The Compleat ^Angler 



To tune their hearts unto his tongue^ and say. 

 Amen ; not doubt they were betrayed 

 To blaspheme^ when they meant to have pray'd. 



Devotion will add life unto the letter: 



And why should not 

 That which authority 

 Prescribes^ esteemed be 



Advantage got? 



If the 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 possess 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. Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubtless God could 

 have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ; " and so (if 

 I might be judge) " God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent 

 recreation than angling." 



I'll tell you, scholar, when I sat last on this primrose bank, and 

 looked down these meadows, I thought of them, as Charles the 

 emperor did of the city of Florence, " That they were too pleasant 



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