5 8o LITERATURE OF SEA AND RIVER FISHING 



The riuers making way through nature's chaine, 

 With headlong course into the sea profounde : 

 The surging sea beneath the valleys low, 

 The valleys sweet, and lakes that louely flowe. 



" The lofty woods, the forrests wide and long, 

 Adorn'd with leaues and branches fresh and greene, 

 In whose coole bow'rs the birds with chaunting song, 

 Doe welcome with thin quire the Summer's Queene, 

 The meadowes faire where Flora's guifts among, 

 Are intermixt the verdant grasse betweene, 

 The siluer skaled fish that softlie swimme 

 Within the brookes and Cristall watry brimme." 



w All these, and many more of his creation, 

 That made the heauens, the Angler oft doth see, 

 And takes therein no little delectation, 

 To think how strange and wonderfull they be* 

 Framing thereof an inward contemplation, 

 To set his thoughts from other fancies free, 

 And whiles he lookes on these with joyfull eye, 

 His mind is rapt aboue the starry skye." 



reminding us of Walton's lines, when he sings of the 

 angler as one 



" Who with his angle and his books 



Can think the longest day well spent ; 

 And praises God when back he looks, 

 And finds that all was innocent." 



and of what was said of Walton, that he " made angling a 

 medium for inculcating the most fervent piety and the 

 purest morality." 



Towards the close of the first book, after dwelling on the 

 antiquity of angling, in which the rude implements of 

 primitive man are described the rod a bough torn from a 

 tree, and hooks of hardwood thorns he thus describes the 

 progress of the art : 



" In this rude sorte began this simple Art, 

 And so remained in that first age of old, 

 When Saturne did Amalthects home impart 

 Vnto the world, that then was all of gold ; 



