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 calmness 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 samne 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,' 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 me 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

Pet. I marry, Sir, this is music indeed; this has cheer'd my heart, and made me remember six verses in praise of music, which I will speak to you instantly.

themselves to perriwig-making, they had forgot their cittern and their music." Works of Dr. William King, vol. ii. p. 79.

And the knowledge of this fact will enable us to explain and justify a passage in Ben Jonson's comedy of The Silent Woman, which none of his annotators seem to have understood. Morose, in act III. scene 5. of that play, after he has discovered that his supposed wife can talk, and that to the purpose too, cries out of Cutberd, "That cursed barber!—I have married his cittern, that's common to all men." Mr. Upton, in his Notes on that play, supposes we should read cistern, i. e. the common sink, the common sewer, cistern, or receptacle or, he says, we may read cittern in a sense that has no relation to a barber's shop. But whether the circumstance above mentioned does not render any such conjecture needless, the ingenious reader will determine.

Mr. Henry Lawes, who composed the music to this song, was the Purcell of the age he lived in: Mr. Waller has honoured him with a Copy of Verses, inscribed "To Mr. Henry Lawes, who had then new set a song of mine, in the year 1635." And Milton has celebrated his merit in an elegant sonnet "to Mr. H. Lawes, on his Airs." Milton was an excellent judge and performer of music; a particular which, as it has been very superficially mentioned by the many writers of his life, it may not be amiss to enlarge on here. And first, we are to know, that his affection to this art was, in some sort, hereditary; for his father was not only a lover, but a composer of music: the common melody, known by the name of York Psalm-tune, which most country chimes play, and half the nurses in this kingdom sing by way of lullaby, was of his composition, as appears by Ravenscroft's Collection of Psalm-lunes, and other evidences. He also composed many madrigals, in four and five parts: some of which are to be seen in the Triumphs of Oriana, a collection of madrigals to five and six voices, composed by divers authors, 4to. Lond. 1601; and in other collections. And lastly, it appears from the Life of Milton, by his nephew Phillips, prefixed to a Translation of some of his Letters of State, printed in 12mo. 1694, that Milton, the father, composed an In Nomine of forty parts, for which he was rewarded, by a Polish prince to whom he presented it, with a gold medal and chain. And we are also told, by the above-mentioned nephew of Milton, that, when he was upon his travels, he collected a chest or two of choice music books of the best masters flourishing at that time in Italy, namely, Luca Marenzio, Monteverde, Horatio Vecchi, Cifra, the Prince of Venosa, and others.

It should seem that Lawes and Milton were well acquainted; for the former composed the original music to the Masque of Comus, and at the exhibition of that performance at Ludlow-castle, acted the part of the attendant Spirit. The best account extant of him, except that in the Athen. Oxon. is contained in Mr. Fenton's note on the poem of Mr. Waller, above mentioned.

And, now I am upon this subject, I will tell the reader a secret; which is, That music was in its greatest perfection in Europe from about the middle of the sixteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century; when, with a variety of treble-instruments, a vicious taste was introduced, and vocal harmony received its mortal wound. In this period flourished Palestrina, the Prince of Venosa, and the several other authors above mentioned to have been collected by Milton, and, to the immortal honour of this nation, our own Tallis and Byrd; and some years after, in the more elegant kinds of composition, such as madrigals, canzonets, &c. Wilbye, Weelkes, Bennet, Morley, Bateson, and others, whose works shew deep skill and fine invention.

Music! miraculous rhet'ric, that speak'st sense
Without a tongue, excelling eloquence;
With what ease might thy errors be excus'd,
Wert thou as truly lov'd as th' art abus'd!

But though dull souls neglect, and some reprove thee,

I cannot hate thee, 'cause the Angels love thee.1

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.

(1) See these Verses, with some small variation, at the end of the book, entitled, Select Ayres and Dialogues, referred to from p. 105, n.; with " W. D. knight," under the bottom line, which I take to signify, that they were written by Sir William Davenant.

And let me be excused, if, from the same book, I here insert the following verses, on the subject of music, written by Mr. Thomas Randolph, and printed among his Poems.

Music! thou queen of souls, get up and string

Thy pow'rful lute; and some sad Requiem sing,
Till rocks requite thy echo with a groan,
And the dull cliffs repeat the duller tone:
Then on a sudden, with a nimble hand,
Run gently o'er the chords, and so command
The pine to dance, the oak his roots forego,
The holm and aged elm to foot it too;
Myrtles shall caper, lofty cedars run,
And call the courtly palm to make up one:
-Then in the midst of all their jolly train,

Strike a sad note, and fix them trees again."

(2) 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 of his Georgic, entitled Rural Sports, and observes how beautifully and accurately he treats the subject of fly-fishing, would conclude the author a proficient: but that it was his chief amusement, I have been assured by an intimate friend of mine, who has frequently fished with him in the river Kennet, at Amesbury, in Wilts, the seat of his grace the Duke of Queensbury.

The Reader will excuse the following addition to this note, for the sake of a beautiful description of the materials used in fly-making, which is quoted from the above-mentioned poem.

"To frame the little animal, provide

All the gay hues that wait on female pride:

Let nature guide thee; sometimes golden wire
The shining bellies of the fly require;
The peacock's plumes thy tackle must not fail,
Nor the dear purchase of the sable's tail;
Each gaudy bird some slender tribute brings,
And lends the growing insect proper wings;
Silks of all colours must their aid impart,
And ev'ry fur promote the fisher's art:
So the gay lady, with expensive care,

Borrows the pride of land, of sea, of air;

Furs, pearls, and plumes, the glittering thing displays,

Dazzles our eyes, and easy hearts betrays."

7

While I listen to thy voice,

Chloris, I feel my life decay;

That powerful noise
Calls my fleeting soul away:
Oh! suppress that magic sound,
Which destroys without a wound.

Peace, Chloris, peace, or singing die,
That together you and I

To heaven may go;

For all we know

Of what the blessed do above,

Is, that they sing, and that they love.

Pisc. Well remembered, brother Peter; these verses came seasonably, and we thank you heartily. Come, we will all join together, my host and all, and sing my scholar's catch over again; and then each man drink the other cup, and to bed; and thank God we have a dry house over our heads.

Pisc. Well, now good night to every body.

Pet. And so say I.

Ven. And so say I.

Cor. Good night to you all; and I thank you.

****

Pisc. Good-morrow, brother Peter; and the like to you, honest Coridon.

Come, my hostess says there is seven shillings to pay : let's each man drink a pot for his morning's draught, and lay down his two shillings, that so my hostess may not have occasion to repent herself of being so diligent, and using us so kindly.

Pet. The motion is liked by every body, and so, hostess, here's your money; we anglers are all beholden to you; it will not be long ere I'll see you again. And now, brother Piscator, I wish you, and my brother your scholar, a fair day and good fortune. Come Coridon, this is our way.