CHAP. I.] THE FIRST DAY. 53 



by them this is written, "that he died 13 Feb. 1601, being 

 aged ninety-five years, forty-four of which he had been Dean of 

 St Paul's Church ; and that his age neither impaired his hearing, 

 nor dimmed his eyes, nor weakened his memory, nor made any 

 of the faculties of his mind weak or useless." * It is said that 

 Angling and temperance were great causes of these blessings ; 

 and I wish the like to all that imitate him, and love the memory 

 of so good a man. 



My next and last example shall be that undervaluer of money, 

 the late Provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton,+ a man 

 with whom I have often fished and conversed, a man whose 

 foreign employments in the service of this nation, and 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 then not 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 pro- 

 fessed and practised it." Indeed, my friend, you will find Ang- 

 ling 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 beyond seventy years of age, he made this descrip- 

 tion 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 



* The inscription under Dean Nowel's picture at Erazenose College, which Walton 

 translated, is 



"ALEXANDER NOWELLUS, Sacra Theologise Professor, 



S. Pauli Decanus, obiit 13 Febr. Anno Dom. 1601. R.R. Eliz. 44. 



An. Decanatus 42. iEtatis suse 95 ; cum neque Oculi 



caligarent, neque Aures obtusiores, neque Memoria 



iniirniior, neque Animi uUse facultates victEe essent. 



Piscator Hominum." 



The portrait has been lately engraved in Churton's Life of Nowel, 8vo, Oxford, i8og, 

 p. 366.— E. 

 t Of whom see an account in the Life of Walton. 



