I I:o, ' ' A 614682 K - n t~ *II t; i I" I I I I I i I i eg". al /tf I IO;, IJ A I., I I A I 4 THlE COMPLETE ANGLER. I I I I I C~, ~ 41 Rh U. V l ilk 'f \, T18 if "2 ())N X WM r t oI'iui /4L it I~ 7 1,,-I CONTENTS. PAGE INTRODUCTION BY JAINES RUSSELL LOWELL...xv AuwrHoR's DEDICATION TO JOHN OFFLEY, EsQ.. xix Au HOR's ADDRESS TO HIS READERS 1XXiii PART I. THE FIRST DAY. CHAP. I - A Conference betwixt an ANGLER, a HUNTER, and a FALCONER, each commending his Recreation....... THE SECOND DAT. CHAP. II. - Observations of the OTTER and CHUB. 53 THE THIRD DAY. CHAP. III. - How to fish for, and to dress, the CHAVENDER, or CHUB.........66 CHAP. IV. - Observations of the NATURE and BREEDING of the TROUT, and how to fish for him. And the Milk-maid's Song. 75 vi CONTENTS. THE THIRD AND FOURTH DAYS. PAGE CHAP. V. - More Directions how to fish for, and how to make for the TROUT an ARTIFICIAL MINNOW and FLIES, with some Merriment. 93 THE FOURTH DAY. CHAP. VI.- Observations of the UMBER or GRAYLING, and Directions how to fish for them.. I45 CHAP. VII. - Observations of the SALMON, with Directions how to fish for him...... 49 CHAP. VIII. - Observations of the LUCE or PIKE, with Directions how to fish for him... I59 CHAP. IX. -Observations of the CARP, with Directions how to fish for him...... 176 CHAP. X. - Observations of the BREAM, and Directions to catch him.... 88 CHAP. XI. - Observations of the TENCH, and Advice how to angle for him........ 98 CHAP. XII.- Observations of the PEARCH, and )irections how to fish for him...02 CHAP. XIII. - Observations of the EEL, and other Fish that want scales, and how to fish for them 209 CHAP. XIV. - Observations of the BARBEL, and Directions how to fish for him.... 220 CHAP. XV. - Observations of the GUDGEON, the RUFFE, and the BLEAK, and how to fish for them.2........... 227 CHAP. XVI. - Is of nothing, or that which is nothing worth.............. 232 THE FIFTH DAY. CHAP. XVII. - Of ROACH and DACE, and how to fish for them; and of CADIS.... 242 CONTENTS. vii PAGE CHAP XVIII. - Of the MINNOW or PENK, of the LOACH, and of the BULL-HEAD, or MILLER'STHUMB.... 257 CHAP XIX. - Of several Rivers, and some Observations of Fish.... 263 CHAP. XX. —Of Fish-Ponds, and how to order them.......... 269 CHAP. XXI. -Directions for making of a Line, and for the coloring of both Rod and Line.... 274 PART lih INSTRUCTIONS HOW TO ANGLE FOR A TROUT OR GRAYLING IN A CLEAR STREAM LETTER FROM CHARLES COTTON TO IZAAK WALTON 295 WALTON'S REPLY THERETO.. 297 THE RETIREMENT. IRREGULAR STANZAS TO MR. IZAAK WALTON.........299 THE FIRST DAY. CHAP. I......... 305 CHAP. II............... 317 THE SECOND DAY. CHAP. III............... 330 CHAP. IV........... 337 CHAP. V.-Of Fly-Fishing.........339 CHAP. VI............. 350 CHAP. VII.............. 361 CHAP. VIII............. 380 viii CONTENTS. THE THIRD DAY. PAGE CHAP. IX................ 392 CHAP. X............... 394 CHAP. XI............ 399 CHAP. XII......... 409 LINNEAN ARRANGEMENT OF THE FISH.... 415 NOTES............... 421 COMMENDATORY VERSES......... 447 GENERAL INDEX.......... 459 LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS. PAGE Portrait of IZAAK WAL'rON, floin the original by IOUSMAN, in the National Gallery To face the Title of Vol. I. Etched Vignette, On the Thames, by HARLOW Title of Vol I. Etching, Ware on the Lea, by HARLOW..To face page I Landing the Trout, by ABSALON.... 66 The Salmon, by INSKIPP......... 49 The Pike, by INSKIPP........ 159 Etching, Waltham Abbey, by HARLOW... 76 The Pearch, by INSKIPP........ 202 The Scholar's Recital, by ABSALON....... 206 Etching, The River Dove, by HARLOW To face the Title of Vol. II. Etched Vignette, The Thames at Henley, by HARLOW Title of Vol. II. Etching, The Thames at Hampton, by HARLOW To face page 263 Portrait of CHARLES COTTON, from an original miniature by SIR PETER LELY... To face the Title of Part II. The Trout, by INSKIPP...... To face page 305 The Fly Fisher, by INSKIPP........ 339 Landing the Grayling, by ABSALON...... 350 The Grayling, by INSKIPP........394 ENGRAVINGS ON WOOD. PAGE I. Portraits of DONNE, WOTTON, HOOKER, HERBERT, and SANDERSON, whose Lives were writ. ten by WALTON, drawn by J W ARCHER. xv 2 Old Houses in Fleet Street, including the residence of WALTON.... xvi 3. Fac-simile of the original Title, I653.... xvii 4. View of Madeley Manor, drawn by J. W. ARCHER lxxi 5. The Angler's Study, drawn by K. MEADOWS, Esq. lxxvi 6. View of Ware on the River Lea, drawn by T. CRESWICK, A.R,A.......... I 7. Initial Letter to Chapter I. alluding to its contents of Angling, Hunting, and Hawking, drawn by J. W. ARCHER............ I 8. Montaigne playing with his Cat, drawn by K. MEADOWS, Esq.......... 6 9. Portrait of ELIAS ASHMOLE, Esq...... 33 Io. Portrait of DEAN NOWELL, who "spent a tenth part of his time in Angling"...... 45 ri. View of Amwell Hill and Bridge over the New River, near Ware, drawn by T. CRESWICK, A.R.A.............. 52 12. The OTTER, drawn from the life at the Zoological Gardens (with permission), by J. W. ARCHER, Esq. The animal was in the act of devouring a fish at the time........... 54 13. The CHUB, from an original painting by W. SMITH.............. 63 14. Portrait of W. CAMDEN, Esq., from "Morgan's Sphere of Gentry"........ 65 LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS. xi PAGE 15. View of Broxbourn, on the River Lea, by T. CRESWICK, A.R.A....... 74 I6. SKEGGER TROUT, from an original Painting by W. SMITH....... 76 I7. Portrait of Sir WALTER RALEIGH..... 92 18. The TROUT, from an original Painting by A. COOPER, R.A.......... 94 I9. A Gypsy Camp, drawn by K. MEADOWS, Esq.. 144 20. The GRAYLING, from an original Painting by W. SMITH.............. 47 21. Portrait of ULYSSES ALDROVANDUS... 148 22. The SALMON, from an original Painting by A. COOPER, R.A........... I 54 23. View of Waltham Abbey, by T. CRESWICK, RA.RA................ 58 24. The PIKE, from an original Painting by A. COOPER, R.A............ i66 25. Portrait of LOYRD BACON...... 175 26. The CARP, from an original Painting by GEO. LANCE, Esq............ 83 27. Portrait of CONRAD GESNER........ 88 28. The BREAM, from an original Painting by W. SMITH........... 90 29. View on the Lea, Mrs. BULLIN'S Cottage, Chingford, by T. CRESWICK, A.R.A...... I98 30. The TENCH, from an original Painting by A. COOPER, R A........... 200 3I. View on the Lea, - the " Stop," Chingford, -by T. CRESWICK, A.R.A......... 201 32. The PEARCH, drawn from life by ALEX. FUSSELL 205 33. Portrait of GUIL. RONDELETIUS... 208 34. The EEL, from an original Painting by W. SMITH 216 35. Portrait of JOHN GERHARD, the Herbalist...220 36. The BARBEL, drawn from the life by ALEX. FUSSELL.......... 222 xii LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS. PAGE 37. Portrait of ARCHBISHOP SHELDON....... 226 38. The GUDGEON, from the life by ALEX. FUSSELL. 227 39. The POPE or RUFFE, from the life by Ditto.. 228 40. The BLEAK, from the life by Ditto.... 229 41. View on the Lea, Ponders End, by T. CRESWICK, A.R.A............... 231 42. Youthful Portrait of EDMUND WALLER.... 241 43. The ROACH, from the life by ALEX. FUSSELL.. 244 44. The DACE, from the life by Ditto...... 245 45. View from Lea Bridge, drawn by T. CRESWICK, A.R.A............... 257 46. The MINNOW, LOACH, and BULLHEAD, from an original Painting by W. SMITH...... 258 47. Infantine Fishing Party, by K. MEADOWS, Esq.. 263 48. Portrait of Dr. THOMAS WHARTON, from the original in the College of Physicians... 268 49. Portrait of BISHOP DUBRAVIUS, from a rare Print 274 50. Cipher of WALTON and COTTON, faithfully reduced from the original of 1676..... 293 51. Autograph of CHARLES COTTON. -... 296 52. Autograph of IZAAK WALTON..... 298 53. Additional Autograph of WALTON, and Engraving of a Seal given to him by Dr. DONNE.. 298 54. The Walton Chamber in Beresford Hall.. 299 55. View on the Lea, Fishing-House, near Tottenham, by T. CRESWICK, A.R.A...... 304 56. Brelsford Well............ 305 57. Initial Letter............ 305 58. The Spittle Hill, - the party descending on horseback............... 316 59. Hanson Toot and the Wheelbarrow Bridge.. 330 60. The Fishing-House........... 336 61. Back view of the Fishing-House...... 338 62. Beresford Hall........... 349 63. Pike Pool............ 36i LIST OF EMBELLISHMENTS. xiii PAGE 64. Rocks, with confluence of the Dove and Cooper Brook............... 3So 65. Rocks, called the " Dove Holes " and the " Shepherd's Abbey"........... 391 66. The Great Hawthorn-Tree in Dove Dale... 394 67. View in Dove Dale, near the Manifold River.. 398 68. The Hiding Caves, alluded to by COTTON in stanza viii of his Poem on " Retirement". 408oS 69. Source of the Dove, with Explorers drinking to the immortal Memory of WALTON and COTTON 414 70. The PEARCH, from a Painting of a remarkably fine specimen of this fish, by F. R. LEE, Esq., R.A....... 420 7I. View on the Lea,-Rural bit, near Edmonton, by T. CRESWICK, A.R.A......... 421 72. Music to the Angler's Song4...... 44 73. View of Theobald's, copied by J. W. ARCHER, from the "Vetusta Monumenta..... 445 74. The Weathercock, with the wind in the "right quarter," by K. MEADOWS, Esq..... 465 I I INTRODUCTION. BY JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL. BIOGRAPHY in these communicative days has become so voluminous that it might seem calculated rather for the ninefold vitality of another domestic animal than for the less lavish allotment of man. Only such renewed leases of life could justify the writing or suffice for the reading of these too often supererogatory confidences. Only a man like the great Julius, who new-moulded the world and stamped his effigy on the coinage of political thought still current, has a right to so much of our curiosity as we are now expected to put at the service of an average xvi INTRODUCTION. general or bishop. " Nothing human is foreign to me" was said long ago, chiefly by 'the Latin Grammar, and has been received as the pit and gallery receive a moral sentiment which does not inconvenience themselves, but which they think likely to give the boxes an uneasy qualm. But biography has found out a process by which what is human may be so thrust upon us as to become inhuman, and one is often tempted to wish that a great deal of it might not only be made foreign to us, but firmly kept so. Plutarch, a man of the most many-sided moral and intellectual interests, had a truer sense of proportion, and tempers his amiable discursiveness with an eye to his neighbor's dial. And in his case the very names of his heroes are mostly so trumpet-like as both to waken attention and to warrant it, ushering in the bearers of them like that flourish on the Elizabethan stage which told that a king was coming. How should Brown or Smith or any other dingy monosyllable of Saxon indistinction compete for conjuration with Pelopidas or Timoleon? Even within living memory Napoleon had a prodigious purchase INTRODUCTION. xvii in his name alone, and prettily confirmed the theory of Mr. Shandy. The modern biographer has become so indiscriminate, so unconscious of the relative importance of a single life to the Universe, so careless of the just limits whether of human interest or endurance, so communistic in assuming that all men are entitled to an equal share of what little time there is left in the world, that many a worthy, whom a paragraph from the right pen might have immortalized, is suffocated in the trackless swamps of two octavos. Meditating over these grievances.with the near prospect of a biography to write, I am inclined to apply what was said of States to men also, and call him happiest who has left fewest materials for history. It is at least doubtful whether gossip gain body by bottling. In these chattering days when nobody who really is nobody can stir forth without the volunteer accompaniment of a brass band, when there is'a certificated eye at every keyhole, and when the Public Informer has become so essential a minister to the general comfort that the world cannot go about its business b XViii INTRODUCTION. of a morning till its intellectual appetite is appeased with the latest doings and sayings of John Doe and Richard Roe, there is healing in the gentlemanlike reserves of the past, a benign sense of seclusion, a comfort such as loved hands bring to fevered brows, in the thought of one who, like Walton, has been safe for two hundred years in the impregnable stronghold of the grave. Malice domestic, treason, interviews, nothing can touch him further. The sanctities of his life, at least, cannot be hawked about the streets or capitalized in posters as a whet to the latest edition of the Peeping Tom. If it be the triumph of an historian to make the great highways of the olden time populous and noisy, or even vulgar, with their old life again, it is nevertheless a consolation that we may still find by-paths there, dumb as those through a pine forest, sacred to meditation and to grateful thoughts. Such a by-path is the life of Walton. Though it lead us through nearly a hundred years of history, many of them stormy with civil or anxious with foreign war, the clamor of events is seldom importunate, and the INTRODUCTION. xix petulant drums are muffled with a dreamy remoteness. So far as he himself could shape its course, it leads us under the shadow of honeysuckle hedges, or along the rushy banks of silence-loving streams, or through the claustral hush of cathedral closes, or where the shadow of the village church-tower creeps round its dial of green graves below, or to the company of thoughtful and godly men. He realized the maxim which Voltaire preached, but so assiduously avoided practising, - bcne vixit qui bene latuit. He did his best to fulfil the apostle's injunction in studying to be quiet. Whether such fugitive and cloistered virtue as his come within the sweep of Milton's gravely cadenced lash or not, whether a man do not owe himself more to the distasteful publicity of active citizenship than to the petting of his own private tastes or talents, as Walton thought it right and found it sweet to do, may be a question. There can be none that the contemplation of such a life both soothes and charms, and we sigh to think that the like of it is possible no longer. Where now would the fugitive from the espials of our modern life find a sanc XX INTRODUCTION. tuary which telegraph or telephone had not deflowered? I do not mean that Walton was an idle man, who, as time was given him for nothing, thought that he might part with it for nothing too. If he had been, I should not be writing this. He left behind him two books, each a masterpiece in its own simple and sincere way, and only the contemplative leisure of a life like his could have secreted the precious qualities that assure them against decay. But Walton's life touches the imagination at more points than this of its quietude and inwardness. It opens many windows to the fancy. Its opportunities were as remarkable as its length. Twentytwo years old when Shakspeare died, he lived long enough to have had Dryden's "Absalom and Achitophel." He had known Ben Jonson and Chillingworth and Drayton and Fuller; he had exchanged gossip with Antony a Wood; he was the friend of Donne and Wotton and King; he had seen George Herbert; and how many more sons of Memory must he not have known or seen in all those years so populous with men justly famous! Of the outward husk of this life of INTRODUCTION. XXi his we know comfortably little, but of the kernel much, and that chiefly from such unconscious glimpses as he himself has given us. Isaac, or (as he preferred to spell the name) Izaak, Walton was born at Stafford, on the 9th of August, 1593, of a family in the rank of substantial yeomen long established in Staffordshire. Of his mother not even the name is known, and of his father we know only that his baptismal name was Jervis, and that he was buried on the IIth of February, I596-7. Surely the short and simple annals of the poor have been seldom more laconic than this. Sir Harris Nicolas, author of the first trustworthy Life of Walton, yielding for