34 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [part i. 



me and my art of Angling. But, however, I will wade no deeper 

 into these mysterious arguments, but pass to such observations as 

 I can manage with more pleasure, and less fear of running into 

 error. But I must not yet forsake the waters, by whose help we 

 have so many known advantages. 



And first, to pass by the miraculous cures of our known baths, 

 how advantageous is the sea for our daily traffic, without which 

 we could not now subsist. How does it not only furnish us with 

 food and physic for the bodies, but with such observations for the 

 mind as ingenious persons would not want ! 



How ignorant had we been of the beauty of Florence, of the 

 monuments, urns, and rarities that yet remain in and near unto 

 Old and New Rome, so many as it is. said will take up a year's 

 time to view, and afford to each of them but a convenient consider- 

 ation ! And therefore it is not to be wondered at that so learned 

 and devout a father as St Jerome, after his wish to have seen 

 Christ in the flesh, and to have heard St Paul preach, makes his 

 third wish, to have seen Rome in her glory : and^ that glory is 

 not yet all lost, for what pleasure is it to see the monuments of 

 Livy, the choicest of the historians ; of TuUy, the best of orators ; 

 and to see the bay-trees that now grow out of the very tomb of 

 Virgil ! * These, to any that love learning, must be pleasing. 

 But what pleasure is it to a devout Christian to see there the 

 humble house in which St Paul was content to dwell,'- and to view 

 the many rich statues that are made in honour of his memory ! 

 Nay, to see the very place in which St Peter f and he lie buried 



VARIATIONS. 



^ and yet all that beauty is not lost. — ist and sd edit, and that beauty is not yet all 

 lost. — 3^ and ^tk edit. 

 1 to live.— ^ij^ arid zd edit. 



* Walton has here made a mistake. Virgil's tomb is at Naples. 



t The Protestants deny not only that St Peter lies buried in the Vaticanf as the 

 Romish writers assert, but that he ever was at Rome. See the Historia Apastolica of 

 liud. Capellus. The sense of the Protestants on this point is expressed in the following 

 epigram, alluding to the prsenomen of Peter, "Simon," and to the simony practised in 

 that city ; — 



** An Petrus fuerit Romje, sub judice lis est ; 

 Simonen Romee nemo fuisse negat." 



Many that Peter ne'er saw Rome declare. 

 But all must own that Simon hath been there. 



Of which that may be observed which I have heard said of libels, " the more tnie the 

 more provoking ;" and this the author, John Owen, the famous epigrammatist, found to 

 his cost ; for his uncle, a Papist, was so stung by these lines that, in revenge, he dis- 

 inherited him, and doomed him to extreme poverty the remainder of his life. Athen, 

 Oxon. vol. i. 471. The Romanists have also taken their revenge on the book that 

 contains them, by inserting it in their Index Expurgatorius. Ibid. — H. 



