350 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



Let me tell you, scholar, that Diogenes walked on a day, 

 with his friend, to see a country fair ; where he saw ribbons 

 and looking-glasses, and nut-crackers, and fiddles, and 

 hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks ; and, having ob- 

 served them, and all the other finnimbruns that make a 

 complete country fair, he said to his friend, "Lord, how 

 many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath 

 no need ! " And truly it is so, or might be so, with very 

 many who vex and toil themselves to get what they have 

 no need of. Can any man charge God that He hath not 

 given him enough to make his life happy ? No, doubtless ; 

 for nature is content with a little. And yet you shall hardly 

 meet with a man that complains not of some want ; though 

 he, indeed, wants nothing but his will ; it may be, nothing 

 but his will of his poor neighbour, for not worshipping or 

 not flattering him : and thus, when we might be happy and 

 quiet, we create trouble to ourselves. I have heard of a 

 man that was angry with himself because he was no taller ; 

 and of a woman that broke her looking-glass because it 

 would not shew her face to be as young and handsome as 

 her next neighbour's was. And I knew another to whom 

 God had given health and plenty, but a wife that nature 

 had made peevish, and her husband's riches had made 

 purse-proud ; and must, because she was rich, and for no 

 other virtue, sit in the highest pew in the church ; which 

 being denied her, she engaged her husband into a contention 

 for it, and at last into a law-suit with a dogged neighbour 

 who was as rich as he, and had a wife as peevish and purse- 

 proud as the other ; and this law-suit begot higher opposi- 

 tions, and actionable words, and more vexations and law- 

 suits ; for you must remember that both were rich, and 





