CHAP. XVI. THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 191 



of an old catch, 1 and added more to it, fitting them to be 

 sung by us anglers. Come, Master, you can sing well : 

 you must sing a part of it, as it is in this paper. 



Here, with sweet bays, the lovely myrtles grow, 



Where th' ocean's fair-cheek'd maidens oft repair; 

 Here to my pipe they danced on a row, 



No other swain may come to note they're fair: 

 Yet my Ainyntas there with me shall go. 

 Proteus himself pipes to his flocks hereby, 

 Whom thou shalt hear, ne'er seen by any jealous eye. Eclogue I. 



And besides Mr. Phineas Fletcher, a gentleman now living [1784,] the Rev. 

 Mr. Moses Browne has obliged the world with Piscatory Eclogues, which I would 

 recommend to all lovers of poetry and angling ; and am much mistaken if the 

 fifth of them, .entitled Rtnnock's Despair, is not by far the best imitation of 

 Milton's Lycidas that has ever yet appeared. 



(1) The song here sung can in no sense of the word be termed a Catch. It 

 was probably set to music at the request of Walton, and is to be found in a book, 

 entitled. Select Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, and three Voyces; to the 

 Theorbo-lute and Basse Viol. By John Wilson and Charles Coleman, doctors 

 of music, Henry Lawes and others, fol. London, l65y. It occurs in the first 

 edition of Walton's book, published in 1653. 



The reader is not to wonder at this motion of Venator's, nor that Piscator 

 so readily accepts it. At the time when Walton wrote, and long before, music 

 was so generally well understood, that a man who had any voice or ear was 

 always supposed to be able to sing his part in a madrigal or song, at sight. 

 Peacham requires of his gentlemau, only to be able " to sing his part sure, and 

 at the first sight; and withal, to play the same on the viol or lute." Compl. 

 Gent. 100. And Philomathes, in Morlcy's excellent Introduction to Practical 

 Music, in fol. Land. 1597, thus complains; [at the banquet of master Sophobu- 

 lus] " Supper being ended, and music-books, according to custom, being brought 

 to table, the mistress of the house presented me with a part, earnestly requesting 

 me losing. But when, after many excuses. I protested unfeignedly that I could 

 not, every one began to wonder; yea, some whispered toothers, demanding how 

 I was'brought up. So that, upon shame of mine ignorance, I go nowe to seek 

 out mine olde friend master Gnorimus, to make myself his scholar." 



Another circumstance, which shews how generally music was formerly known 

 and practised in England, occurred to me upon the sight of an old Book of 

 Enigmas; to every one of which the author has prefixed a wooden cut of the 

 subject of the enigma. The solution to one of these is, A barber: and the cut 

 represents a barber's shop, in which there is one person sitting in a chair, under 

 the barber's hands ; while another, who is waiting for his turn, is playing on 

 the lute ; and on the side of the shop hangs another instrument of the lute or 

 cittern kind. The inference I draw from hence is, that, formerly, a lute was 

 considered as a necessary part of the furniture of a barber's shop, aud answered 

 the end of a newspaper, the now common amusement of waiting customers ; 

 which it would uever have done, if music had not, as is above observed, been 

 generally known and practised. 



In an old comedy of Dekker's, entitled, " The Second Part of the Honest 

 Whore," printed in Dodsley's Collection, vol. iii. edit. 1780, Matheo, speaking 

 of his wife, terms her, " a barber's citterns for every serving-man to play 

 upon." 



This instrument grew into disuse about the beginning of this century. Dr. 

 King, taking occasion to mention the barbers of his time, says, " that turning 



