6 ANGLING. 



much of plenty ; and though your satisfaction be 

 not as ready as your wishes, yet you must hope 

 still, that with perseverance you shall reap the ful- 

 ness of your harvest with contentment. Then he 

 must be full of love both to his pleasure and 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 : then he must be 

 exceeding patient, and neither vex nor excruciate 

 himself with losses or mischances, as in losing the 

 prey when it is almost in the hand, or by breaking 

 his tools by ignorance or negligence ; but with 

 pleased sufferance amend errors, and think mis- 

 chances instructions to better carefulness."' 



In regard to the antiquity of angling, it has been 

 traced by some to the time of Seth, who is asserted 

 to have taught it to his sons ; and so highly have 

 others esteemed the knowledge of the art, as to 

 maintain that its rules and maxims were engraven 

 on those pillars by which an acquaintance with 

 music, the mathematics, and other branches of use- 

 ful knowledge, was preserved by God's appointment 

 from extinction in the days of Noah. It is fre- 

 quently alluded to in the holy Scriptures ; as in 

 Isaiah, xix. 8, " The fishers also shall mourn, and 

 all they that cast angle into the brooks shall lament, 

 and they that spread nets upon the waters shall 

 languish;" so in the prophet Habakkuk, i. 15, 

 u They take up all of them with the angle, they 

 catch them in their net, and gather them in their 

 drag ; therefore they rejoice and are glad." We 