once to the biographer's weakness for appearances, says that he " received a good, though not, strictly speaking, classical education." Considering that absolutely nothing is known of Walton's schooling, the concession to historical conscientiousness made in the parenthetic " strictly speaking" is amusing. We have the witness of documents in Walton's own handwriting that he could never have been taught even the rudiments XXii INTRODUCTION. of Latin; for he spells the third person singular of the perfect tense of obire, obiet, separate, seperate, and divided, devided. And these documents are printed by Sir Harris himself. After this one finds it hard to conceive what a classical education, loosely speaking, would be. In the list of Walton's books there is none that is not in English. It is enough for us that he contrived to pick up somewhere and somehow a competent mastery of his mother-tongue (far harder because seeming easier than Latin), and a diction of persuasive simplicity, capable of dignity where that was natural and becoming, such as not even the universities can bestow. It is not known in what year he went to London. It has been conjectured, and with much probability, that he was sent thither to serve his apprenticeship with a relative, Henry Walton, a haberdasher. Of this Henry Walton nothing is known beyond what we are told by his will, and this shows us that he had connections with Staffordshire. That Izaak Walton gave the name of Henry to two sons in succession seems to show some kind of close relation between INTRODUCTION. XXiii them and some earlier Henry. But Mr. Nicholls discovered in the records of the Ironmongers' Company for I617-18 the following entry: " Isaac Walton was made one of the Ironmongers' Company by Thomas Grinsell, citizen and ironmonger." That Walton had relatives of this name appears from a legacy in his will to the widow of his " Cosen Grinsell." On the whole, whatever light is let in by this chink serves only to make the abundant darkness more visible. May there not have been another Isaac, perhaps a cousin, to distinguish himself from whom ours gave to his surname its fantastic spelling? What is certain is that he was already in London in I619. In that year was published the second edition of a poem, " The Love of Amos and Laura," which, to judge by all that I know of it, the dedication, must happily have been very soon gathered to its fathers; but it has two points of interest. It is dedicated to Walton by a certain S. P., who may have been the Samuel Purchas of the " Pilgrims; " and in this dedication there are expressions which show that Walton's character was already, in his twenty-sixth xxiv INTRODUCTION. year, marked by the same attractiveness and purity and the same aptness for friendship which endeared him in later life to so many good and eminent men. S. P., after calling him his " more than thrice-beloved friend," tells him that he is the cause that the poem " is now as it is," and that it might have been called his had it been better, but that " No ill thing can be clothed with thy verse." We should infer that Walton had done much in the way of revision, and not only this, but that he was already known, among his friends at least, as a writer of verse himself. It is puzzling, however, that the first edition was published in 1613, when Walton was barely twenty, and that the second differs from the first in a single word only. In the only known copy of this earlier edition (which, to be sure, is otherwise imperfect) the dedication is not to be found. Sir Harris Nicolas suggests that Walton may have revised the poem in manuscript, but it seems altogether unlikely that he should have been called in as a consulting physician at so early an age. More than twenty years later, in the preface to his Life of Donne, he speaks of his "art INTRODUCTION. XXV less pencil," and several times elsewhere alludes to his literary inadequacy. But this deprecation may have been merely a shiver of his habitual modesty, or, as is more likely, a device of his literary adroitness. He certainly must have had considerable practice in the making of verse before he wrote his Elegy on Donne (1633), his first published essay in authorship. The versification of this, if sometimes rather stiff, is for the most part firm and not inharmonious. It is easier in its gait than that of Donne in his Satires, and shows the manly influence of Jonson. Walton, at any rate, in course of time, attained, at least in prose, to something which, if it may not be called style, was a very charming way of writing, all the more so that he has an innocent air of not knowing how it is done. Natural endowment and predisposition may count for nine in ten of the chances of success in this competition; but no man ever achieved, as Walton sometimes did, a simplicity which leaves criticism helpless, by the mere light of nature alone. Nor am I speaking without book. In his Life of Herbert he prints a poem of Donne's ad xxvi INTRODUCTION. dressed to Herbert's mother, in which there is allusion to certain hymns. Walton adds a few words which seem to follow each other with as little forethought as the notes of a thrush's song: "These hymns are now lost to us, but doubtless they were such as they two now sing in Heaven." Now on the inside cover of his Eusebius Walton has written three attempts at this sentence, each of them very far from the concise beauty to which he at last constrained himself. Simplicity, when it is not a careless gift of the Muse, is the last and most painful achievement of conscientious self-denial. He seems also to have had the true literary memory which stores up the apt or pleasing word for use on occasion. I have noticed more than one instance of it, but one must suffice. In Donne's beautiful poem, "A Valediction Forbidding Mourning," is this stanza: - "Dull sublunary lovers' love, Whose soul is sense, cannot admit Absence, because that doth remove Those things that elemented it." Walton felt the efficacy of the word "elemented," and laid it by for employment at INTRODUCTION. xxvii the first vacancy. I find it more than once in his writings. Of the personal history of Walton during his life in London we know very little more than that he was living in Fleet Street in I624, that from I628 to I644 he lived in Chancery Lane, and that he was twice married. Perhaps the most important event during all these years in its value to his mind and character was his making the acquaintance of Donne, to whose preaching he was a sedulous listener. This acquaintance became a friendship by which he profited till Donne's death in 1631. There needs no further witness to his intelligence or to his worth. Walton's first wife, to whom he was married in I624, was Rachel Floud, daughter of Susannah Cranmer, who was the daughter of Thomas, grand-nephew of the martyr. By her, who died in I640, he had six sons and one daughter, all of whom died in infancy or early childhood. Six years after his first wife's death Walton married Anne Ken, a sister by the half blood of Bishop Ken. Of this marriage there were three children, xxviii INTRODUCTION. one son, Izaak, who lived but a short time; a daughter Anne; and another Izaak, who survived his father, and died in I7I9, a canon of Salisbury. In the third edition of " The Complete Angler" (1664) appear for the first time some verses by Walton called " The Angler's Wish." Among other blisses is mentioned that of hearing "my Chlora sing a song." In the fifth edition (1676) " Kenna " is substituted for " Chlora," and the reference to Walton's second wife is obvious. It has been supposed that " Chlora" was an imperfect anagram for " Rachel; " and that Walton, like some better poets, Poe notably, had economized his inspiration by serving up the same verses cold to a second or even third mistress; but he was incapable of such amatory double-dealing. Sir Harris Nicolas, by calling attention to the dates, at- least makes it very unlikely that he was guilty of it. The verses were first published twenty years after the death of his first wife, and the name "Kenna" does not appear till his second had been fourteen years in her grave. Sir Harris failed to remark that Walton uses "Chlora" as the name of a INTRODUCTION xxiX shepherdess in an eclogue on the restoration of Charles II. Confronted with this fact, the supposed anagram turns out to be a mare'snest, like the Lztcro Rossetti found in Dante's Veltro. Anne Walton herself died in 1662. There is no certainty as to what Walton's occupation may have been further than that he was a tradesman of some sort, and probably, since he was thirty years in amassing the modest competence that sufficed him, in a small way. Whether large or small is of little interest to us, for his real business in this world was to write the Lives and " The Complete Angler," and to leave the example of a useful and unspotted life behind him. But it is amusing to find Mr. Major, with that West-End view of the realities of life which Englishmen of a certain class feel it proper to take, arguing that Walton's business must have been of a wholesale character because the place in which it was carried on was cramped, and moreover shared by a certain John Mason, hosier. One is irresistibly tempted to parody the notorious verse, and say, " His trade was great because his shop was small." XXX INTRODUCTION. " What room would there have been for the display of goods?" asks Mr. Major, with triumphant conviction, forgetting that in those days the space for that purpose was found in the street. Walton's removal to Chancery Lane may imply an enlargement of business; and this, so far as it goes, must suffice to console whoever values a man not for what he is, but by the round of the social ladder on which he happens to be standing. If the humbleness of Walton's station helped him toward that unaffected modesty which is so gracious in him and so dignified, we may well be thankful for it. Walton seems to have done his duty as a citizen with exemplary fidelity. Between 1632 and i644, when he moved out of the parish, the register of St. Dunstan's in the West shows him to have been successively scavenger (which Sir Harris Nicolas prudently deodorizes by calling it vaguely " a parish office "), juryman, constable, grand-juryman, overseer of the poor, and vestry-man, - enough, one might say, to satisfy any reasonable ambition for civic honors at a time when they meant honest work done for honest wages. INTRODUCTION. xxxi Walton's first appearance as an author was in an elegy, which, after the fashion of the day, accompanied the first edition of Donne's poems (I633). This species of verse, whether in the writing or the reading, is generally the most dreary compulsory labor to which man can be doomed. The poet climbs the doleful treadmill without getting an inch the higher; and as we watch him we are wearied with the reality of a toil which seems to have no real object. Once in my life I have heard a funeral elegy which was wholly adequate. It was the long quavering howl of a dog under a window of the chamber in which his master had at that moment died. It was Nature's cry of grief and terror at first sight of Death. That faithful creature was not trying to say something; so far from it, that even the little skill in articulation which his race has acquired was choked in the gripe of such disaster. Consolation would shrink away abashed from the presence of so helpless a grief. With elegiac poets it is otherwise, for it is of themselves and of their verses that they are thinking. They distil a precious cordial from their tears. They con XXXll INTRODUCTION. sole themselves by playing variations on their inconsolability. Their triumphs are won over our artistic sense, not over our human fellowfeeling. Yet now and then in the far inferior verse of far inferior men there will be some difficult word with a sob in it that moves as no artifice can move, and- brings back to each of us his private loss with a strange sense of comfort in feeling that somewhere, no matter how far away in the past, there was one who had suffered like ourselves and would not be appeased by setting his pain to music. There is something of this in Walton's Elegy on Donne. I do not believe that he was thinking of his poetical paces as he wrote it; or, if he was, he forgets them from time to time and falls into his natural gait. What he said ten years later in writing of Cartwright seems true of this,"Muses, I need you not, for Gr;ef and I Can in your absence weave an elegy." I should be yielding to my partiality for Walton if I called these verses poetry; but there is at least, in the eloquence of their honest sorrow, a tendency to become so which stops little short of it, and which is INTRODUCTION. xxxiii too often missed in the carefully cadenced ululation of similar efforts. Here, indeed, there seems no effort at all, and that surely is a crowning mercy. There is one phrase whose laconic pathos I find it hard to match elsewhere. It is where he bids his thoughts "forget he loved me." This is the true good breeding of sorrow. It may as well be said here, once for all, that Walton was no poet, so far as rhythm is an essential element of expression. His lyrics are mechanical and club-footed. He succeeded best in that measure, the rhymed couplet of ten syllables, which detaches itself least irreconcilably from prose. The nearer an author comes to being a poet, so much the worse for him should he persist in making verse the interpreter of his thought; so much the better for him should he wisely abandon it for something nearer to the habitual dialect of men. I think that Walton's prose owes much of its charm to the poetic sentiment in him which was denied a refuge in verse, and that his practice in metres may have given to his happier periods a measure and a music they would otherwise have wanted. That he had this practice has a xxxiv INTRODUCTION. direct bearing on the question of the authorship of " Thealma and Clearchus," of which I must say something at the proper time. Walton had not the strong passions which poets break to the light harness of verse, and indeed they and longevity such as his are foaled by dams of very different race. But he loved poetry, and the poetry he loved was generally good. He had also some critical judgment in it. Speaking of Marlowe's " Come live with me," and Raleigh's answer to it, he says, " They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good; I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age." His simplicity, it should seem, was not only a gift, but a choice as well. Not long before the publication of a volume of Donne's sermons (I640), Walton wrote a life of the author, which was prefixed to them. This piety was not volunteered, but devolved on him by the death of their common friend, Sir Henry Wotton (December, 1639), for whom he had been collecting the material. Donne lost nothing, and the world gained much, by this substitution; INTRODUCTION, XXXV for Walton thus learned by accident where his true talent lay, and was encouraged to write those other lives which, with this, make the volume that has endeared him to all who choose that their souls should keep good company. In a preface, beautiful alike for its form and the sentiment embodied in it, after a pretty apology for his own deficiencies, he says, " But be this to the disadvantage of the person represented, certain I am it is to the advantage of the beholder who shall here see the author's [Donne] picture ini a natural drcss, which ought to beget faith in what is spoken." And not only that but Walton's picture too! In this preference of the homely and familiar and in an artlessness which is not quite so artless as it would fain appear, lies the charm that never stales of Walton's manner. He would have applied his friend Wotton's verse to himself and affirmed, " Simple truth his utmost skill," but he was also a painstaking artist in his own way. As illustrations, take this sentence from the Life of Donne, describing him