ENGLISH POETS ON FISHING. 653 



seventeen pounds weight, Mr. Clarke put these words into 

 the dying fish's mouth : 



" Not artificial flies my fancy took, 

 Nature's own magic lured me to your hook ; 

 Play me no more no thought to 'scape have I- 

 But land me, land me, at your feet to die." 



Sir Harris Nicolas, in his first edition of The Complete 

 Angler (1836), mentions a poem of Waller's "On a Lady 

 fishing with an Angle," commencing 



" See where the fair Clorinda sits." 



The MS., he says, was in the library of the Royal Society, 

 but he was unable to obtain a sight of it. The writer of 

 these notes regrets that he is unable to say whether such a 

 MS. really exists. 



Is Bunyan, who wrote in the latter half of the seven- 

 teenth century, among the piscatory poets ? At all events, 

 in his Apology for his Book he bids us observe the angler 



" You see the ways the Fisherman doth take 

 To catch the fish : what engines doth he make ! 

 Behold ! how he engageth all his wits : 

 Also his snares, lines, angles, hooks and nets ; 

 Yet fish there be, that neither hook nor line, 

 Nor snare, nor net, nor engine can make thine ; 

 They must be grop'd for, and be tickled too 

 Or they will not be catch'd, whate'er you do." 



The Innocent Epicure, already alluded to in connection 

 with the authors of the Universal Angler (5th edition of 

 Complete A ngler\ was an anonymous poem on " The Art of 

 Angling," published in 1697. "Antithetical periods and 

 smooth classicisms " are its features. Thus Esox lucius is 

 introduced 



