84 THE COMPLETE ANGLEK. 



Look yon, scholar, I have another. Come, do as you did 

 before. And now I have a bite at another. Oh me ! he has 

 \broke all : there's half a line and a good hook lost. 



YEN. Ay, and a good trout too. 



x -Pise. Nay, the trout is not lost ; for pray take notice, no 

 man can lose what he never had. 



VEN. Master, I can neither catch with the first nor second 

 angle : I have no fortune. 



Pise. Look you, scholar, T have yet another. And now, 

 having caught three [two] brace of trouts, I will tell you a short 

 tale as we walk towards our breakfast. A scholar, a preacher 

 I should say, that was to preach to procure the approbation of 

 a parish, that he might be their lecturer, had got from his 

 fellow pupil the copy of a sermon that was first preached with 

 great commendation by him that composed it : and though 

 the borrower of it preached it, word for word, as it was at 

 first, yet it was utterly disliked as it was preached by the 

 second to his congregation : which the sermon-borrower 

 complained of to the lender of it : and thus was answered : 

 *' I lent you, indeed, my fiddle, but not my fiddlestick ; for 

 you are to know that every one cannot make music with my 

 words, which are fitted to my own mouth." And so, my 

 scholar, you are to know, that as the ill-pronunciation or ill 

 accenting of words in a sermon spoils it, so the ill carriage of 

 your line, or not fishing even to a foot in a right place, makes 

 you lose your labour : and you are to know, that though you 

 have my fiddle, that is, my very rod and tacklings with which 

 you see I catch fish, yet you have not my fiddlestick, that is, 

 you yet have not skill to know how to carry your hand and 

 line, or how to guide it to a right place : and this must be 

 .taught you : for you are to remember, I told you angling is 

 an art, either by practice or a long observation, or both. But 

 take this for a rule, When you fish for a trout with a worm, 

 let your line have so much, and not more lead than will fit the 

 stream in which you fish ; that is to say, more in a great 

 troublesome stream than in a smaller that is quieter ; as near 

 as may be, so much as will sink the bait to the bottom, and 

 keep it still in motion, and not more. 



.But now let's say grace and fall to breakfast: what say 



you, scholar, to the providence of an old angler ? Does not 

 this meat taste well '? and was not this place well chosen to 

 oat it ? for this sycamore-tree will shade us from the sun's 

 heat. 



