THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, 179 



However, I have one reserve at last, 

 To save my credit, and delight her taste : 

 Til to the miller step, for a small sum 

 He'll cast his net, and send me loaded home. 

 For he that disapoints a longing wife, 

 Adds thorns and briars to a marry 'd life. 

 For wives as well as concubines we find, 

 No longer than they're humour' d will be kind." 



Moses Browne followed, in about three quarters of a 

 century, the footsteps of Walton, of whose work he was 

 a passionate admirer and commentator, and, in several 

 respects, an imitator. Browne wrote his Eclogues, in 

 the summer of 1727, and they were well received, and 

 ran through several editions in the course of a few years. 

 The Eclogues are preceded by an ably written essay in 

 defence of Piscatory Eclogue , in which the writer endea- 

 vours to prove, that angling conies fairly within the range 

 of pastoral poetry. He sees no reason why it should be 

 generally restricted to shepherds, husbandmen, planters, or 

 vine dressers ; for says he, " It might be imagined that 

 angling, an exercise so gentle, and such a friend to con- 

 templation, should need no argument to recommend it to 

 the regard and favourable sentiments of the wise and 

 thinking man ; it seems so free from the hazard and 

 fatigues of other recreations, and those ill habits arid 

 disorders many of them breed in mind and body, that one 

 would think it was the innocent diversion of the infant 

 world, and the readiest, most naturally suggested subject 

 for pastoral poetry to be employed in it. It has charms 



