EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 119 



others to delight in an exercise so much laudable." .... 

 " ( An angler must be full of love, both to his pleasure and 

 to his neighbour ; to his pleasure, which otherwise will be 

 irksome and tedious ; and to his neighbour, that he never 

 give offence in any particular, nor be guilty of any general 

 destruction." . . . . " He should not be unskilful in 

 musick, that whensoever either melancholy, heaviness of 

 his thoughts, or the perturbations of his own fancies, 

 stirreth up sadness in him, he may remove the same with 

 some godly hymn or anthem, of which David gives us 

 ample examples." 



Mr. PHINEAS FLETCHER wrote Piscatory Eclogues 

 (1621). He was Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. 

 They have been often reprinted. The following two speci- 

 mens are extracted from them : 



" But, ah ! let me under some Kentish hill, 

 Near rolling Medway, 'mong my fellow-peers, 

 With fearless merry-make and piping, still 

 For ever pass my few and slow-paced years. 

 The beach shall yield a safe, cool canopy, 

 While down I sit and sing to th' echoing wood ; 

 Ah ! singing might I live and singing die ! 

 So by fair Thames or Medway's silver flood, 

 The dying swan, .when years his temples pierce, 

 In music's strains breathes out his life and verse, 

 And chaunting own his dirge, tides on his watery hearse." 



The following lines are descriptive of the innocent 

 pleasures which attend an angler's country life : 



