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'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 fields:"

XV.

We covet no wealth,

But the blessing of health,

And that greater, good conscience within us.
Such devotion we bring

To our God, and our King,

That from either no offers can win us.

XVI.

While we sit and fish,

We

pray, as we wish,

For long life to our king, James the Second.

Honest anglers then may,

Or they've very foul play,

With the best of good subjects be reckon'd.

(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

for I could there sit 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 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.

but Lord Burlington was ever delighted in the view of his most elegant villa at Chiswick.

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 honorably employed in history, natural or civil; in geometry, astronomy, poetry, painting, and music; 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 1. chap. 7.

HA

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 Fletcher; an excellent divine,

1

(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, Cambridge, and the author of a fine allegorical poem, 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, from 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, ah! 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.J

Strength'ning our pleasing ease, aud 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 music-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, 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,

and an excellent angler; and the author of excellent Piscatory Eclogues, 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-leav'd beeches in the field receive him,
With coolest shade, till noon-tide's heat be spent.
His life is neither tost in boist'rous seas,

Or the vexatious world; or lost in slothful ease.
Pleas'd and full blest 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 possess'd me. And I there made a conversion of a piece

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 seaeclogues, the very idea of which is surely inconsistent with the calmeess and tranquillity of the pastoral life; not to say, that oysters and cray-fish are no very elegant or persuasive 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 legislators 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 saine 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.

of an old catch,1 and added more to it, fitting them to be sung by us anglers. Come, Master, you can sing well: you must sing a part of it, as it is in this paper.

Here, with sweet bays, the lovely myrtles grow,

Where th' ocean's fair-cheek'd maidens oft repair;

Here to my pipe they danced 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 besides Mr. Phineas Fletcher, a gentleman now living [1784,] the Rev. Mr.Moses Browne has obliged the world with Piscatory Eclogues, which I would recommend to all lovers of poetry and angling; and am much mistaken if the fifth of them, entitled Rennock's Despair, is not by far the best imitation of Milton's Lycidas that has ever yet appeared.

(1) The song here sung can in no sense of the word be termed a Catch. It was probably set to music at the request of Walton, and is to be found in a book, entitled, Select Ayres and Dialogues for one, two, and three Voyces; to the Theorbo-lute and Basse Viol. By John Wilson and Charles Coleman, doctors of music, Henry Lawes and others. fol. London, 1659. It occurs in the first edition of Walton's book, published in 1653.

The reader is not to wonder at this motion of Venator's, nor that Piscator so readily accepts it. At the time when Walton wrote, and long before, music was so generally well understood, that a man who had any voice or ear was always supposed to be able to sing his part in a madrigal or song, at sight. Peacham requires of his gentleman, only to be able" to sing his part sure, and at the first sight; and withal, to play the same on the viol or lute." Compl. Gent. 100. And Philomathes, in Morley's excellent Introduction to Practical Music, in fol. Lond. 1597, thus complains; [at the banquet of master Sophobulus] "Supper being ended, and music-books, according to custom, being brought to table, the mistress of the house presented me with a part, earnestly requesting ine to sing. But when, after many excuses, I protested unfeignedly that I could not, every one began to wonder; yea, some whispered to others, demanding how I was brought up. So that, upon shame of mine ignorance, I go nowe to seek out mine olde friend master Gnorimus, to make myself his scholar."

Another circumstance, which shews how generally music was formerly known and practised in England, occurred to me upon the sight of an old Book of Enigmas; to every one of which the author has prefixed a wooden cut of the subject of the enigma. The solution to one of these is, A barber: and the cut represents a barber's shop, in which there is one person sitting in a chair, under the barber's hands; while another, who is waiting for his turn, is playing on the lute; and on the side of the shop hangs another instrument of the lute or cittern kind. The inference I draw from hence is, that, formerly, a lute was considered as a necessary part of the furniture of a barber's shop, and answered the end of a newspaper, the now common amusement of waiting customers; which it would never have done, if music had not, as is above observed, been generally known and practised.

In an old comedy of Dekker's, entitled, "The Second Part of the Honest Whore," printed in Dodsley's Collection, vol. iii. edit. 1780, Matheo, speaking of his wife, terms her, "a barber's citterne for every serving-man to play upon."

This instrument grew into disuse about the beginning of this century. Dr. King, taking occasion to mention the barbers of his time, says, "that turning