CHAP. xix. THE FIFTH DAY. 165 



6. Tyne, famous for Newcastle, and her inexhaustible coal-pits. 

 These, and the rest of principal note, are thus comprehended in 

 one of Mr. Drayton's sonnets. 



" Our floods' queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd; 



And stately Severn for her shore is praised ; 



The crystal Trent, for fords and fish renown'd ; 



And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is raised. 



Carlegion Chester vaunts her holy Dee; 



York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ; 

 The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be; 



And Kent will say, her Medway doth excel. 



Cotswold commends her Isis to the Thame ; 



Our northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood ; 

 Our western parts extol their Willy's fame; 



And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood." 



These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my 

 old deceased friend, Michael Drayton ; and because you say 

 you love such discourses as these, of rivers and fish and fishing, 

 I love you the better, and love the more to impart them to you ; 

 nevertheless, scholar, if I should begin but to name the several 

 sorts of strange fish that are usually taken in many of those 

 rivers that run into the sea, I might beget wonder in you, or 

 unbelief, or both; and yet I will venture to tell you a real truth 

 concerning one lately dissected by Dr. Wharton, a man of great 

 learning and exrjerience, and of equal freedom to communicate 

 it ; one_that loves mejand my art ; one to whom I have been 

 beholden for many of the choicest^ observations that J-JTave 

 imparted lo^you. This gojuljnan, that dares to do anything 

 rather than tell an untruth, did, I say, tell me he had lately 

 dbsectecTonelitrange fi^H^aiT6rrienthus described it to me : 



" The fish was almost a yard broad, and twice that length ; 

 his mouth wide enough to receive, or take into it, the head of a 

 man ; his stomach seven or eight inches broad. He is of a slow 

 motion, and usually lies or lurks close in the mud, and has a 

 movable string on his head, about a span or near unto a quarter 



