mean, by discommending it, to beg your commendations of it. And therefore, without replications, let's 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 water side, and considered what you had told me of the owner of that pleasant meadow in which you 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 fields1: for I could there sit quietly; and looking on the water,

(1) 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 excellencies. 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.

66

But that excellent moralist, Dr. Francis Hutcheson, late of Glasgow, has a passage to this purpose, which is a much better comment on this reflection than any we can give : As often," says he, as the more important offices of virtue allow any intervals, our time is agreeably and honourably employed in history, natural or civil; in geometry, 66 astronomy, poetry, painting, and musick; or such entertainments as ingenious arts afford. And some of the sweetest enjoyments of this sort require no property; nor need we ever want the objects. "If familiarity abates the pleasure of the more obvious beauties of nature, their more exquisite inward structures may give new delights, and the stores of nature are inexhaustible." See his System of Moral Philosophy, book i. chap. 7.

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 exprest 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 humble mind: they were written by Phineas Fletcher1; an excellent divine,

(1) It would be great injustice to the memory of this person whose name is now hardly known, to pass by him without notice. The son of Giles Fletcher, Doctor of Laws, and ambassador from Queen Elizabeth to the Duke of Muscovy. Phineas Fletcher was fellow of King's

College,

and an excellent angler; and the author of excellent Piscatory Eclogues, in which you shall see the picture of

College, Cambridge, and the author of a fine allegorical poen, entitled, 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. The reader will not be displeased with a more entire quotation from that work; which, for its elegant pastoral simplicity, I could wish to see equalled.

Let others trust the seas, dare death and hell,

Search either Inde, vaunt of their scars and wounds;

Let others their dear breath (nay, silence) sell

To fools; and (swoln, not rich) stretch out their bounds,

By spoiling those that live, and wronging dead;

That they may drink in pearl, and couch their head

In soft, but sleepless down; in rich, but restlesse bed.

Oh! let them in their gold quaff dropsies down;
Oh! let them surfeits feast in silver bright;
While sugar hires the taste the brain to drown,
And bribes of sauce corrupt false appetite,

His master's rest, health, heart, life, soul to sell.
Thus plenty, fulness, sickness, ring their knell;

Death weds and beds them; first in grave, and then in hell.

But, ab! let me, under some Kentish hill,

Near rolling Medway, 'mong my shepherd peers,

With fearless merry-make and piping, still

Securely pass my few and slow-pac'd years:

While yet the great Augustus* of our nation
Shuts up old Janus in this long cessation,

[*

*K. James I.]

Strength'ning our pleasing ease, and gives us sure vacation.

There may I, master of a little flock,

Feed my poor lambs, and often change their fare.

My lovely mate shall tend my sparing stock,

And nurse my little ones with pleasing care,

Whose love and look shall speak their father plain.
Health be my feast; heaven hope; content my gain;
So in my little house my lesser heart shall reign.

The beech shall yield a cool safe canopy,

While down I sit, and chaunt to th' echoing wood. Ah! singing might I live, and singing die;

So by fair Thames or silver Medway's flood,

The dying swan, when years her temples pierce,
In musick-strains breathes out her life and verse;

And, chaunting her own dirge, tides on her watry hearse.

Purple Island, Canto I. The innocence of angling, the delightful scenes with which it is

conversant,

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-leav'd beeches in the field receive him,
With coolest shade, till noon-tide's heat be spent.

His

conversant, and its associated pleasures of ease, retirement, and meditation, have been a motive to the introduction of a new species of eclogue, where fishers are actors, as shepherds are in the pastoral. Mr. Addison, it is true, has censured Sannazarius for such an attempt: but it is to be remembered, that his are sea-eclogues, the very idea of which is surely inconsistent with the calmness and tranquillity of the pastoral life; not to say, that oysters and cray-fish are no very elegant or pursuasive bribes to the favour of a mistress. But the ancient writers of Pastoral, Bion, Theocritus, Moschus, and others, included, under that species, the manners of herdsmen, vine-dressers, and others; and why those of fishers are to be excluded, the legis lators of Pastoral would do well to inform us.

Of those who have attempted this kind of poetry, the above-mentioned Mr. Fletcher is one; and in the same volume with the Purple Island are several poems, which he calls Piscatory Eclogues, from whence the following passage is extracted.

Ah! would thou knew'st how much it better were

To bide among the simple fisher-swains.

No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here;
Nor is our simple pleasure mix'd with pains.
Our sports begin with the beginning year,
In calms to pull the leaping fish to land;
In roughs to sing, and dance along the golden sand.
I have a pipe which once thou lovedst well;
(Was never pipe that gave a better sound;
Which oft to hear, fair Thetis from her cell,

Thetis the queen of seas, attended round
With hundred nymphs, and many powers that dwell
In th' ocean's rocky walls, came up to hear;

And gave me gifts, which still for thee lie hoarded here.
Here, with sweet bays, the lovely myrtles grow,

Where th' ocean's fair-cheek'd maidens oft repair;
Here to my pipe they dancen on a row,

No other swain may come to note they're fair:
Yet my Amyntas there with me shall go.
Proteus himself pipes to his flocks hereby,

Whom thou shalt hear, ne'er seen by any jealous eye.

Eclogue I.

And