tail, and placed him after such a manner on your hook as he is like to turn, then, sew up his mouth to your line, and he is like to turn quick, and tempt any Trout: but if he does not turn quick, then turn his tail, a little more or less, towards the inner part, or towards the side of the hook; or put the Minnow or Sticklebag a little more crooked or more straight on your hook, until it will turn both true and fast: and then doubt not but to tempt any great Trout that lies in a swift stream.1 And the Loach that I told you of will do the like: no bait is more tempting, provided the Loach be not too big.

And now, scholar, with the help of this fine morning, and your patient attention, I have said all that my present memory will afford me, concerning most of the several fish that are usually fished for in fresh waters.

Ven. But, master, you have by your former civility made me hope that you will make good your promise, and say something of the several rivers that be of most note in this nation; and also of fish-ponds, and the ordering of them: and do it I pray, good master; for I love any discourse of rivers, and fish and fishing; the time spent in such discourse passes away very pleasantly.

(1) The Minnow, if used in this manner, is so tempting a bait, that few fish are able to resist it. The present Earl of ******** told me, that in the month of June last, at Kimpton Hoo, near Wellwyn, in Hertfordshire, he caught (with a Minnow) a Rud, a fish described in page 195, which, insomuch as the Rud is not reckoned, nor does the situation of his teeth, which are in his throat, bespeak him to be a fish of prey, is a fact more extraordinary thau that related by Sir George Hastings, in Chap. IV. of a Fordidge Trout (of which kind of fish none had ever been known to be taken with an angle), which he caught, and supposed it bit for wantonness.

THE COMPLETE ANGLER.

PART I.

CHAP. XIX.

Of several RIVERS, and some Observations on FISH.

Piscator. WELL, scholar, since the ways and weather do both favour us, and that we see not Tottenham-Cross, you shall see my willingness to satisfy your desire. And, first, for the rivers of this nation: there be, as you may note out of Doctor Heylin's Geography,' and others, in number 325; but those of chiefest note he reckons and describes as followeth.

The chief is Thamisis, compounded of two rivers, Thame and Isis; whereof the former, rising somewhat beyond Thame in Buckinghamshire, and the latter near Cirencester in Gloucestershire, meet together about Dorchester in Oxfordshire; the issue of which happy conjunction is the Thamisis, or Thames; hence it flieth between

2

(1) It should be Dr. Heylin's Cosmography, a book well known. Great confusion arises from the want of a clear idea of the many words in our language that have this termination; but it seems they are well understood by some. About forty years ago, Mr. Jefferys, a printseller at the corner of St. Martin's-lane, and a great engraver of maps, got himself to be enrolled in the list of the servants of Frederick, prince of Wales, by the designation of Geogra pher to his Royal Highness. Rocque, who published the great map of London, at that time a young man, and desirous of an honourable adjunct to his name, applied, shortly after, to the servants of the Prince, and, with the tender of a proper gratuity, solicited the same appointment; but was given to understand by them, that he was too late, for that the office of Geographer was disposed of; but they, (probably hearing the chink of his money) comforted him by saying, that they could set him down in terms of their own invention, either Topographer, or Chorographer, to his Royal Highness the Prince. The charms of these sonorous appellations were too strong to be resisted. Mr. Rocque, therefore, after due deliberation upon a matter so important, made choice of the former; and, in addition to his name, caused it to be painted on the front of his shop in the Strand.

(2) Though the current opinion is, that the Thames had its name from the conjunction of Thame and Isis, it plainly appears that the Isis was always called Thames, or Tems, before it came near the Tame. Gibbon's Camden,

edit. 1753. p. 99.

And as to the head of the Thame, although it is generally supposed to be in Oxfordshire, Camden (whom we may suppose Walton followed), Brit. 215, says it is in Buckinghamshire.

But what shall we say to the following account which Lambarde has adopted?

Berks, Buckinghamshire, Middlesex, Surrey, Kent, and Essex and so weddeth himself to the Kentish Medway, in the very jaws of the ocean. This glorious river feeleth the violence and benefit of the sea more than any river in Europe; ebbing and flowing, twice a day, more than sixty miles; about whose banks are so many fair towns and princely palaces, that a German' poet thus truly spake :

Tot campos, &c.

We saw so many woods and princely bowers,
Sweet fields, brave palaces, and stately towers;
So many gardens drest with curious care,

That Thames with royal Tiber may compare.

2. The second river of note is Sabrina, or Severn: it hath its beginning in Plinilimmon-hill, in Montgomeryshire; and his end seven miles from Bristol; washing, in the mean space, the walls of Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester, and divers other places and palaces of note.

"Tame (sayeth Leland) springeth out of the hilles of Hertfordshire, at a place called Bulburne, a few miles from Penlye, (the house of a family of gentlemen called Verneys); it runneth from thence to Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire, and to Tame (a market-town in Oxfordshire, whearunto it gyveth the name,) then passinge under Whetley-bridge, it cometh to Dorchester, and hard by joyneth with Isis, or Ouse, and from that place joyneth with it in name also." Dictionarium Topographicum, voce THAME.

Unfortunately, Leland's manuscript has lost twenty-five leaves in that part of it where one might expect to find this passage. But the following extract, from an author of great authority, and who had a seat in the county of Hertford, will determine the question.

