THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 85 



Venator. A match, good master, let 's go to that house ; for 

 the linen looks white, and smells of lavender, and I long to lie 

 in a pair of sheets that smell so. Let 's be going, good master, 

 for I am hungry again with fishing. 



Piscator. Nay, stay a little, good scholar ; I caught my last 

 Trout with a Worm ; now I will put on a Minnow, and try a 

 quarter of an hour about yonder trees for another ; and so walk 

 towards pur lodging. Look you, scholar, thereabout we shall 

 have a bite presently, or not at all. Have with you, sir : o' my 

 word I have hold of him. Oh ! it is a great logger-headed 

 Chub ; come, hang him upon that willow twig and let 's be going. 

 But turn out of the way a little, good scholar, towards yonder 

 high honeysuckle hedge ; there we '11 sit and sing, whilst this 

 shower falls so gently upon the teeming earth, and gives yet a 

 sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant 

 meadows. 



Look ! under that broad beech tree I sat down, when I was 

 last this way a-fishing ; and the birds in the adjoining grove 

 seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead 

 voice seemed to live in a hollow tree near to the brow of that 

 primrose hill. There I sat viewing the silver streams glide 

 silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea ; yet some- 

 times opposed by rugged roots and pebble stones, which broke 

 their waves, and turned them into foam. And sometimes I 

 beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs ; some leaping 

 securely in the- cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in 

 the cheerful sun ; and saw others craving comfort from the 

 swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and 

 other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content, that I 

 thought, as the poet hath happily expressed it, 



I was for that time lifted above earth ; 

 And possess'd joys not promised in my birth. 



As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second 

 pleasure entertained me, 'twas a handsome milkmaid, that had 

 not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind 

 with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many 

 men too often do ; but she cast away all care, and sung like a 

 nightingale ; her voice was good, and the ditty fitted for it ; it 

 was that smooth song which was made by Kit Mario w,* now at 



* Christopher Marlow, a poet of no small eminence. He was sometime 

 a student at Cambridge, and, after that, an actor on and writer for the 

 stage. There are extant of his writings, five tragedies and a poem that 

 bears his name, entitled Hero and Leander, which, he not living to com- 

 plete it, was finished by Chapman. The song here mentioned is printed, 

 with his name to it, in a Collection entitled, England's Helicon, 4to. 1600, 

 as is also the Answer, here said to be written by Sir Walter Raleigh, but 

 there subscribed " Ignoto." Of Marlow it is said, that he was the author 



