THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PART II* 



Pise. Come, Sir, fall to then ; you see my little supper 

 is always ready when I come home, and I'll make no 

 stranger of you. 



Viat. That your meal is so soon ready, is a sign your 

 servants know your certain hours, Sir ; I confess I did not 

 expect it so soon : but now 'tis here, you shall see I will 

 make myself no stranger. 



Pise. Much good do your heart : and I thank you for 

 that friendly word : and now, Sir, my service to you in a 

 cup of More-Land's ale ; for you are now in the More- 

 Lands, but within a spit and a stride of the Peak. Fill 

 my friend his glass. 



Viat. Believe me you have good ale in the More-Lands, 

 far better than that at Ashborn. 



Pise. That it may soon be ! for Ashborn has, (which is 

 a kind of riddle,) always in it, the best malt and the worst 

 ale in England. Come, take away, and bring us some 

 pipes, and a bottle of ale : and go to your own suppers. 

 Are you for this diet, Sir? 



Viat. Yes, Sir, I am for one pipe of tobacco ; and I 

 perceive yours is very good by the smell. 



Pise. The best I can get in London, I assure you. 1 But 



(1) It should seem bj what Walton says. Chap. X. that he was a smoker: 

 aod the reader tees, by the passage in the text, that Piicator, by whom we are 

 to understand Cotton himself, is so curious as to have his tobacco from London. 



Smoking, or as the phrase was, taking tobacco, was, in Queen Elizabeth's and 

 her successor's time, esteemed the greatest of all foppery. Ben Jonson, who 

 mortally hated it, has numberless sarcasms against smoking and smokers ; all 

 which are nothing , compared to those contained in that work of our King James 

 the First, A Counter-blast to Tobacco. Nor was the ordinary conversation of 

 this monarch less fraught with reasons aud invectives against the use of that 

 weed, as will appear from the following saying of his, extracted from A Collec- 

 tion of Witty Apothegms, delivered by kirn and othert, at several times, and 

 on tundry occasion*, published in I2mo. 1071. 



"That tobacco wot the lively image and pattern of hell; for that it had, by 

 allusion, in it all the parts and vices of the world whereby hell may be gained ; 

 to wit : Pint. It wot a moke; so are the vanities of this world. Secondly, It 

 deUghteth them who take it; so do the pleasures of the world delight the men 

 of the world. Thirdly. It maketh men drunken, and light in the head; so 

 do the vanities of the world : men are drunken therewith. Fourthly, He that 

 taketh tobacco taith he cannot leave it, it doth bewitch him: even so the 



