193 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



not leisure to take the sweet content that I, who pretended no title 

 to them, took in his fields : for I could there sit quietly, and 

 looking on the water, see some fishes sport themselves in the sil- 

 ver streams, others leaping at flies of several shapes and colors ; 

 looking on the hills, I could behold them spotted with woods and 

 groves ; looking down the meadows, could see here a boy ga- 

 thering lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping culver- 

 keyes and cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this present 

 month of May : these and many other field flowers, so perfumed 

 the air, that I thought that very meadow like that field in Sicily, 

 of which Diodorus* speaks, where the perfumes arising from the 

 place make all dogs that hunt in it to fall off, and to lose their 

 hottest scent. I say, as I thus sat joying in my own happy con- 

 dition, and pitying this poor rich man, that owned this and many 

 other pleasant groves and meadows about me, I did thankfully 

 remember what my Saviour said, that the " meek possess the 

 earth ;" or rather, they enjoy what the other possess and enjoy 

 not ; for anglers, and meek quiet-spirited men, are free from 

 those high, those restless thoughts, which corrode the sweets of 

 life ; and they, and they only, can say, as the poet has happily 

 expressed it — 



Hail blest estate of lowliness f 



Happy enjoyments of such minds, 



* Walton means Diodorus Siculus, so called from his being a native of 

 Assyrium in Sicily. He lived in the Augustan age, and after extensive 

 travels in Europe, Asia, and Africa, he published at Rome his Bibliotheca 

 Historica in forty books. He wrote in Greek, and comprehended in his 

 history the time from before the Trojan war to the end of Cajsar's Gal- 

 lic wars. Of his Bibliotheca, the first five, the eleventh to the twen- 

 tieth, and fragments of the rest, are extant. It was translated in Wal- 

 ton's time, as The History of the World, by Diodorus Siculus; done 

 into English by Air. {Henry) Cogan. Lond., 10.53, fol. 



The passage referred to occurs in the third chapter of the fifth book 

 (p. 255, vol. iii.., ed. Heyne, Argent. 1793), where Diodorus, copying from 

 Aristotle {Admirand.) a description of the meadows near Enna (the scene 

 of the Rape of Proserpine), relates what is quoted in the text. The 

 modern Castro Giovanni occupies the site, but the country round shows 

 little trace of its ancient fertility, which led her worshippers to consider 

 it the principal seat of Ceres. — dm. Ed. 



