204 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



Pet. Aye, marry, Sir, this is music indeed ; this has cheered 

 my heart, and made me to remember six verses in praise of mu- 

 sic, which I will speak to you instantly. 



Music, miraculous rheVric! that speak' st sense 

 Without a tongue, excelling eloquence ; 

 With what ease might thy errors be excused, 

 Wert thou as truly lov'd as thouWt abus'd 7 

 But though dull souls neglect, and some reprove thee, 

 I cannot hate thee, 'cause the angels love thee.* 



Yes. And the repetition of these last verses of music has 

 called to my memory what Mr. Ed. Waller,t a lover of the 

 angle, says of love and music. 



* These verses were taken, with some small variations, from Select 

 Ayres and Dialogues (already referred to), where they have the signa- 

 ture, W. D. Knight, which I take to signify that they were written by 

 Sir William Davenant.— i?ato^i>i5. 



t Edmund Waller, born March, 1603, inherited from his father an estate 

 of three or four thousand pounds a year. He was educated at Eton and 

 Cambridge. He began his public life as a member of parliament in his 

 ISth year, about which time he published some verses on the escape of 

 Prince Charles at St. Andero, which show the same sweetness of numbers 

 afterwards displayed in the poems of his riper years. He increased his 

 fortunes by a wealthy marriage, and found himself a widower in his 

 25th year. Shortly afterwards he paid his addresses to the Lady Dorothea 

 Svdney, whom he celebrated under the name of Sacharissa; but, on his 

 love being rejected by that lady, who married the Duke of Sunderland, he 

 professed an attachment for Lady Sophia Murray, who is the Amoret of 

 several of his pieces. Being related to Hampden and Cromwell, he became 

 ostensibly a republican ; but, secretly attached to the royal side, he plotted 

 for the restoration of the king. On the conspiracy being detected, he 

 escaped with his life by the forfeit of half his fortune ; and lived for some 

 time in exile at Paris, when he obtained from Cromwell leave to return, 

 and on Cromwell's death he wrote the panegyric which was so severely 

 castigated by Charles Cotton. (See The Sketch of his Life and Writings, 

 prefixed to the second part of The Complete Angler.) On the restoration 

 he addressed some adulatory verses to the king, and, Charles having re- 

 marked, that they were inferior to those written on Cromwell, the poet 

 wittily replied : " Poets, Sire, succeed much better in fiction than truth." 

 He died in 16S7. His poems are ingeniously conceived and elegantly writ- 

 ten. We must take Walton's word for his having been an angler, as no 

 trace of it is to be met with in his writings, though he has a few lines on 

 the Ladies Angling in St. James's Pai-k. Sir Harris Nicholas, in a note on 