after the death of his wife:* * * 6 ~.. I,~.,' xxxvi INTRODUCTION. "Thus, as the Israelites sat mourning by the rivers of Babylon when they remembered Zion, so he gave some ease to his oppressed heart by thus venting his sorrows; thus he began the day and ended the night; ended the restless night and began the weary day in lamentations." Or this, of the nightingale, worthy to compete with Crashawe's, or with Jeremy Taylor's lark: - " But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very laborer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, 'Lord, what music hast Thou provided for the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth?'" He had learned of his great contemporaries also to turn and wind those many-membered periods which in unskilful hands become otherwise-minded as a herd of swine. The passage in the Introduction to his revised Life of Donne, where he compares himself to Pompey's bondman, and that in the Preface to the Life of Herbert, in which he speaks of:.: $ lee$e INTRODUCTION. Xxxvii Mary Magdalene, may serve as examples; and in these neither are the words caught at random, nor do they fall into those noble modulations by chance. And he could be succinct at need, as where he says: " He that praises Richard Hooker praises God, who hath given such gifts to men." Walton tells us that he saw the Scotch Covenanters, when in I644 they " came marching with it [the Covenant] gloriously upon their pikes and in their hats.... This I saw and suffered by it," whether in mind or purse he leaves doubtful. In this year he ceased to be an inhabitant of the Parish of St. Dunstan; and from that time till I650, when he took a house in Clerkenwell, he for the most part vanishes. We know incidentally that he was in London once in the course of the year 1645 and once again in that of I647. But these may have been flying visits, for there is no evidence that his second marriage (I646) took place there; and the statement of Antony a Wood, who knew him well, makes it probable that he may have spent at Stafford, where he had a small property, the years during which he xxxviii INTRODUCTION. cannot be shown to have lived anywhere else. To a man with his opinions, London could not have been more amiable during the Long Parliament and the Protectorate than during the reign of Charles II. to a man of his morals. The solitude of Stafford, where, to cite his own words, he could " Linger long days by Swaynham brook," seems more suitable to the conception and gestation of such a book as " The Complete Angler" than London could have been to a man whose companionable instincts were so strong that even fishing was not perfect happiness without a friend to share it. That the "Angler" was begun some years before it was published is rendered more probable by Walton's saying of Marlowe's song which he quotes, that it " was made at least fifty years ago." He was likely to know something about Marlowe through his own friendship with Drayton, who was the first adequately to signalize the poet's merit. Marlowe died in 1593, and the " at least fifty years" would bring us down to the Stafford INTRODUCTION. xxxiX period. There are passages in Walton which lead me to think he may have spent abroad some part of the time during which he is invisible to us. He set great store by the advantages of foreign travel, and gave his son the benefit of them. It seems likely that he gave up business in I644, and it may have been at Stafford that he saw some foraging party from Leslie's army which would not have spared his uncovenanted chickens. Internal evidence makes it likely that in I646 he wrote the preface to Quarles's "Shepherd's Eclogues," and that he was on terms of friendly acquaintance with him as a brother of the angle. He may have borrowed the name " Clora" from Quarles. It is true that he has put an h into it, but his spelling is always according to his own lights (mostly will-o'-the-wisps); and there are people who think crystals less lustrous without that letter which may be picked up anywhere in the land of Cokayne, where they are dropped so often. In I650 he published the " Reliquiae Wottonianae," prefixing to them a life of the author, printed in haste, he tells us, but corrected in later edi xl INTRODUCTION. tions. The " Angler" appeared in I653, and a second edition came out two years later. It was while he was in London during this latter year, probably to correct his proof-sheets, that he met Sanderson, who was there to perform the same function for the preface to a volume of sermons. Walton's account of this meeting is so characteristic that I shall quote it: - " About the time of his printing this excellent Preface, I met him accidentally in London in sad-colored clothes, and, God knows, far from being costly. The place of our meeting was near to Little Britain, where he had been to buy a book which he then had in his hand. We had no inclination to part presently, and therefore turned to stand in a corner under a penthouse, for it began to rain, and immediately the wind rose and the rain increased so much that both became so inconvenient as to force us into a cleanly house, where we had bread, cheese, ale, and a fire for our money. This rain and wind were so obliging to me as to force our stay there for at least an hour, to my great content and advantage.... And I gladly remember and mention it as an argument of my happiness and his great humility and condescension." It is exactly as if he were telling us of it, and this sweet persuasiveness of the living and naturally cadenced voice is never wanting INTRODUCTION. xli in Walton. It is indeed his distinction, and it is a very rare quality in writers, upon most of whom, if they ever happily forget themselves and fall into the tone of talk, the pen too soon comes sputtering in. The passage is interesting too because it illustrates both Walton's love of good company and his Boswellian sensitiveness to the attraction of superior men. Much as he loved fishing, it was in the minds of such men that he loved best to fish. And what a memory was his! The place, the sad-colored clothes, the book just bought, the rain and then the wind, the penthouse, the tavern, the bread, the ale, the fire, - everything is there that makes a picture. Then he reports Sanderson's discourse; and having done that, is reminded that this is a good time to give us a description of his person. In reading Walton's Lives (and no wonder Johnson loved them sol) I have a feeling that I have met him in the street and am hearing them from his own lips. I ask him about Donne, let us say. He begins, 1 Gray must have loved them too, and his Ode on a distant Prospect of Eton College was suggested by a passage in the Life of Wotton. xlii INTRODUCTION. but catching sight of some one who passes, gives me in parenthesis an account of him, comes back to Donne, and keeps on with him till somebody else goes by about whom he has an anecdote to tell; and so we get a leash of biographies in one. It is very delightful, and though more rambling than Plutarch, comes nearer to him than any other life-writing I can think of. Indeed I should be inclined to say that Walton had a genius for rambling rather than that it was his foible. The comfortable feeling he gives us that we have a definite purpose, mitigated with the license to forget it at the first temptation and take it up again as if nothing had happened, thus satisfying at once the conscientious and the natural man, is one of Walton's most prevailing charms. What vast balances of leisure does he not put to our credit! To read him is to go a-fishing with all its bewitching charms and contingencies. If there be many a dull reach in the stream of his discourse, where contemplation might innocently lapse into slumber, it is full also of nooks and eddies where nothing but our own incompetence will balk us of landing a fine INTRODUCTION. xliii fish. In this story of his meeting with Sanderson there is another point to be noticed. Walton's memory is always discreet, always well-bred. It never blabs. I think that one little fact is purposely omitted here, namely, who paid for the good cheer at the tavern. The scot was paid, to be sure, with " our money," but I doubt very much whether the poor country parson's purse were the lighter for it. In I658 Walton published separately the second and revised edition of his Life of Donne, with a preface engagingly full of himself. I say "engagingly full," because when he speaks of himself he never seems to usurp on other people, but only to share with all mankind a confidence to which they had as good a right as he. In I660 he prefixed a congratulatory eclogue on the Restoration to a volume of Alexander Brome's Songs. In this he contrives to bring in the praise of his friend's verses, and combines the tediousness of the Commendatory and the Birthday styles with entire success. Never inspired in verse, he becomes laborious unless where his feelings are stirred to the roots, as in the Elegy on Donne. xliv INTRODUCTION. In I662 he was at Worcester, the guest, probably, of his friend Bishop Morley. Here his second wife died and lies buried in the cathedral, with an inscription by him, simple and affectionate. In that year he removed with Morley (on his translation) to Winchester, and there spent the rest of his vigorous old age. From time to time he must have visited Charles Cotton, whose father he had known. We have no record of these visits (spent in fishing) further than that one of them is spoken of in a letter of Walton as proposed in I676. This was in his eightythird year, and implies in him that longevity of the taste for out-of-door sports and of the 4 muscle to endure their fatigues which are almost peculiar to Englishmen. Cotton was a Royalist country-gentleman with a handsome estate, which, after sidling safely through the intricacies of the Civil War, trickled pleasantly away through the chinks of its ' master's profusion. He was an excellent poet and a thorough master of succulently idiomatic English, which he treated with a country-gentlemanlike familiarity, as his master, Montaigne, had treated French. The two INTRODUCTION. xlv men loved one another, and this speaks well for the social charity of both. There must have been delicately understood and mutually respectful conventions of silence in an intimacy between the placidly believing author of the Lives and the translator of him who invented the Essay. Walton loved a gentleman of blue blood as honestly as Johnson did, and was, I am sure, as sturdily independent withal. He could condone almost anything, that had no taint of personal dishonor, in a gentleman and a Cavalier. His nature was incapable of envy, and, himself of obscurest lineage, there was nothing he relished more keenly than the long pedigrees of other people. While he enjoyed, he had also, I fancy, not merely a sense of joint ownership,.but perhaps of something like over-lordship, as in that winsome passage of the " Angler " he makes Venator say, after describing the landscape he has been looking on: "As I thus sat joying in my own happy condition and pitying the poor rich man that owns this and many other pleasant groves and meadows about me, I did thankfully remember what my Saviour said, that the meek xlvi INTRODUCTION. possess the earth." But with him the more noble the ancestry, the worse for their degenerous representative. A pedigree had not the right flavor for Walton unless newly spiced with achievement from generation to generation. In his Life of Sanderson, after proclaiming with heraldic satisfaction that he was of ancient family, he blows this trumpetblast against the recreant: - " For titles not acquired, but derived only, do but show us who of our ancestors have and how they have achieved that honor which their descendants claim and may not be worthy to enjoy. For if those titles descend to persons that degenerate into vice and break off the continued line of learning or valor or that virtue that acquired them, they destroy the very foundation upon which that honor was built, and all the rubbish of their vices ought to fall heavy on such dishonorable heads; ought to fall so heavy as to degrade them of their titles and blast their memories with reproach and shame." It is plain that Walton, had he lived now, would have made short work with an unsavory Peer. It is noticeable too that he gives Learning precedence over Valor. Walton had a genius for friendships and an amiability of nature ample for the comfortable housing of many at a time; he had INTRODUCTION. xlvii even a special genius for bishops, and seems to have known nearly the whole Episcopal bench of his day; but his friendship, like Lamb's, did not slink away from a fortune out at elbows, and he had, I more than suspect, a curiosity hospitable enough to entertain a broken gentleman (like the Carey whom he speaks of having known) if he had good talk or narrative or honest mirth in him and producible on demand. His friend Alexander Brome was surely no precisian. But these less reputable intimates he made welcome in a back-parlor of his mind, away from the street and with the curtains drawn, as if he would fain hide them even from himself.1 His habitual temper sought serious and thoughtful company, and he valued respectability as a wise man must, his own selfrespect as a good man ought. But Cotton was a man of genius,2 whose life was clean1 In his Life of Hooker, having to speak of George Sandys, he mentions his Travels, and his translations in verse from the Psalms and Job. He is silent about his version of Ovid's Metamorphoses (done in Virginia), though the book was in his own library. 2 Not yet extinct among his descendants. The late Lady Marian Alford, beside her social talents, had every gift that Fortune bestows on the artist save that of poverty. xlviii INTRODUCTION lier than his Muse always cared to be. If he wrote the Virgil Travesty, he also wrote verses which the difficult Wordsworth could praise, and a poem of gravely noble mood addressed to Walton on his Lives, in which he shows a knowledge of what goodness is that no bad man could have acquired. Let one line of it at least shine in my page, not as a sample but for its own dear sake:" For in a virtuous act all good men share." Those must have been delightful evenings which the two friends spent together after the day's fishing. Well into the night they must have lingered with much excellent discourse of books and men, now serious, now playful, much personal anecdote and reminiscence. Perhaps it was as well that Dr. Morley should be at Winchester, with all respect be it said, and not forgetting that Walton has told us he " loved such mirth as did not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning." At Walton's request Cotton wrote in ten days the treatise on fly-fishing which was added to the fifth edition of " The Complete INTRODUCTION. xlix Angler" in I676. 