PISHING AS A SPOUT. 75 



bed beckoning his eldest son to him, and whispering low 

 in his ear, " Jack, always look for a hare on an oat arish 

 directly after harvest." Here was the "ruling passion 

 strong in death ;" and for some time I looked on an old 

 courser as more wedded to his sport than any other man; 

 but I am now sure he cannot be compared with the old 

 angler. The shooting-man and hunting-man come at last 

 to contemplate their "last" season, and deliberately 

 withdraw from their sport ; but hardly ever so the angler ; 

 and herein consists a special advantage in angling, for in 

 some form or other it may be pursued as an amusement 

 to the very end of life. If Cicero were writing now Be 

 Senectute, he would certainly mention angling as among 

 the pleasures and privileges of old age. 



I have already quoted in my second Note a passage from 

 Dame Juliana Berners, in which the worthy prioress up- 

 holds fishing as the best of sports. I cannot resist quoting 

 one from old Burton, who, in his, Anatomy of Melancholy , I 

 have a shrewd idea, is a much greater plagiarist than is 

 generally supposed. He says (evidently with the passage 

 from the Book of St. Alban^s in his mind, and perhaps 

 eye),— 



" ' Pishing is a kinde of hunting by water, be it with nets, weeles, 

 baits, angling, or otherwise, and yields all out as much pleasure to 

 some men, as dogs, or hawks, when they draw their fish upon the 

 bank,' saith Nic. Henselius, SilesiograpMce, cap. 3, speaking of that 

 extraordinary delight his countrymen took in fishing and making of 

 pooles. James Dubravius, that Moravian, in his book De Pise, 

 telleth, how travelling by the highway-side in Silesia, he found a 

 nobleman booted up to the groins, wading himself, pulling the nets, 

 and labouring as much as any fisherman of them all : and when some 

 belike objected to him the baseness of his office, he excused himself, 

 that if other men might hunt hares, why should not he hunt carpes ? 

 Many gentlemen in like sort, with us, will wade up to the armholes, 



