THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 65 



angler, made that good, plain, unperplexed catechism which is 

 printed with our good old Service- Book, I say, this good man 

 was a dear lover and constant practiser of angling, as any age 

 can produce : and his custom was to spend, besides his fixed 

 hours of prayer, (those hours which, by command of the church, 

 were enjoined the clergy, and voluntarily dedicated to devotion 

 by many primitive Christians,) I say, besides those hours, 

 this good man was observed to spend a tenth part of his time in 

 angling ; and also (for I have conversed with those which have 

 conversed with him) to bestow a tenth part 'of his revenue, and 

 usually all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to 

 those rivers in which it was caught ; saying often, " that charity 

 gave life to religion : " and, at his return to his house, would 

 praise God he had spent that day free from worldly trouble, 

 both harmlessly, and in a recreation that became a churchman. 

 And this good man was well content, if not desirous, that 

 posterity should know he was an angler, as may appear by his 

 picture, now to be seen, and carefully kept, in Brazen- Nose 

 College, to which he was a liberal benefactor. In which picture 

 he is drawn, leaning on a desk, with his Bible before him : and 

 on one hand of him his lines, hooks, and other tackling, lying 

 in a round ; and, on his other hand, are his angle-rods of several 

 sorts,* and by them this is written, " that he died 13th February 

 1601, 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 or 

 useless." It 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 



* Fuller, in his Worthies, (Lancashire, p. 115.) has thought it worth 

 recording of this pious and learned divine, and that in language so very 

 quaint, as to be but just intelligible, that he was accustomed to fish in the 

 Thames ; and having one day left his bottle of ale in the grass, on the bank 

 of the river, he found it some days after, no bottle, but a gun, such the 

 sound at the opening thereof. And hence, with what degree of sagacity 

 let the reader determine, he seems to derive the original of bottled ale in 

 England. Could he have shewn that the botle was of leather, it is odds 

 but he had attributed to him the invention of that noble vehicle, and 

 made 



his soul in heaven to dwell, 



For first devising the leatharn bottel ; 



as, in a fit of maudlin devotion, sines the author of a humorous and well- 

 known old ballad. 