'What he says of Walton in it is interesting, and the reverence he expresses for his character especially so as coming from.a man of the world. " My father Walton," he makes Piscator say, "will be seen twice in no man's company he does not like, and likes none but such as he believes to be very honest men." It should be remembered that in those days the word " honest" had to the initiated ear a political and ecclesiastical as well as a moral meaning. Cotton was a far better poet than Walton, and had a more practised hand; yet his supplement to the "Angler" wants that charm. of inadvertency with which Walton knew how to make his most careful sentences waylay the ear, and his truly poetic sympathy with the sights and sounds of every-day Nature. Its chief value, I think, lies in this illustrative contrast. In I665 Walton wrote his Life of Hooker, less a labor of love than the others, but containing that homely picture of him reading Horace as he tended his scanty sheep, and called away by his wife to rock the cradle. In I670 came the Life of Herbert, written, he tells us, chiefly to please himself. Sometime d 1 INTRODUCTION. before I678, it is uncertain when, his daughter Anne became the wife of the Reverend William Hawkins, one of the prebends of Winchester, and with them he seems to have spent his latter years. In that year he wrote the Life of Sanderson, which, as showing no sign of mental disrepair, is surely an almost unparalleled feat for a man of eighty-five. Length of days is one of the blessings of the Old Testament, and surely it might be added to the Beatitudes of the New, when, as with Walton, it meant only a longer ripening, a more abundant leisure to look backwards without self-reproach, and forwards with an assured gratitude to God for a future goodness like the past. There is, perhaps, if we condescend to a purely utilitarian view, no stronger argument for belief in a personal Deity than that it makes possible this ennobling sense of gratitude; and in a time when such possibility has been so largely analyzed and refined away, Walton's habitual recognition of so direct and conscious an obligation that he cannot resist the interjectional expression of it is a chief cause of the solace and refreshment we feel in reading him. As we INTRODUCTION. li read we inhale an odor from the leaves as if flowers from the garden of childhood had been pressed between them, and for a moment, by the sweet sophistry of association, we stand again among them where they grew. Here is incontaminate piety, wholesome as bread. It is a gush of involuntary emotion like that first sincere and precious juice which their own weight forces from the grapes. A fine morning, a meadow flushed with primroses, are not only good in themselves, but sweeter and better because they give him occasion to be thankful for them. We may be wiser, but it may be doubted whether we are so happy, in our self-reliant orphanhood. He had two pleasures where we have but one, and that one doubtingly now that the shadow of the metaphysic cloud has darkened nature. In 1683 Walton published "Thealma and Clearchus, a pastoral history in smooth and easie verse written long since by John Chalkhill, Esq., an acquaintant and friend of Edmund Spencer [sic]." The preface is dated five years earlier. The poem is incomplete, with this quaint note by Walton at the iil INTRODUCTION. end: " And here the author died, and I hope the reader will be sorry." When Mr. S. W. Singer reprinted it in I820 he expressed his doubts whether such a person as John Chalkhill had ever existed, and his strong suspicion that it might be a youthful production of Walton himself. But several John (or Jon) Chalkhills have since been unearthed; one of them (who died in I615) being remotely connected with Walton through the marriage of his daughter with one of the Kens. Sir Harris Nicolas, who rejects Mr. Singer's suspicion as implying a duplicity of which honest Izaak would have been incapable, drolly enough fixes upon another John Chalkhill, fellow of Winchester College, as the probable author of the poem. This he does with Walton's statement that the author was " an acquaintant and friend" of Spenser, and that of John Chalkhill's monument in Winchester Cathedral that he died in I679, octogenarius, both before him. Now Spenser died in 1599; and this Chalkhill, at least, could not have known him. But if the other, who died in I615, wrote "Thealma and Clearchus" he certainly did not write it as it was printed INTRODUCTION. liii by Walton. The language is altogether too modern for that, unless, indeed, he was endowed with a spirit of prophecy that both foresaw and forestalled the changes in his mother-tongue. The invariable use of the possessive its and the elision of the e in the past participle would be conclusive. The tone is also too modern, though this is more easily to be felt than defined in words. While there is nothing that compels us to accept Mr. Singer's suggestion as to the authorship, it is certain that the poem has been largely rewritten by somebody, and this must have been Walton. It has many of the characteristics of his style, - his discursiveness, his habit of leaving the direct track of narrative on the suggestion of the first inviting by-path, his commonplaceness of invention, and, what is even more suspicious, the same imperfect rhymes, sometimes mnere assonances, which are found in verses admittedly his own. I find also, or think I find, unmistakable (though veiled) allusions to the Civil War consonant with some that Walton could not refrain in his acknowledged writings. There is almost liv INTRODUCTION. nothing in it that suggests poetry. Indeed I remember but a single happy phrase:"in the proud deep She and her bold Clearchus sweetly sleep In those soft beds of darkness." There is another passage worth quoting as applicable to Walton himself in his old age: "And he was almost grown a child again, Yet sound in judgment, not impaired in mind, For age had rather the soul's parts refined Than any way infirmed, his wit no less Than 't was in youth, his memory as fresh; He failed in nothing but his earthly part That tended to its centre, yet his heart Was still the same and beat as lustily." And in his preface Walton perfectly describes himself in describing the real or imaginary author: - "He was in his time a man generally known and as well beloved; for he was humble and obliging in his behavior, a gentleman, a scholar, very innocent and prudent; and indeed his whole life was useful, quiet, and virtuous." I am convinced that "Thealma and Clearchus," whoever may have sketched it, is mainly Walton's as it now stands, and I believe it to be the work of his middle or later life. The gap of five years between the date INTRODUCTION. Iv of the preface and that of publication is hard to explain if we suppose him to have been merely the editor. The hesitation of an author venturing himself, even under an alias, in a new direction, seems a more natural explanation. If he was the author, I cannot agree with Archdeacon Nares and Sir Harris Nicolas that the artifice was very culpable, or that Walton would have thought it so. The evidence internal and external that he was author of the two letters from "a quiet and comfortable [conformable?] citizen in London to two busy and factious shopkeepers in Coventry," published in I680, and signed R. W., seems to me conclusive. Had he attributed to Chalkhill a poem as bad in its morals as "Thealma and Clearchus" in its verse, it would have been quite another matter. Walton thought the poem good, or he would not have published it; and the worst harm that could come to Chalkhill would be the reputation of being a bad poet, - not very hard to bear with so many to keep him in countenance, and he safe under the sod for sixty-eight years. Whether author or editor, Walton did not lvi INTRODUCTION. live long to enjoy the mystification or share the success, if any there were. He wrote his own will in October, I683; and on the I5th December of that year, to borrow the words of his granddaughter's epitaph, written no doubt by himself, he died in the ninetieth year "of his innocency." In his will there is this remarkable passage: " My worldly estate, which I have nether got by falsehood or flattery, or the extreme crewelty of the law of this nation." This cruelty, I have no doubt, was the power which the law put into the hands of evil landlords. On this subject Walton held opinions which, if put in practice, would have prevented the social miseries of Ireland and the consequent po'litical retribution which England is compelled to suffer for them. This is all the more creditable to him because he was by temperament and principle conservative, and not only a friend to that order of the Universe which was by law established in Church and State, but a lover of it. He tells of a pitiless landlord who was a parishioner of Sanderson, and of Sanderson's successful dealing with him, and adds: INTRODUCTION. Ivii "It may be noted that in this age there are a sort of people so unlike the God of Mercy, so void of the bowels of pity, that they love only themselves and children, love them so as not to be concerned whether the rest of mankind waste their days in sorrow and shame, -people that are cursed with riches and a mis- I take that nothing but riches can make them and theirs I happy." The character of Walton's friendships and his fidelity to them when prorogued by death bear ample witness to the fine quality of his nature. How amiably human it was he betrays at every turn, yet with all his bolzhomic there is a dignity which never forgets itself or permits us to forget it. We may apply to him what he says of Sir Henry Wotton's father: that he was "a man of great modesty, of a most plain and single heart, of an ancient freedom and integrity of mind," and may say of him, as he says of Sir Henry himself, that he had "a most persuasive behavior." His friends loved to call him " honest' Izaak." He speaks of his own " simplicity and harmlessness," and tells that his humor was "to be free and pleasant and civilly merry," and that he " hated harsh censures." He makes it a prime quality of the gentleman Iviii INTRODUCTION. to be " communicable." He had no love of money and compassionates those who are " condemned to be rich." He was a stanch royalist and Churchman, loved music, painting, good ale, and a pipe, and takes care to tell us that a certain artificial fly " was made by a handsome woman and with a fine hand." But what justifies and ennobles these lowest loves, what gives a special and native aroma like that of Alexander, is that above all he loved the beauty of holiness and those ways of taking and of spending life that make it wholesome for ourselves and our fellows. His view of the world is not of the widest, but it is the Delectable Mountains that bound the prospect. Never surely was there a more lovable man nor to whom love found access by more avenues of sympathy. There are two books which have a place by themselves and side by side in our literature, -Walton's " Complete Angler" and White's " Natural History of Selborne; " and they are books, too, which have secured immortality without showing any tincture of imagination or of constructive faculty, and in the gift of one or the other of these that distinction com INTRODUCTION. lix monly lies. They neither stimulate thought nor stir any passionate emotion. If they make us wiser, it is indirectly and without attempting it, by making us more cheerful. The purely literary charm of neither of them will alone authorize the place they hold so securely, though, as respects the "Angler," this charm must be taken more largely into account. They cannot be called popular, because they attract only a limited number of readers, but that number is kept full by new recruits in every generation; and they have survived every peril to which editing could expose them, even the crowning one of illustration. They have this in common, that those who love them find themselves growing more and more to love the authors of them too. Theirs is an immortality of affection, perhaps the most desirable, as it is the rarest, of all. I do not mean that there are no books in other languages, and no other books in our own, that invite to a similar intimacy and inspire the same enthusiasm of regard. Don Quixote and Elia appeal to the memory at once. But in both of these there is also the sorcery of genius, there is the touch of the master, as lx INTRODUCTION. well as the shy personal attractiveness of the writer. In the two books of which I have been speaking what primarily interests us is the unconscious revelation of the authors' character; and it is through the kindly charm of this and a certain homely inspiration drawn from the sources of every-day experience that they tighten their hold upon us. Nature had endowed these men with the simple skill to make hapiness out of the cheap material that is within the means of the poorest of us. The good fairy gave them to weave cloth of gold out of straw. They did not waste their time or strive to show their cleverness in discussing whether life were worth living, but found every precious moment of it so without seeking, or made it so without grimace, and with no thought that they were doing anything worth remark. Both these books are pre-eminently cheerful books and have the invaluable secret of distilling sunshine out of leaden skies. They are companionable books, that tempt us out of doors and keep us there. The reader of the " Angler" 1 especially finds himself growing conscious of one meaning in the sixth Beatitude too often INTRODUCTION. lxi overlooked, -that the pure in heart shall see God, not only in some future and far-off sense, but wherever they turn their eyes. I have hesitated to say that Walton had style, because, though that quality, the handmaid of talent and the helpmeet of genius, have left the unobtrusive traces of its deft hand in certain choicer parts of Walton's writing,-his guest-chambers as it were,yet it does by no means pervade and regulate the whole. For in a book we feel the influence of style everywhere, though we never catch it at its work, as in a house we divine the neat-handed ministry of woman. Walton too often leaves his sentences in a clutter. But there are other qualities which, if they do not satisfy like style, are yet even more agreeable, draw us nearer to an author, and make us happier in him. Why try to discover what the charm of a book is, if only it charm? If I must seek a word that more than any other explains the pleasure which Walton's way of writing gives us, I should say it was its innocefcy. It refreshes like the society of children. I do not know whether he had humor, but there are passages that K t.* INTRODUCTION. suggest it, as where, after quoting Montaigne's delightful description of how he played with his cat, he goes on: "Thus freely speaks Montaigne concerning cats," as if he had taken an undue liberty with them; or where he makes a meteorologist of the crab, that " at a certain age gets into a dead fish's shell, and like a hermit dwells there alone studying the wind and weather; " or where he tells us of the palmer-worm, that " he will boldly and disorderly wander up and down, and not endure to be kept to a diet or fixed to a particular place." And what he says of Sanderson -that "he did put on some faint purposes to marry "-would have arrided Lamb. These, if he meant to be droll, have that seeming inadvertence which gives its highest zest to humor and makes the eye twinkle with furtive connivance. Walton's weaknesses, too, must be reckoned among t his other attractions. He praises a medita ' life, and with evident sincerity; but we feel, that he liked nothing so well as good talk. His credulity leaves front and back door invitingly open. For this I rather praise than censure him, since it brought him the chance INTRODUCTION. lxiii of a miracle at any odd moment, and this complacency of belief was but a lower form ofthe same quality of mind that in more serious questions gave him his equanimity of faith. And how persuasively beautiful that equanimity is! Heaven was always as real to him as to us are countries we have seen only in the map, and so near that he caught wafts of the singing there when the wind was in the right quarter. I must not forget Walton's singular and genuine love of Nature and his poetical sympathy with it, less common then than now when " all have got the seed." This love was not in the Ercles vein such as is now in fashion, but tender and true, and expresses itself not deliberately but in caressing ejaculations, as where he speaks of " the little living creatures with which the sun and summer adorn and beautify the river-banks and meadows... whose life, they say, Nature intended not to exceed an hour, and yet that life is made shorter by other flies or by accident." What far-reaching pity in this concluding sigh, and how keen a sense of the sweetness of life, too! In one respect, I think, he is peculiar, - his sensitiveness to..