CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 69 



fore him, and on one hand of him his lines, hooks, and other 

 tackling, lying in a round j and on his other hand are his Angle- 

 rods of several sorts : and by them this is written, " that he died 

 13 Feb. 1 60 1, being aged ninety-five years, forty-four of which 

 he had been Dean of St. Paul's Church ; and that his age had 

 neither impaired his hearing, nor dimmed his eyes, nor weakened 

 his memory, nor made any of the faculties of his mind weak 01 

 useless." 'T is said that Angling and temperance were great 

 causes of these blessings, and I wish the like to all that imitate 

 him and love the memory of so good a man. 



My next and last example shall be that undervaluer of money, 

 the late Provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton ; a man 

 with whom I have often fished and conversed, a man whose 

 foreign employments in the service of this nation, and whose 

 experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness made his company 

 to be esteemed one of the delights of mankind. This man, 

 whose very approbation of Angling were sufficient to convince 

 any modest censurer of it, this man was also a most dear lover, 

 and a frequent practiser, of the art of Angling ; of which he 

 would say, " 'T was an employment for his idle time, which 

 was then not idly spent " : for Angling was, after tedious study, 

 " a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sad- 

 ness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a 

 procurer of contentedness " ; and " that it begat habits of peace 

 and patience in those that professed and practised it." Indeed, 

 my friend, you will find Angling to be like the virtue of humil- 

 ity, which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other bless- 

 ings attending upon it. 



Sir, this was the saying of that learned man, and I do easily 

 believe that peace, and patience, and a calm 'content, did co- 

 habit in the cheerful heart of Sir Henry Wotton, because I know 

 that, when he was beyond seventy years of age, he made this 

 description of a part of the present pleasure that possessed him, 

 as he sat quietly in a summer's evening on a bank a-fishing. It 

 is a description of the Spring, which because it glided as soft 



