158 THE COMPLETE ATTGLEE. [PAKT I. 



and you shall choose which shall be yours ; and it is an even 

 lay, one of them catches. 



And, let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a dead 

 rod, and laying night-hooks ; are like putting money to use ; 

 for they both work for the owners when they do nothing 

 but sleep. or eat, or rejoice, as you know we have done 

 this last hour, and sat as quietly and as free from cares 

 under this sycamore, as Virgil's Tityrus and his Meliboeus 

 did under their broad beech-tree. No life, my honest 

 scholar ! no life so happy and so pleasant, as the life of a 

 well-governed angler ; for when the lawyer is swallowed up 

 with business, and the statesman is preventing, or con- 

 triving, plots, then, we sit on cowslip-banks, hear the 

 birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as 

 these silent silver streams, which we now see glide so 

 quietly by us. Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of 

 angling as Dr. Boteler 1 said, of strawberries, "Doubtless 

 God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God 

 never did ;" and so, if I might be judge, " God never 

 did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation, than 

 angling." 



I'll tell you, scholar ! when I sat last on this primrose- 

 bank, and looked down these meadows, I thought of them 

 as Charles the emperor did of the city of Florence : " That 

 they were too pleasant to be looked on, but only on holy- 

 days." As I then sat on this very grass, I turned my 

 present thoughts into verse : 'twas a wish, which I'll repeat 

 to you. 



1 The person here mentioned I take to be Dr. William Butler, an 

 eminent physician of our author's time, styled by Fuller in his "Worthies" 

 (Suffolk, p. 67), the JEsculapius of the age. He invented a medical drink 

 called ' ' Dr. Butler's Ale," which was a few years ago sold at certain houses 

 in London, that had his head for a sign. One of these was in Ivy Lane, and 

 another in an alley leading from Coleman-street to Basinghall-street. He 

 was a great humourist, a circumstance in his character which, joined 

 to his reputation for skill in his profession, might contribute to render 

 him popular. H. 