___,,.... —~ Ixiv INTRODUCTION. odors. In enumerating the recreations of man he reckons sweet smells among them. It is Venator who says this, it is true; but in the " Angler" there is absolutely no dramatic se and it is always Walton who seaks It is, indeed, a part of our entertainment to see him doubling so many parts and all the while so unmistakably hinself. Walton certainly cannot be called original in the sense that he opened new paths to thought or new vistas to imagination. Such men are rare, but almost as rare are those who have force enough of nature to suffuse whatever they write with their own individuality and to make a thought fresh again and their own by the addition of this indefinable supplement. This constitutes literary originality, and this Walton had. Whatever entered his mind or memory came forth again plus Izaak Walton. We have borrowed of the Latin mythology the word " genius" to express certain intellectual powers or aptitudes which we are puzzled to define, so elusive are they. I have already admitted that this term in its ordinary acceptation cannot be applied to Walton. This would imply INTRODUCTION. Ixv larger "draughts of intellectual day" than his ever were or could be. For we ordinarily confine it to a single species of power which seems sometimes (as in Villon, Marlowe, and Poe) wholly dissociated from the rest of the man and continues to haunt the ruins of him with its superior presence as if it were rather a genius loci than the natale conmes qui temperat astruim. In Walton's case, since a Daimon or a Genius would be too lofty for the business, might we not take the Brownie of our own Northern mythology for the type of such superior endowment as he clearly had? We can fancy him ministered to by such a homely and helpful creature, - not a genius exactly, but answering the purpose sufficiently well, and marking a certain natural distinction in those it singles out for its innocent and sportful companionship. And it brings a blessing also to those who treat it kindly, as Walton did. Fortunate senex, ergo tua rura manebunt. — L nIl,I "I* Being a Difcourfe of FI S H and FISH IN G, Not unworthy the petufal of moft Angler:. Simon Peter fad, I go a fifhing: and tbeyaid, We alfo il go witb thee. John 2. 3. Londott, Printed by T. Maxey for RICH. MARRIOT,in. S. Dunftans Church-yard Fleetfree't, 1653. I TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL JOHN OFFLEY, ESQ. OF MADELY MANOR, IN THE COUNTY OF STAFFORD, My most Honored Friend. SIR, HAVE made so ill use of your former favors, as by them to be encouraged to intreat that they may be enlarged to the Patronage and Protection of this Book: and I have put on a modest confidence, that I shall not be denied, because it is a Discourse of Fish and Fishing, which you know so well, and both love and practise so much. You are assured, though there be ignorant men of another belief, that Angling is an Art; and you know that Art better than others: and that this truth is demonstrated by the fruits of that pleasant labor which you enjoy when you purpose to give rest to your mind, and divest yourself of your more serious business, and, which is often, dedicate a day or two to this recreation. At which time, if common Anglers should attend you, and be eyewitnesses of the success, not of 1Xx THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. your fortune, but your skill, it would doubtless beget in them an emulation to be like you, and that emulation might beget an industrious diligence to be so; but I know it is not attainable by common capacities. And there be now many men of great wisdom, learning, and experience, which love and practise this Art, that know I speak the truth. Sir, -This pleasant curiosity of Fish and Fishing, of which you are so great a master, has been thought worthy the pens and practices of divers in other nations that have been reputed men of great learning and wisdom; and amongst those of this nation, I remember Sir Henry Wotton, a dear lover of this Art, has told me that his intentions were to write a Discourse of the Art, and in praise of Angling. And doubtless he had done so, if death had not prevented him; the remembrance of which hath often made me sorry: for, if he had lived to do it, then the unlearned Angler had seen some better Treatise of this Art, a Treatise that might have proved worthy his perusal; which, though some have undertaken, I could never yet see in English. But mine may be thought as weak, and as unworthy of common view: and I do here freely confess that I should rather excuse myself, than censure others, my own discourse being liable to THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY. lxxi so many exceptions; against which, you, Sir, might make this one, -that it can contribute nothing to your knowledge. And, lest a longer Epistle may diminish your pleasure, I shall make this no longer than to add this following truth, That I am really, Sir, Your affectionate Friend, And most humble Servant, Iz. WA. II ' -1 _ - i -ti~ ---;, '; --- r sr, i I 3 -~i~- ~5? / " _:- i , I\ biizai L-IIIIIJJ I Il I ' i An_ I 5 i m 1 U - - E am I TO ALL READERS OF THIS DISCOURSE, BUT ESPECIALLY TO THE HONEST ANGLER. THINK fit to tell thee these following truths, —that I did neither undertake, nor write, nor publish, and much less own, this Discourse to please myself: and having been too easily drawn to do all to please others, as I proposed not the gaining of credit by this undertaking, so I would not willingly lose any part of that to which I had a just title before I begun it; and do therefore desire and hope, if I deserve not commendations, yet I may obtain pardon. And though this Discourse may be liable to some exceptions, yet I cannot doubt but that most Readers may receive so much pleasure or profit by it, as may make it worthy the time of their perusal, if they be not too grave or too busy men. And this is all the confidence that I can put on, concerning the merit of what is here offered to their consideration and censure; and if the last prove too severe, as I have a liberty, so I am resolved to use it and neglect all sour censures. And I wish the Reader also to take notice, that in writing of it I have made myself a recreation of a recreation. And that it might prove so to him, and not read dull and tediously, I have in several places mixed, not any scurrility, but some innocent, harmless mirth: of which, if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge; for divines say, There are offences given, and offences not given but taken. And I am the willinger to justify the pleasant part of it, because, though it is known I can be serious at seasonable lxxiv WALTON TO THE READER. times, yet the"whqle Discourse is, or rather was, a picture of my own disposition; especially in such days and times as I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing with honest Nat. and R. Roe: but they are gone, and with them most of my pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away and returns not. And next let me add this, that he that likes not the book should like the excellent picture of the Trout, and some of the other fish; which I may take a liberty to commend, because they concern not myself. Next let me tell the Reader, that in that which is the more useful part of this Discourse, that is to say, the observations of the nature, and breeding, and seasons, and catching of fish, I am not so simple as not to know that a captious Reader may find exceptions against something said of some of these: and therefore I must entreat him to consider, that experience teaches us to know that several countries alter the time, and I think almost the manner, of fishes' breeding, but doubtless of their being in season: as may appear by three rivers in Monmouthshire, namely, Severn, Wye, and Usk; where Camden (Brit., fol. 633) observes, that in the river Wye, Salmon are in season from September to April; and we are certain that in Thames, and Trent, and in most other rivers, they be in season the six hotter months. -Now for the Art of Catching Fish, that is to say, how to make a man that was none to be an Angler by a book; he that undertakes it shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales, a most valiant and excellent fencer, who in a printed book, called "A Private School of Defence," undertook to teach that art or science, and was laughed at for his labor. Not but that many useful things might be learned by that book, but he was laughed at, because that art was not to be taught by words, but practice: and so must Angling. And note also, that in this Discourse I do not undertake to say all that is known, or may be said of WALTON TO THE READER. Ixxv it, but I undertake to acquaint the Reader with many things that are not usually known to every Angler; and I shall leave gleanings and observations enough to be made out of the experience of all that love and practise this recreation, to which I shall encourage them. For Angling may be said to be so like the Mathematics that it can never be fully learned; at least not so fully but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us. But I think all that love this game may here learn something that may be worth their money, if they be not poor and needy men; and in case they be, I then wish them to forbear to buy it: for I write not to get money, but for pleasure, and this Discourse boasts of no more; for I hate to promise much and deceive the Reader. And however it proves to him, yet I am sure I have found a high content in the search and conference of what is here offered to the Reader's view and censure; I wish him as much in the perusal of it. And so I might here take my leave; but will stay a little and tell him, that whereas it is said by many, that, in fly-fishing for a Trout, the Angler must observe his twelve several flies for the twelve months of the year; I say, he that follows that rule shall be as sure to catch fish, and be as wise, as he that makes hay by the fair days in an almanac, and no surer; for those very flies that use to appear about and on the water in one month of the year, may the following year come almost a month sooner dr later, as the same year proves colder or hotter: and yet in the following Discourse I have set down the twelve flies that are in reputation with many Anglers, and they may serve to give him some observations concerning them. And he may note, that there are in Wales and other countries peculiar flies proper to the particular place or country; and doubtless, unless a man makes a fly to counterfeit that very fly in that place, he is like to lose his labor, or much of it: but for the Ixxvi WALTON TO THE READER. generality, three or four flies neat and rightly made, and not too big, serve for a Trout in most rivers all the summer. And for winter fly-fishing, it is as useful as an almanac out of date. And of these, because as no man is born an artist, so no man is born an Angler, I thought fit to give thee this notice. When I have told the Reader, that in this fifth impression there are many enlargements, gathered both by my own observations and the communication with friends, I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following Discourse; and that, if he be an honest Angler, the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing. I. W. THE FIRST DAY. CHAP. I. - A Conference betwixt an ANGLER, a HUNTER, and a FALCONER, each commending his Recreation. PISCATOR, VENATOR, AUCEPS. PISCATOR. i s, OU are well overtaken, Gentlemen: a good morning to you both: I have stretched my legs up Tottenham Hill to overtake you, hoping your business may occasion you towards Ware, whither I am going this fine, fresh May morning. 2 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. VENATOR. Sir, I, for my part, shall almost answer your hopes; for my purpose is to drink my morning's draught at the Thatched House in Hoddesden; and I think not to rest till I come thither, where I have appointed a friend or two to meet me: but for this gentleman that you see with me, I know not how far he intends his journey; he came so lately into my company, that I have scarce had time to ask him the question. AUCEPS. Sir, I shall, by your favor, bear you company as far as Theobald's; and there leave you, for then I turn up to a friend's house who mews a hawk for me, which I now long to see. VEN. Sir, we are all so happy as to have a fine, fresh, cool morning, and I hope we shall each be the happier in the others' company. And, Gentlemen, that I may not lose yours, I shall either abate or amend my pace to enjoy it; knowing that, as the Italians say, "Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter." Auc. It may do so, Sir, with the help of good discourse, which, methinks, we may promise from you that both look and speak so cheerfully; and, for my part, I promise you as an invitation to it, that I will be as free and open-hearted as discretion will allow me to be with strangers. VEN. And, Sir, I promise the like. CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 3 Pisc. I am right glad to hear your answers: and in confidence you speak the truth, I shall put on a boldness to ask you, Sir, whether business or pleasure caused you to be so early up, and walk so fast; for this other gentleman hath declared he is going to see a hawk, that a friend mews for him. VEN. Sir, mine is a mixture of both, a little business and more pleasure: for I intend this day to do all my business, and then bestow another day or two in hunting the otter, which a friend, that I go to meet, tells me is much pleasanter than any other chase whatsoever; howsoever, I mean to try it; for to-morrow morning we shall meet a pack of otter-dogs of noble Mr. Sadler's, upon Amwell Hill, who will be there so early, that they intend to prevent the sun rising. Pisc. Sir, my fortune has answered my desires; and my purpose is to bestow a day or two in helping to destroy some of those villanous vermin; for I hate them perfectly, because they love fish so well, or rather, because they destroy so much; indeed, so much, that, in my judgment, all men that keep otter-dogs ought to have pensions from the King to encourage them to destroy the very breed of those base otters, they do so much mischief. VEN. But what say you to the foxes of the 4 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. CPART I. nation? Would not you as willingly have them destroyed? for doubtless they do as much mischief as otters do. PIsc. 0 Sir, if they do, it is not so much to me and my fraternity as those base vermin the otters do. Auc. Why, Sir, I pray, of what fraternity are you, that you are so angry with the poor otters? Pisc. I am, Sir, a Brother of the Angle, and therefore an enemy to the otter: for you are to note that we Anglers all love one another, and therefore do I hate the otter, both for my own and their sakes who are of my brotherhood. VEN. And I am a lover of hounds; I have followed many a pack of dogs many a mile, and heard many merry huntsmen make sport and scoff at Anglers. Auc. And I profess myself a Falconer, and have heard many grave, serious men pity them, 't is such a heavy, contemptible, dull recreation. Pisc. You know, Gentlemen, 't is an easy thing [to scoff at any art or recreation: a little wit, mixed with ill-nature, confidence, and malice, will do it; but though they often venture boldly, yet they are often caught, even in their own trap, according to that of Lucian, the father of the family of scoffers. CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 5 " Lucian, well skilled in scoffing, this hath writ: Friend, that's your folly which you think your wit: This you vent oft, void both of wit and fear, Meaning another, when yourself you jeer." If to this you add what Solomon says of scoffers, that " they are an abomination to mankind " (Prov. xxiv. 9), let him that thinks fit scoff on, and be a scoffer still; but I account them enemies to me, and to all that love virtue and Angling. And for you that have heard many grave, serious men pity Anglers, let me tell you, Sir, there be many men that are by others taken to be serious