HOW TO FISH FOR THE TROUT 



VEN. I thank you, good Master, for this piece of merriment, 

 and this song, which was well humoured by the maker, and well 

 remembered by you. 



Pise. But I pray forget not the catch which you promised to 

 make against night; for our countryman, honest Coridon, will 

 expect your catch and my song, which I must be forced to patch 

 up, for it is so long since I learned it, that I have forgot a part of 

 it. But come, now it hath done raining, let's stretch our legs 

 a little in a gentle walk to the river, and try what interest our 

 Angles will pay us for lending them so long to be used by the 

 Trouts ; lent them indeed, like usurers, for our profit and their 

 destruction. 



VEN. Oh me! look you Master, a fish a fish! Oh, alas 

 Master, I have lost her! 



Pise. Ay marry, Sir, that was a good fish indeed : if I had had 

 the luck to have taken up that rod, then 'tis twenty to one, he 

 should not have broke my line by running to the rod's end as you 

 suffered him. I would have held him within the bent of my rod, 

 unless he had been fellow to the great Trout that is near an ell 

 long, which was of such a length and depth, that he had his 

 picture drawn, and now is to be seen at mine Host Rickabie's, at 

 the George in Ware ; and it may be, by giving that very great 

 Trout the rod, that is, by casting it to him into the water, I might 

 have caught him at the long run ; for so I use always to do when 

 I meet with an overgrown fish, and you will learn to do so too 

 hereafter : for I tell you, Scholar, fishing is an art, or at least, it 

 is an art to catch fish. 



VEN. But Master, I have heard that the great Trout you 

 speak of is a Salmon. 



Pise. Trust me, Scholar, I know not what to say to it. 

 There are many country people that believe Hares change sexes 

 every year : And there be very many learned men think so too, 

 for in their dissecting them they find many reasons to incline 

 them to that belief. And to make the wonder seem yet less, that 

 Hares change sexes, note, that Doctor Mer. Casaubon affirms in 

 his book of credible and incredible things, that Caspar Peucerus, 

 a learned Physician, tells us of a people that once a year 

 turn wolves, partly in shape, and partly in conditions. And so 

 whether this were a Salmon when he came into the fresh water, 



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