CHAP. I.] THE FIRST DAT. 85 



a man with whom I have often fished and conversed ; a man 

 whose foreign employments in the service of this nation 

 a^d whose experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness 

 made his company to be esteemed one of the delights of 

 mankind. This man, whose very approbation of angling 

 were sufficient to convince any modest censurer of it ; this 

 man was, also, a most dear lover, and a frequent practiser 

 of the art of angling; of which he would say, "It was an 

 employment for his idle time, which was not then idly 

 spent ; for angling was, after tedious study, " a rest to his 

 mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer 

 of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of 

 contentedness;" and "that it begat habits of peace and 

 patience in those that professed and practised it." Indeed, 

 my friend, you will find angling to be like the virtue of 

 humility ; which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of 

 other blessings attending upon it. Sir, this was the saying 

 of that learned man. 



And I do easily believe, that peace and patience, and 

 a calm content did cohabit in the cheerful heart of Sir 

 Henry Wotton ; because I know that, when he was be- 

 yond seventy years of age, he made this description of a 

 part of the present pleasure that possessed him, as he sat 

 quietly, in a summer's evening, on a bank a-fishing. It 



is a description of the spring ; which, because it glided 

 as soft and sweetly from his pen, as that river does, at 



