 

 him upon that willow twig, and let's be going. But turn out of 

 the way a little, good Scholar, towards yonder high honeysuckle 

 hedge ; there we'll sit and sing whilst this shower falls so gently 

 upon the teeming earth, and gives yet a sweeter smell to the 

 lovely flowers that adorn these verdant meadows. 



Look, under that broad beech-tree, I sat down when I was last 

 this way a fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed 

 to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice 

 seemed to live in a hollow tree, near to the brow of that primrose- 

 hill : there I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently towards 

 their centre, the tempestuous sea ; yet sometimes opposed by 

 rugged roots and pebble-stones, which broke their waves, and 

 turned them into foam : and sometimes I beguiled time by 

 viewing the harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the cool 

 shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful sun ; and 

 saw others c ravins comfort from the swollen udders of their 

 bleatinor dams.* As I thus sat, these and other sights had so 

 fully possessed my soul with content, that I thought, as the poet 

 has happily expressed it, 



I was for that time lifted above earth. 



And possessed Joys not promised in my birth. 



As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second 

 pleasure entertained me ; it was a handsome milk-maid that had 

 not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind 



* How perfectly beautiful is this description ! I cannot tell from whom 

 Walton quotes this couplet. — Am. Ed. 



