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CHAPTER XVI.

IS OF NOTHING, OR THAT WHICH IS NOTHING WORTH.

[Fourth Day.]

PISC. My purpose was to give you some directions concerning roach and dace, and some other inferior fish, which make the angler excellent sport, for you know there is more pleasure in hunting the hare than in eating her; but I will forbear at this time to say any more, because you see yonder come our brother Peter and honest Coridon: but I will promise you, that as you and I fish, and walk to-morrow towards London, if I have now forgotten anything that I can then remember, I will not keep it from you.

Well met, gentlemen: this is lucky that we meet so just together at this very door. Come, hostess, where are you? Is supper ready? Come, first give us drink, and be as quick as you can, for I believe we are all very hungry. Well, brother Peter, and Coridon, to you both; come drink, and then tell me what luck of fish: we two have caught but ten trouts, ofwhich my scholar caught three; look, here's eight, and a brace we gave away: we have had a most pleasant day for fishing and talking, and are returned home both weary and hungry, and now meat and rest will be pleasant.

PET. And Coridon and I have had not an unpleasant day, and yet I have caught but five trouts: for indeed we went to a good honest ale-house, and there we played at shovel-board half the day; all the time that it rained we were there, and as merry as they that fished; and I am glad we are now with a dry house over our heads, for hark how it rains and blows. Come, hostess, give us more ale, and our supper with what haste you may and when we have supped, let us have your song, Piscator, and the catch that your scholar promised us; or else Coridon will be dogged.

PISC. Nay, I will not be worse than my word; you shall not want my song, and I hope I shall be perfect in it.

VEN. And I hope the like for my catch, which I have ready too and therefore let's go merrily to supper, and then have a gentle touch at singing and drinking; but the last with moderation.

COR. Come, now for your song; for we have fed heartily. Come, hostess, lay a few more sticks on the fire. And now sing when you will.

Pisc. Well then, here's to you, Coridon; and now for my

And to be lamented.-Jo. CHALKHILL.

VEN. Well sung, master: this day's fortune and pleasure, and this night's company and song, do all make me more and more in love with angling. Gentlemen, my master left me alone for an hour this day; and I verily believe he retired himself from talking with me, that he might be so perfect in this song was it not, master?

PISC. Yes, indeed; for it is many years since I learned it, and having forgotten a part of it, I was forced to patch it up by the help of mine own invention, who am not excellent at poetry, as my part of the song may testify: but of that I will say no more, lest you should think I mean by discommending it to beg your commendations of it. And therefore, without replications, let us hear your catch, scholar, which I hope will be a good one; for you are both musical, and have a good fancy to boot.

VEN. Marry, and that you shall; and as freely as I would have my honest master tell me some more secrets of fish and fishing as we walk and fish towards London to-morrow. But, master, first let me tell you, that very hour which you were absent from me, I sat down under a willow tree by the waterside, and considered what you had told me of the owner of that pleasant meadow in which you had then left me; that he had a plentiful estate, and not a heart to think so; that he had at this time many law-suits depending, and that they

both damped his mirth and took up so much of his time and thoughts, that he himself had not leisure to take the sweet content that I, who pretended no title to them, took in his fields: for I could sit there quietly; and looking on the water, see some fishes sport themselves in the silver streams, others leaping at flies of several shapes and colours; looking on the hills, I could behold them spotted with woods and groves; looking down the meadows, could see, here a boy gathering lilies and lady-smocks, and there a girl cropping culverkeys and cowslips, all to make garlands suitable to this present month of May: these, and many other field-flowers, so perfumed the air, that I thought that very meadow like that field in Sicily of which Diodorus speaks, where the perfumes arising from the place make all dogs that hunt in it to fall off, and to lose their hottest scent. I say, as I thus sat, joying in my own happy condition, and pitying this poor rich man that owned this and many other pleasant groves and meadows about me, I did thankfully remember what my Saviour said, that the meek possess the earth; or rather, they enjoy what the others possess and enjoy not; for anglers and meek quiet-spirited men are free from those high, those restless thoughts, which corrode the sweets of life; and they, and they only, can say, as the poet has happily expressed it :

Hail blest estate of lowliness !

Happy enjoyments of such minds

As, rich in self-contentedness,

Can, like the reeds in roughest winds,
By yielding make that blow but small,
At which proud oaks and cedars fall.

There came also into my mind, at that time, certain verses in praise of a mean estate and an humble mind; they were written by Phineas Fletcher, an excellent divine, and an excellent angler, and the author of excellent piscatory eclogues,

* There is so much fine and useful morality included in this sentiment, that to let it pass would be inexcusable in one who pretends to illustrate the author's meaning, or display his excellence. The precept which he evidently meant to inculcate, is a very comfortable one, viz., that some of the greatest pleasures human nature is capable of, lie open and in common to the poor as well as the rich. It is not necessary that a man should have the fee-simple of all the land in prospect from Windsor Terrace or Richmond Hill, to enjoy the beauty of those two delightful situations; nor can we imagine that no one but Lord Burlington was ever delighted in the view of his most elegant villa at Chiswick, now his grace the Duke of Devonshire's.-H.

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in which you shall see the picture of this good man's mind, and I wish mine to be like it.*

No empty hopes, no courtly fears him fright;
No begging wants his middle fortune bite :
But sweet content exiles both misery and spite.

His certain life, that never can deceive him,

Is full of thousand sweets and rich content;
The smooth-leaved beeches in the field receive him,
With coolest shade, till noontide's heat be spent.
His life is neither toss'd in boisterous seas

Or the vexatious world, or lost in slothful ease;
Pleased and full bless'd he lives, when he his God can please.

His bed, more safe than soft, yields quiet sleeps,
While by his side his faithful spouse hath place;
His little son into his bosom creeps,

The lively picture of his father's face;

His humble house or poor state ne'er torment him-
Less he could like, if less his God had lent him ;

And when he dies, green turfs do for a tomb content him.

Gentlemen, these were a part of the thoughts that then possessed me. And I here made a conversion of a piece of an old catch, and added more to it, fitting them to be sung by anglers. Come, master, you can sing well; you must sing a part of it as it is in this paper.

PETER. Ay marry, sir, this is music indeed; this has cheered my heart, and made me to remember six verses in praise of music, which I will speak to you instantly.

Music! miraculous rhetoric, that speakest sense
Without a tongue, excelling eloquence;

With what ease might thy errors be excused,
Wert thou as truly loved as thou'rt abused!

But though dull souls neglect, and some reprove thee,

I cannot hate thee, 'cause the angels love thee.

VEN. And the repetition of these last verses of music has called to my memory what Mr. Ed. Waller,† a lover of the angle, says of love and music.

* It would be great injustice to the memory of this person, whose name is now hardly known, to pass him by without notice. He was the son of Giles Fletcher, doctor of laws, and ambassador from Queen Elizabeth to the Duke of Muscovy; a fellow of King's College, Cambridge, and the author of a fine allegorical poem, intitled, "The Purple Island," printed at Cambridge, with other of his poems, in 4to. 1633; from whence the passage in the text, with a little variation, is taken.-H.

† As the author's concern for the honour of angling induced him to enumerate such persons of note as were lovers of that recreation, the reader will allow me to add Mr. John Gay to the number. Any one who reads the first canto