"The Thame (the most famous river of England) issues from three heads, in the parish of Tring: the first rises in an orchard, near the parsonage-house; the second in a place called Dundell; and the other proceeds from a spring named Bulbourne, which last stream joins the other waters at a place called Newmill; whence all, gliding together in one current, through Puttenham in this county, pass by Aylesbury (a fair market-town in Buckinghamshire) to Etherop, (an ancient pleasant seat of that noble family of the Dormers, earls of Caernarvon ;) and crossing that county, by Notley-abbey, to Thame, (a market-town in Oxfordshire, which borrows its name from this river,) hasteneth away by Whateley-bridge to Dorchester, (an ancient episcopal seat,) and thence congratulates the Isis; but both emulating each other for the name, and neither yielding, they are complicated by that of Thamisis." Sir Henry Chauncy's Historical Antiquities of Hertfordshire, p. 2. See also the later Maps of Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire.

(1) Who this German poet was I cannot find; but the verses, in the original Latin, are in Heylin's Cosmography, page 240, and are as follow:

Tot campos, sylvas, tot regia tecta, tot hortos,
Artifici excultos dextra, tot vidimus urces;
Ut nunc Ausonio, Thamisis, cum Tibride certet.

3. Trent, so called from thirty kind of fishes that are found in it, or for that it receiveth thirty lesser rivers; who, having his fountain in Staffordshire, and gliding through the counties of Nottingham, Lincoln, Leicester, and York, augmenteth the turbulent current of Humber, the most violent stream of all the isle. This Humber is not, to say truth, a distinct river having a spring-head of his own, but it is rather the mouth or æstuarium of divers rivers here confluent and meeting together, namely, your Derwent, and especially of Ouse and Trent; and (as the Danow, having received into its channel the river Dravus, Savus, Tibiscus, and divers others) changeth his name into this of Humberabus, as the old geographers call it.

4. Medway, a Kentish river; famous for harbouring the royal navy.

5. Tweed, the north-east bound of England; on whose northern banks is seated the strong and impregnable town of Berwick.

6. Tyne, famous for Newcastle, and her inexhaustible coal-pits. These, and the rest of principal note, are thus comprehended in one of Mr. Drayton's Sonnets.

Our floods' queen, Thames, for ships and swans is crown'd;
And stately Severn for her shore is prais'd;
The crystal Trent, for fords and fish renown'd;
And Avon's fame to Albion's cliffs is rais'd.

Carlegian Chester vaunts her holy Dee;

York many wonders of her Ouse can tell ;
The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be,
And Kent will say her Medway doth excel.

(1) It would have been beside the author's purpose, and indeed inconsistent with the brevity of his work, to have given such a description and history of the rivers of this kingdom, as some readers would wish for. Such, however, may find, in Selden's Notes on the Polyolbion, a great variety of curious and useful learning on the subject. And it were to be wished that some person skilled like Leland, Camden, Lambarde, or that excellent person above mentioned, in the antiquities of this country, if any such there are, would undertake the delightful task of surveying them, and giving their history.

In the meanwhile we would recommend to our angler the use of a map of the county where he fishes; by means whereof he may see the rivers contained in it, with their courses; which is perhaps as much as a mere angler need know about the matter.

Cotswold commends her Isis to the Tame;

Our Northern borders boast of Tweed's fair flood;
Our Western parts extol their Willy's fame,

And the old Lea brags of the Danish blood.1

These observations are out of learned Dr. Heylin, and my old deceased friend, Michael Drayton; and because you say you love such discourses as these, of rivers, and fish, and fishing, I love you the better, and love the more to impart them to you. Nevertheless, scholar, if I should begin but to name the several sorts of strange fish that are usually taken in many of those rivers that run into the sea, I might beget wonder in you, or unbelief, or both: and yet I will venture to tell you a real truth concerning one lately dissected by Dr. Wharton, a man of great learning and experience, and of equal freedom to communicate it; one that loves me and my art; one to whom I have been beholden for many of the choicest observations

(1) "LEE flu. Lygan, Saxon. Luy, Mar. [forsan Marcellinus] Lea, Polydoro. The name of the water which (runnyn betwene Ware and London) devydethe, for a great part of the way, Essex and Hertfordshire. It begynnethe near a place called Whitchurche; and from thence, passinge by Hertford, Ware, and Waltham, openethe into the Thamise at Ham in Essex; wheare the place is, at this day, called Lee Mouthe. It hathe, of longe tyme, horne vessells from London, 20 miles towarde the head; for, in tyme of Kinge Alfrede, the Danes entered Leymouthe, and fortified, at a place adjoyninge to this ryver, 20 myles from London; where, by fortune, Kinge Alfrede passinge by, espied that the chanuell of the ryver might be in such sorte weakened, that they should want water to return withe their shippes: he caused therefore the water to be abated by two greate trenches, and settinge the Londoners upon theim, he made theim batteil: wherein they lost four of their capitaines, and a great nomber of their common souldiers; the reste flyinge into the castle which they had builte. Not longe after, they weare so pressed that they forsoke all, and left their shippes as a pray to the Londoners; which breakinge some, and burninge other, conveyed the rest to London. This castle, for the distance, might seme Hertforde; but it was some other upon that banke, which had no longe continuance; for Edward the elder, and son of this Alfrede, builded Hertforde not longe after." Vide Lambarde's Dictionarium Topographicum, voce LEE. Drayton's Polyolbion, Song the Twelfth, and the first Note thereon.

Other authors, who confirm this fact, also add, That for the purpose aforesaid he opened the mouth of the river. See Sir William Dugdale's History of the embanking and draining the Fens, and Sir John Spelman's Life of Elfred the Great, published by Hearne, in 8vo. 1709; the perusal of which last-named author will leave the reader in very little doubt but that these trenches are the very same that now branch off from the river betweeu Temple-Mills and OldFord, and, crossing the Stratford road, enter the Thames, together with the principal stream, a little below Blackwall.