and grave men, which we contemn and pity. Men that are taken to be grave, because nature hath made them of a sour complexion, money-getting men, - men that spend all their time, first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busy or discontented: for these poor-rich-men, we Anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thoughts to think ourselves so happy. No, no, Sir, we enjoy a contentedness above the reach of such dispositions, and as the learned and ingenious Montaigne says like himself freely, "When my cat and I entertain each other with, mutual apish tricks, as playing with a garter, who knows but that I make my cat more sport than she t.'s 1,,, 6 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. makes me? Shall I conclude her to be simple, that has her time to begin or refuse to play as freely as I myself have? Nay, who knows but that it is a defect of my not understanding her language (for doubtless cats talk and reason with one another) that we agree no better? And who knows but that she pities me for being no wiser than to play with her, and laughs and censures my folly for making sport for her, when we two play together?" Thus freely speaks Montaigne concerning cats, and I hope I may take as great a liberty to blame any man, and laugh at him too, let him be never so grave, that hath not heard what Anglers can say in the justification of their art and recreation; which I may again tell you is so full of pleasure, CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 7 that we need not borrow their thoughts to think ourselves happy. VEN. Sir, you have almost amazed me: for though I am no scoffer, yet I have, I pray let me speak it without offence, always looked upon Anglers as more patient and more simple men than I fear I shall find you to be. Pise. Sir, I hope you will not judge my earnestness to be impatience: and for my simplicity, if by that you mean a harmlessness, or that simplicity which was usually found in the primitive Christians, who were, as most Anglers are, quiet men and followers of peace, - men that were so simply-wise as not to sell their consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation and a fear to die; if you mean such simple men as lived in those times when there were fewer lawyers, when men might have had a lordship safely conveyed to them in a piece of parchment no bigger than your hand, though several sheets will not do it safely in this wiser age, - 1 say, Sir, if you take us Anglers to be such simple men as I have spoken of, then myself and those of my profession will be glad to be so understood: but if by simplicity you meant to express a general defect in those that profess and practice the excellent art of Angling, I hope in time to disabuse you, and make the contrary appear so evidently, 8 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. that, if you will but have patience to hear me, I shall remove all the anticipations that discourse, or time, or prejudice, have possessed you with against that laudable and ancient art; for I know it is worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man. But, Gentlemen, though I be able to do this, I am not so unmannerly as to engross all the discourse to myself: and, therefore, you two having declared yourselves, the one to be a lover of Hawks, the other of Hounds, I shall be most glad to hear what you can say in the commendation of that recreation which each of you love and practise; and having heard what you can say, I shall be glad to exercise your attention with what I can say concerning my own recreation and art of Angling, and by this means we shall make the way to seem the shorter: and if you like my motion, I would have Mr. Falconer to begin. Auc. Your motion is consented to with all my heart; and, to testify it, I will begin as you have desired me. And first for the element that I use to trade in, which is the Air, an element of more worth than weight, an element that doubtless exceeds both the earth and water; for though I sometimes deal in both, yet the air is most properly mine, - I and CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 9 my Hawks use that most, and it yields us most recreation. It stops not the high soaring of my noble, generous Falcon: in it she ascends to such an height, as the dull eyes of beasts and fish are not able to reach to; their bodies are too gross for such high elevations: in the air my troops of Hawks soar up on high, and when they are lost in the sight of men, then they attend upon and converse with the Gods; therefore I think my Eagle is so justly styled Jove's servant in ordinary: and that very Falcon, that I am now going to see, deserves no meaner a title, for she usually in her flight endangers herself, like the son of Daedalus, to have her wings scorched by the sun's heat, she flies so near it, but her mettle makes her careless of danger; for she then heeds nothing, but makes her nimble pinions cut the fluid air, and so makes her high way over the steepest mountains and deepest rivers, and in her glorious career looks with contempt upon those high steeples and magnificent palaces which we adore and wonder at; from which height I can make her to descend by a word from my mouth, which she both knows and obeys, to accept of meat from my hand, to own me for her master, to go home with me, and be willing the next day to afford me the like recreation. 10 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. And more: this element of air which I profess to trade in, the worth of it is such, and it is of such necessity, that no creature whatsoever, not only those numerous creatures that feed on the face of the earth, hut those various creatures that have their dwelling within the waters, - every creature that hath life in its nostrils stands in need of my element. The waters cannot preserve the fish without air, witness the not breaking of ice in an extreme frost: the reason is, for that if the inspiring and expiring organ of any animal be stopped, it suddenly yields to nature, and dies. Thus necessary is air to the existence both of fish and beasts, nay, even to man himself; that air, or breath of life with which God at first inspired mankind (Gen. ii. 7), he, if he wants it, dies presently, becomes a sad object to all that loved and beheld him, and in an instant turns to putrefaction. Nay, more, the very birds of the air, those that be not Hawks, are both so many and so useful and pleasant to mankind, that I must not let them pass without some observations: they both feed and refresh him; feed him with their choice bodies, and refresh him with their heavenly voices. I will not undertake to mention the several kinds of fowl by which this is done; and his curious palate pleased by day, and which with their very CHAP. 1.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. ItI excrements afford him a soft lodging at night. These I will pass by, but not those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which Nature hath furnished them to the shame of Art. As first the Lark, when she means to rejoice, to cheer herself and those that hear her, she then quits the earth and sings as she ascends higher into the air; and, having ended her heavenly employment, grows then mute and sad to think she must descend to the dull earth, which she would not touch but for necessity. How do the Blackbird and Thrassel with their melodious voices bid welcome to the cheerful spring, and in their fixed mouths warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can reach to! Nay, the smaller birds also do the like in their particular seasons, as namely the Laverock, the Titlark, the little Linnet, and the honest Robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead. But the Nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very laborer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, 12 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, "Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth! " And this makes me the less to wonder at the many aviaries in Italy, or at the great charge of Varro his aviary, the ruins of which are yet to be seen in Rome, and is still so famous there, that it is reckoned for one of those notables which men of foreign nations either record, or lay up in their memories when they return from travel. This for the birds of pleasure, of which very much more might be said. My next shall be of birds of political use; I think 't is not to be doubted that Swallows have been taught to carry letters between two armies. But 't is certain that, when the Turks besieged Malta or Rhodes, I now remember not which 't was, Pigeons are then related to carry and recarry letters. And Mr. G. Sandys, in his Travels, relates it to be done betwixt Aleppo and Babylon. But if that be disbelieved, 't is not to be doubted that the Dove was sent out of the ark by Noah, to give him notice of land, when to him all appeared to be sea; and the Dove proved a faithful and comfortable messenger. CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I3 And for the sacrifices of the Law, a pair of Turtledoves or young Pigeons were as well accepted as costly bulls and rams. And when God would feed the Prophet Elijah (i Kings xvii. 4-6) after a kind of miraculous manner, he did it by Ravens, who brought him meat morning and evening. Lastly, the Holy Ghost, when he descended visibly upon our Saviour, did it by assuming the shape of a Dove. And, to conclude this part of my discourse, pray remember these wonders were done by birds of the air, the element in which they and I take so much pleasure. There is also a little contemptible winged creature, an inhabitant of my aerial element, namely the laborious Bee, of whose prudence, policy, and regular government of their own commonwealth I might say much, as also of their several kinds, and how useful their honey and wax are both for meat and medicines to mankind; but I will leave them to their sweet labor, without the least disturbance, believing them to be all very busy at this very time amongst the herbs and flowers that we see Nature puts forth this May morning. And now to return to my Hawks, from whom I have made too long a digression; you are to note, that they are usually distinguished into two kinds; namely, the Long-winged and the Short-winged 14 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Hawk; of the first kind, there be chiefly in use amongst us in this nation, The Gerfalcon and Jerkin, The Falcon and Tassel-gentle, The Laner and Laneret, The Bockerel and Bockeret, The Saker and Sacaret, The Merlin and Jack Merlin, The Hobby and Jack; There is the Stelletto of Spain, The Blood-red Rook from Turkey, The Waskite from Virginia. And there is of Short-winged Hawks, The Eagle and Iron, The Goshawk and Tarcel, The Sparhawk and Musket, The French Pye of two sorts. These are reckoned Hawks of note and worth, but we have also of an inferior rank, The Stanyel, the Ringtail, The Raven, the Buzzard, The Forked Kite, the Bald Buzzard, The Hen-driver, and others that I forbear to name. Gentlemen, if I should enlarge my discourse to the observation of the Eires, the Brancher, the Ramish Hawk, the Haggard, and the two sorts of Lentners, and then treat of their several ayries, their mewings, rare order of casting, ard the renovation CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I 5 of their feathers; their reclaiming, dieting, and then come to their rare stories of practice;- I say, if I should enter into these, and many other observations that I could make, it would be much, very much pleasure to me: but lest I should break the rules of civility with you, by taking up more than the proportion of time allotted to me, I will here break off, and entreat you, Mr. Venator, to say what you are able in the commendation of Hunting, to which you are so much affected; and if time will serve, I will beg your favor for a further enlargement of some of those several heads of which I have spoken. But no more at present. VEN. Well, Sir, and I will now take my turn, and will first begin with a commendation of the Earth, as you have done most excellently of the Air; the earth being that element upon which I drive my pleasant, wholesome, hungry trade. The earth is a solid, settled element; an element most universally beneficial both to man and beast: to men who have their several recreations upon it, as horse-races, hunting, sweet smells, pleasant walks: the earth feeds man, and all those several beasts that both feed him and afford him recreation. What pleasure doth man take in hunting the stately Stag, the generous Buck, the Wild-Boar, the cunning Otter, the crafty Fox, and the fearful Hare! I6 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. And if I may descend to a lower game, what pleasure is it sometimes with gins to betray the very vermin of the earth! as namely, the Fitchet, the Fulimart, the Ferret, the Polecat, the Mouldwarp, and the like creatures that live upon the face and within the bowels of the earth! How doth the earth bring forth herbs, flowers, and fruits, both for physic and the pleasure of mankind! and above all, to me at least, the fruitful vine, of which when I drink moderately it clears my brain, cheers my heart, and sharpens my wit. How could Cleopatra have feasted Mark Antony with eight wild-boars roasted whole at one supper, and other meat suitable, if the earth had not been a bountiful mother? But to pass by the mighty Elephant, which the earth breeds and nourisheth, and descend to the least of creatures, how doth the earth afford us a doctrinal example in the little Pismire, who in the summer provides and lays up her winter provision, and teaches man to do the like! The earth feeds and carries those horses that carry us. If I would be prodigal of my time and your patience, what might not I say in commendations of the earth? that puts limits to the proud and raging sea, and by that means preserves both man and beast that it destroys them not, as we see it daily doth those that venture upon the sea, and are CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 17' there shipwrecked, drowned, and left to feed haddocks; when we that are so wise as to keep ourselves on earth, walk, and talk, and live, and eat, and drink, and go a hunting: of which recreation I will say a little, and then leave Mr. Piscator to the commendation of Angling. Hunting is a game for Princes and noble persons; it hath been highly prized in all ages; it was one of the qualifications that Xenophon bestowed on his Cyrus, that he was a hunter of wild beasts. Hunting trains up the younger nobility to the use of manly exercises in their riper age. What more manly exercise than hunting the Wild-Boar, the Stag, the Buck, the Fox, or the Hare! How (loth it preserve health, and increase strength and activity! And for the dogs that we use, who can commend their excellency to that height which they deserve? How perfect is the Hound at smelling, who never leaves or forsakes his first scent, but follows it through so many changes and varieties of other scents, even over and in the water, and into the earth! What music doth a pack of dogs then make to any man, whose heart and ears are so happy as to be set to the tune of such instruments! How will a right Greyhound fix his eye on the best Buck in a herd, single him out, and follow I8 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. him, and him only, through a whole herd of rascal game, and still know and then kill him! For my Hounds, I know the language of them, and they know the language and meaning of one another, as perfectly as we know the voices of those with whom we discourse daily. I might enlarge myself in the commendation of Hunting, and of the noble Hound especially, as also of the docibleness of dogs in general; and I might make many observations of land-creatures, that for composition, order, figure, and constitution approach nearest to the completeness and understanding of man; especially of those creatures which Moses in the Law