THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 105 



Devotion will add life unto the letter : 

 And why should not 

 That which authority 

 Prescribes, esteemed be 

 Advantage got ? 

 If th' prayer be good, the commoner the better: 

 Prayer in the Church's words, as well 

 As sense, of all prayers bears the bell. 



Ch. Harvie.* 



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 choose 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 sleep, 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 Melibceus did under their broad beech-tree. No 

 life, my honest Scholar, no life so happy and so pleasant, as the 

 life of a well-governed angler ; for when the lawyer is swallowed 

 up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving 

 plots, then we sit on cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and pos- 

 sess ourselves in as much quietness 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. Botelerf said of straw- 



* Anthony Wood says that The Synagogue, a collection of poems sup- 

 pletory to The Temple, of Herbert, was written by Charles Harvie ; which 

 is confirmed by the fact that this poem is found in the Synagogue. In 

 the Athen. Oxon., vol. i., 2G7, there is a Charles Harvie, M.A., Vicar of 

 Clifton, Warwickshire, born in 1597, who was alive in 1G63. The second 

 of the Commendatory Verses, prefixed to the Complete Angler, have the 

 same signature. The verses in the text were written about the time when 

 the Church Liturgy was abolished by act of parliament. — Hawkins and 

 JVicholas. 



t The person here named I take to be Dr. William Butler, an eminent 

 physician of Walton's time, styled by Fuller, in his Worthies, Suffolk, S7, 

 " the Esculapius of his 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, which had his head for a sign. One of these was in 

 Ivy lane, and another in an alley from Coleman street to Basinghall street. 



G* 