permitted to the Jews (Lev. ix. 2-8), which have cloven hoofs and chew the cud, which I shall forbear to name, because I will not be so uncivil to Mr. Piscator as not to allow him a time for the commendation of Angling, which he calls an Art; but doubtless 't is an easy one: and, Mr. Auceps, I doubt we shall hear a watery discourse of it, but I hope 't will not be a long one. Auc. And I hope so too, though I fear it will. PIsc. Gentlemen, let not prejudice prepossess you. I confess my discourse is like to prove suitable to my recreation, calm and quiet; we seldom take the name of God into our mouths, CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I9 but it is either to praise him or pray to him: if others use it vainly in the midst of their recreations, so vainly as if they meant to conjure, I must ',tell you it is neither our fault nor our custom; we protest against it. But pray remember, I accuse nobody; for as I would not make "a watery discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into it; nor would I raise the reputation of my own art by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to what I mean to say. And now for the Water, the element that I trade in. The Water is the eldest daughter of the creation, the element upon which the Spirit of.God did first move (Gen. i. 2), the element which God commanded to bring forth living creatures abundantly; and without which, those that inhabit the land, even all creatures that have breath in their nostrils, must suddenly return to putrefaction. Moses, the great law-giver and chief philosopher, skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians, who was called the friend of God, and knew the mind of the Almighty, names this element the first in the creation; this is the element upon which the Spirit of God did first move, and is the chief ingredient in the creation: many philosophers have made it.to comprehend all the other elements, and most 20 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. allow it the chiefest in the mixtion of all living creatures. There be that profess to believe that all bodies are made of water, and may be reduced back again to water only; they endeavor to demonstrate it thus: - Take a willow, or any like speedy-growing plant, newly rooted in a box or barrel full of earth, weigh them all together exactly when the trees begin to grow, and then weigh all together after the tree is increased from its first rooting to weigh an hundred pound weight more than when it was first rooted and weighed; and you shall find this augment of the tree to be without the diminution of one drachm weight of the earth. Hence they infer this increase of wood to be from water of rain, or from dew, and not to be from any other element. And they affirm, they can reduce this wood back again to water; and they affirm, also, the same may be done in any animal or vegetable. And this I take to be a fair testimony of the excellency of my element of Water. The Water is more productive than the earth. Nay, the earth hath no fruitfulness without showers or dews; for all the herbs and flowers and fruits are produced and thrive by the water; and the very minerals are fed by streams that run under CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 21 ground, whose natural course carries them to the tops of many high mountains, as we see by several springs breaking forth on the tops of the highest hills; and this is also witnessed by the daily trial and testimony of several miners. Nay, the increase of those creatures that are bred and fed in the water are not only more and more miraculous, but more advantageous to man, not only for the lengthening of his life, but for the preventing of sickness; for 't is observed by the most learned physicians, that the casting off of Lent and other fish days, -which hath not only given the lie to so many learned, pious, wise founders of colleges, for which we should be ashamed, - hath doubtless been the chief cause of those many putrid, shaking, intermitting agues, unto which this nation of ours is now more subject than those wiser countries that feed on herbs, salads, and plenty of fish; of which it is observed in story, that the greatest part of the world now do. And it may be fit to remember that Moses (Lev. xi. 9, Deut. xiv. 9) appointed fish to be the chief diet for the best commonwealth that ever yet was. And it is observable, not only that there are fish, - as namely, the Whale, three times as big as the mighty Elephant, that is so fierce in battle, - but 22 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. that the mightiest feasts have been of fish. The Romans in the height of their glory have made fish the mistress of all their entertainments; they have had music to usher in their Sturgeons, Lampreys, and Mullets, which they would purchase at rates rather to be wondered at than believed. He that shall view the writings of Macrobius, or Varro, may be confirmed and informed of this, and of the incredible value of their fish and fish-ponds. But, Gentlemen, I have almost lost myself, which I confess I may easily do in this philosophical discourse; I met with most of it very lately, and, I hope, happily, in a conference with a most learned physician, Dr. Wharton, a dear friend, that loves both me and my art of Angling. But however, I will wade no deeper in these mysterious arguments, but pass to such observations as I can manage with more pleasure, and less fear of running into error. But I must not yet forsake the waters, by whose help we have so many known advantages. And first, to pass by the miraculous cures of our known baths, how advantageous is the sea for our daily traffic, without which we could not now subsist! How does it not only furnish us with food and physic for the bodies, but with such observations for the mind as ingenious persons would not want! CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER3 23 How ignorant had we been of the beauty of Florence, of the monuments, urns, and rarities that yet remain in and near unto old and new Rome, so many as it is said will take up a year's time to view, and afford to each of them but a convenient consideration; and therefore it is not to be wondered at, that so learned and devout a father as St. Jerome, after his wish to have seen Christ in the flesh, and to have heard St. Paul preach, makes his third wish to have seen Rome in her glory; and that glory is not yet all lost, for what pleasure is it to see the monuments of Livy, the choicest of the historians; of Tully, the best of orators; and to see the bay-trees that now grow out of the very tomb of Virgil! These, to any that love learning, must be pleasing. But what pleasure is it to a devout Christian to see there the humble house in which St. Paul was content to dwell, and to view the many rich statues that are there made in honor of his memory! Nay, to see the very place in which St. Peter and he lie buried together! These are in and near to Rome. And how much more doth it please the pious curiosity of a Christian, to see that place on which the blessed Saviour of the world was pleased to humble himself, and to take our nature upon him, and to converse with men,to see Mount Sion, Jerusalem, and the very Sepul 24 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. chre of our Lord Jesus! How may it beget and heighten the zeal of a Christian, to see the devotions that are daily paid to him at that place! Gentlemen, lest I forget myself I will stop here, and remember you, that, but for my element of Water, the inhabitants of this poor island must remain ignorant that such things ever were, or that any of them have yet a being. Gentlemen, I might both enlarge and lose myself in such like arguments; I might tell you that Almighty God is said to have spoken to a fish, but never to a beast; that he hath made a Whale a ship to carry and set his prophet Jonah safe on the appointed shore. Of these I might speak, but I must in manners break off, for I see Theobald's house. I cry you mercy for being so long, and thank you for your patience. Auc. Sir, my pardon is easily granted you; I except against nothing that you have said; never, theless, I must part with you at this park-wall, for which I am very sorry; but I assure you, Mr. Piscator, I now part with you full of good thoughts, not only of yourself, but your recreation. And so, Gentlemen, God keep you both! Pisc. Well, now, Mr. Venator, you shall neither want time nor my attention to hear you enlarge your discourse concerning Hunting. CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 25 VEN. Not I, Sir; I remember you said that Angling itself was of great antiquity, and a perfect art, and an art not easily attained to; and you have so won upon me in your former discourse, that I am very desirous to hear what you can say further concerning those particulars. Pisc. Sir, I did say so, and I doubt not but if you and I did converse together but a few hours, to leave you possessed with the same high and happy thoughts that now possess me of it; not only of the antiquity of Angling, but that it deserves commendations, and that it is an art, and an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man. VEN. Pray, Sir, speak of them what you think fit, for we have yet five miles to the Thatched House, during which walk I dare promise you my patience and diligent attention shall not be wanting. And if you shall make that to appear which you have undertaken; first, that it is an art, and an art worth the learning, I shall beg that I may attend you a day or two a-fishing, and that I may become your scholar, and be instructed in the art itself which you so much magnify. Pisc. O Sir, doubt not but that Angling is an art; is it not an art to deceive a Trout with an artificial fly? - a Trout! that is more sharp-sighted 26 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. than any Hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled Merlin is bold? and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow, for a friend's breakfast: doubt not therefore, Sir, but that Angling is an art, and an art worth your learning: the question is rather,,. whether you be capable of learning it? for Angling is somewhat like Poetry, men are to be born so: I mean with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice; but he that hopes to be a good Angler must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but Angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be like virtue, a reward to itself. VEN. Sir, I am now become so full of expectation, that I long much to have you proceed; and in the order that you propose. Pisc. Then first, for the antiquity of Angling, of which I shall not say much, but only this: some say it is as ancient as Deucalion's flood; others, that Belus, who was the first inventor of godly and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of Angling; and some others say, for former times have had their disquisitions about the antiquity of I CHAP. 1.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 27 it, that Seth, one of the sons of Adam, taught it to his sons, and that by them it was derived to posterity; others say, that he left it engraven on those pillars which he erected, and trusted to preserve the knowledge of the mathematics, music, and the rest of that precious knowledge, and those useful arts which by God's appointment or allowance and his noble industry were thereby preserved from perishing in Noah's flood. These, Sir, have been the opinions of several men, that have possibly endeavored to make Angling more ancient than is needful, or may well be warranted; but for my part, I shall content myself in telling you, that Angling is much more ancient than the incarnation of our Saviour; for in the Prophet Amos mention is made of fish-hooks; and in the Book of Job, which was long before the days of Amos, for that book is said. to be writ by Moses, mention is made also of fish-hooks, which must imply Anglers in those times. But, my worthy friend, as I would rather prove myself a gentleman by being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and communicable, than by any fond ostentation of riches, or, wanting those virtues myself, boast that these were in my ancestors, - and yet I grant that where a noble and ancient descent and such merits meet in any 28 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. man, it is a double dignification of that person:so if this antiquity of Angling, which for my part I have not forced, shall, like an ancient family, be either an honor or an ornament to this virtuous art which I profess to love and practise, I shall be the gladder that I made an accidental mention of the antiquity of it; of which I shall say no more, but proceed to that just commendation which I think it deserves. And for that I shall tell you, that in ancient times a debate hath risen, and it remains yet unresolved, whether the happiness of man in this world doth consist more in contemplation or action. Concerning which, some have endeavored to maintain their opinion of the first, by saying, that the nearer we mortals come to God by way of imitation, the more happy we are. And they say, that God enjoys himself only by a contemplation of his own Infiniteness, Eternity, Power, and Goodness, and the like. And upon this ground, many cloisteral men of great learning and devotion prefer contemplation before action. And many of the fathers seem to approve this opinion, as may appear in their commentaries upon the words of our Saviour to Martha (Luke x. 41, 42). And, on the contrary, there want not men of equal authority and credit, that prefer action to be ./ CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 29 the more excellent: as namely, experiments in physic, and the application of it, both for the ease and prolongation of man's life; by which each man is enabled to act and do good to others, either to serve his country, or do good to particular persons: and they say also, that action is doctrinal, and teaches both art and virtue, and is a maintainer of humane society; and for these, and other like reasons, to be preferred before contemplation. Concerning which two opinions I shall forbear to add a third by declaring my own, and rest myself contented in telling you, my'very worthy friend, that both these meet together, and do most properly belong to the most honest, ingenuous, quiet, and harmless art of Angling. And first, I shall tell you what some have observed, and I have found it to be a real truth, that the very sitting by the river's side is not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, but will invite an Angler to it; and this seems to be maintained by the learned Peter Du Moulin, who, in his discourse of the Fulfilling of Prophecies, observes, that when God intended to reveal any future events or high notions to his prophets, he then carried them either to the deserts or the sea-shore, that having so separated them from amidst the press of people and business, and the 30 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. cares of the world, he might settle their mind in a quiet repose, and there make them fit for revelation. And this seems also to be intimated by the children of Israel (Psal. I37), who, having in a sad condition banished all mirth and music from their pensive hearts, and having hung up their then mute harps upon the willow-trees growing by the rivers of Babylon, sat down upon those banks bemoaning the ruins of Sion, and contemplating their own sad condition. And an genious Spaniard says, that "rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element were made for wise men to contemplate, and fools to pass by without consideration." And though I will not rank myself in the number of the first, yet give me leave to free myself from the last, by offering to you a short contemplation, first of rivers and then of fish; concerning which I doubt not but to give you many observations that will appear very considerable: I am sure they have appeared so to me, and made many an hour pass away more pleasantly, as I have sat quietly on a flowery bank by a calm river, and contemplated what I shall now relate to you. And first concerning Rivers; there be so many wonders reported and written of them, and of the CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 3 I several creatures that be bred and live in them, and those by authors of so good credit, that we need not to deny them an historical faith. As namely of a river in Epirus, that puts out any lighted torch, and kindles any torch that was not lighted. Some waters being drank cause madness, some drunkenness, and some laughter to death. The river Selarus in a few hours turns a rod or wand to stone; and our Camden mentions the like in England, and the like in Lochmere in Ireland. There is also a river in Arabia, of which all the sheep that drink thereof have theirtbol turned into a vermilion color. And one of no less credit than Aristotle tells us of a merry river, the river Elusina, that dances at the noise of music, for with music it bubbles, dances, and grows sandy, and so continues till the music ceases, but then it presently returns to its wonted calmness and clearness. And Camden tells us of a well near to Kirby in Westmoreland, that ebbs and flows several times every day; and he tells us of a river in Surrey, it is called Mole, that after it has run several miles, being opposed by hills, finds or makes itself a way under ground, and breaks out again so far off, that the inhabitants thereabouts boast, as the Spaniards do of their river Anus, that they feed divers flocks of sheep upon a bridge. And lastly, for I would not 32 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. tire your patience, one of no less authority than Josephus, that learned Jew, tells us of a river in Judaea that runs swiftly all the six days of the week, and stands still and rests all their Sabbath. But I will lay aside my discourse of rivers, and tell you some things of the monsters, or fish, call them what you will, that they breed and feed in them. Pliny the philosopher says, in the third chapter of his ninth book, that in the Indian Sea the fish called the Balaena, or Whirlpool, is so long and broad as to take up more in length and breadth than two acres of ground, and of other fish of two hundred cubits long; and that in the river Ganges, there be Eels of thirty foot long. He says there, that these monsters appear in that sea only when the tempestuous winds oppose the torrents of waters falling from the rocks into it, and so turning what lay at the bottom to be seen on the water's top. And he says, that the people of Cadara, an island near this place, make the timber for their houses of those fish-bones. He there tells us, that there are sometimes a thousand of these great Eels found wrapped or interwoven together. He tells us there, that it appears that Dolphins love music, and will come, when called for, by some men or boys, that know and use to feed them, and that they can swim as swift as an arrow can be shot out of a bow; and CHAP. 1.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 33 much of this is spoken concerning the Dolphin, and other fish, as may be found also in learned Dr. Casaubon's discourse "Of Credulity and Incredulity," printed by him about the year I670. I know we islanders are averse to the belief of these wonders; but there be so many strange creatures to be now seen, many collected by John Tradescant, and others added by my friend Elias Ashmole, Esq., who now keeps them carefully and methodically at his house near to Lambeth near London, as may get some belief of some of the other wonders I mentioned. I will tell you some of the wonders that you may now see, and not till then believe, unless you think fit. You may there see the Hog-fish, the Dog-fish, the Dolphin, the Coney-fish, the Parrot-fish, the Shark, the Poison-fish, Sword-fish, and not only 3 34 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. other incredible fish, but you may there see the Salamander, several sorts of Barnacles, of Solan geese, the Bird of Paradise, such sorts of Snakes, and such bird's-nests, and of so various forms, and so wonderfully made, as may beget wonder and amusement in any beholder: and so many hundred of other rarities in that collection, as will make the other wonders I spake of the less incredible; for you may note, that the waters are Nature's storehouse, in which she locks up her wonders. But, Sir, lest this discourse may seem tedious, I shall give it a sweet conclusion out of that holy poet, Mr. George Herbert, his divine " Contemplation on God's Providence." "Lord! who hath praise enough? Nay, who hath any? None can express thy works but he that knows them; And none can know thy works they are so many And so complete, but only he that owes them! "We all acknowledge both thy power and love To be exact, transcendent, and divine; Who dost so strongly and so sweetly move, Whilst all things have their end, yet none but thine. "Wherefore, most sacred Spirit, I here present For me, and all my fellows, praise to thee; And just it is that I should pay the rent, Because the benefit accrues to me." And as concerning fish in that Psalm (Psal. civ.), wherein for height of poetry and wonders the CHAP, I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 35 prophet David seems even to exceed himself, how doth he there express himself in choice metaphors, even to the amazement of a contemplative reader, concerning the sea, the rivers, and the fish therein contained! And the great naturalist, Pliny, says, "That Nature's great and wonderful power is more demonstrated in the sea than on the land." And this may appear by the numerous and various creatures inhabiting both in and about that element; as to the readers of Gesner, Rondeletius, Pliny, Ausonius, Aristotle, and others, may be derhonstrated. But I will sweeten this disDu Bartas, course also out of a contemplation in in the Fifth Day. divine Du Bartas, who says: -- "God quickened in the'sea and in the rivers So many fishes of so many features, That in'the wrXes we may see all creatures, Ev'n all that on the earth are to be found, ' As if the world were in deep waters drdw.ned. For Seas, as well as Skies, haj" Sun,.foonin; As well as Air - Swaltiws, Rooksand S As well as Earth,- VineORose~, Nettl elons, Mushrooms, Pinks, Gilliflower,) andmany millions Of other plants, more rare, n, trange than these, As very fishes living inthelev '. As also Rams, Calves,1Hor ares, and Hogs, Wolves, Urchins, Lions, j ihant, and'Dogs; Yea, Men and Maids, an 'which I most admire, The mitred Bishop, andche cowlel Friar: Of which examples but a few years since Were shown the Norway and Polonian Prince." Yr '.?'". [ ".t S r ".~ 36 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. These seem to be wonders, but have had so many confirmations from men of learning and credit, that you need not doubt them: nor are the number nor the various shapes of fishes more strange or more fit for contemplation, than their different natures, inclinations, and actions; concerning which I shall beg your patient ear a little longer. The Cuttle-fish will cast a long gut out of her throat, which, like as an Angler doth his line, she sendeth forth and pulleth in again at her pleasure, Montaigne, according as she sees some little fish Montaygne, Essaysaffrd come near to her; and the Cuttle-fish, other affirm this. being then hid in the gravel, lets the smaller fish nibble and bite the end of it, at which time she by little and little draws the smaller fish so near to her, that she may leap upon her, and then catches and devours her: and for this reason some have called this fish the Sea-Angler. And there is a fish called a Hermit, that at a certain age gets into a dead fish's shell, and like a hermit dwells there alone, studying the wind and weather, and so turns her shell that she makes it defend her from the injuries that they would bring upon her. There is also a fish called, by AElian, in his ninth Book of Living Creatures, Ch. i6, the Adonis, or CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 37 Darling of the Sea; so called because it is a loving and innocent fish, a fish that hurts nothing that hath life, and is at peace with all the numerous inhabitants of that vast watery element: and truly I think most Anglers are so disposed to most of mankind. And there are also lustful and chaste fishes, of which I shall give you examples. And first, what Du Bartas says of a fish called the Sargus: which because none can express it better than he does, I shall give you in his own words; supposing it shall not have the less credit for being verse, for he hath gathered this and other observations out of authors that have been great and industrious searchers into the secrets of Nature. "The adult'rous Sargus doth not only change Wives every day in the deep streams, but, strange! As if the honey of sea-love delight Could not suffice his raging appetite, Goes courting she-goats on the grassy shore, Horning their husbands that had horns before." And the same author writes concerning the Cantharus, that which you shall also hear in his own words: "But contrary, the constant Cantharus Is ever constant to his faithful spouse; In nuptial duties spending his chaste life, Never loves any but his own dear wife." 38 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Sir, but a little longer, and I have done. VEN. Sir, take what liberty you think fit, for your discourse seems to be music, and charms me to an attention. PIsc. Why then, Sir, I will take a little liberty to tell, or rather to remember you, what is said of Turtle-Doves; first, that they silently plight their troth and marry; and that then the survivor scorns, as the Thracian women are said to do, to outlive his or her mate, and this is taken for a truth, and if the survivor shall ever couple with another, then not only the living but the dead, be it either the he or the she, is denied the name and honor of a true Turtle-Dove. And to parallel this land-rarity, and teach mankind moral faithfulness, and to condemn those that talk of religion, and yet come short of the moral faith of fish and fowl; men that violate the law affirmed by St. Paul (Rom. ii. 14, 15, i6), to be writ in their hearts, and which, he says, shall at the last day condemn and leave them without excuse; — I Du Bartas, pray hearken to what Du Bartas sings, Fifth Day. for the hearing of such conjugal faithfulness will be music to all chaste ears, and therefore I pray hearken to what Du Bartas sings of the Mullet. CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 39 "But for chaste love the Mullet hath no peer; For, if the fisher hath surprised her pheer, As mad with woe, to shore she followeth, Prest to consort him both in life and death." On the contrary, what shall I say of the HouseCock, which treads any hen; and then, contrary to the Swan, the Partridge, and Pigeon, takes no care to hlatch, to feed, or to cherish his own brood, but is senseless, though they perish. And 't is considerable, that the Hen, which, because she also takes any Cock, expects it not, who is sure the chickens be her own, hath by a moral impression her care and affection to her own brood more than doubled, even to such a height, that our Saviour, in expressing his love to Jerusalem (Matt. xxiii. 37), quotes her for an example of tender affection; as his father had done Job for a pattern of patience. And to parallel this Cock, there be divers fishes that cast their spawn on flags or stones, and then leave it uncovered, and exposed to become a prey, and be devoured by vermin, or other fishes; but other fishes, as namely the Barbel, take such care for the preservation of their seed, that, unlike to the Cock or the Cuckoo, they mutually labor, both the spawner and the melter, to cover their spawn with sand, or watch it, or hide it in some secret 40 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. place, unfrequented by vermin or by any fish but themselves. Sir, these examples may, to you and others, seem strange; but they are testified, some by Aristotle, some by Pliny, some by Gesner, and by many others of credit, and are believed and known by divers, both of wisdom and experience, to be a truth; and indeed are, as I said at the beginning, fit for the contemplation of a most serious and a most pious man. And, doubtless, this made the Prophet David say (Psal. cvii. 23, 24), "They that occupy themselves in deep waters see the wonderful works of God:" indeed, such wonders and pleasures too as the land affords not. And that they be fit for the contemplation of the most prudent, and pious, and peaceable men, seems to be testified by the practice of so many devout and contemplative men, as the Patriarchs and Prophets of old, and of the Apostles of our Saviour in our latter times; of which twelve, we are sure he chose four that were simple Fishermen, whom he inspired and sent to publish his blessed will to the Gentiles, and inspired them also with a power to speak all languages, and by their powerful eloquence to beget faith in the unbelieving Jews, and themselves to suffer for that Saviour whom their forefathers and they had crucified; CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 41 and, in their sufferings, to preach freedom from the incumbrances of the law, and a new way to everlasting life. This was the employment of these happy Fishermen, concerning which choice some have made these observations. First, that he never reproved these for their employment or calling, as he did scribes and the money-changers. And secondly, he found that the hearts of such men by nature were fitted for contemplation and quietness; men of mild, and sweet, and peaceable spirits, as indeed most Anglers are: these men, our blessed Saviour, who is observed to love to plant grace in good natures, though indeed nothing be too hard for him, yet these men he chose to call from their irreprovable employment of fishing, and gave them grace to be his disciples, and to follow him and do wonders; I say four of twelve. And it is observable, that it was our Saviour's will, that these our four Fishermen should have a priority of nomination in the catalogue of his Twelve Apostles (Matt. x. 2-4, Acts i. I3), as namely, first St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. James, and St. John, and then the rest in their order. And it is yet more observable, that when our blessed Saviour went up into the mount, when he left the rest of his disciples and chose only three 42 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. to bear him company at his Transfiguration, that those three were all Fishermen. And it is to be believed, that all the other Apostles, after they betook themselves to follow Christ, betook themselves to be Fishermen too; for it is certain that the greater number of them were found together fishing by Jesus after his Resurrection, as it is recorded in the twenty-first chapter of St. John's Gospel, v. 3, 4. And since I have your promise to hear me with patience, I will take a liberty to look back upon an observation that hath been made by an ingenious and learned man; who observes, that God hath been pleased to allow those whom he himself hath appointed to write his holy will in Holy Writ, yet, to express his will in such metaphors as their former affections or practice had inclined them to: and he brings Solomon for an vxample, who before his conversion was remarkably carnally amorous; and after by God's appointment wrote that spiritual dialogue or holy amorous love-song, the Canticles, betwixt God and his Church; in which he /says his beloved had eyes like the fish-pools of Heshbon. And if this hold in reason, as I see none to the contrary, then it may be probably concluded, that Moses, who, I told you before, writ the Book of CHAP. 1.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 43 Job, and the Prophet Amos, who was a shepherd, were both Anglers; for you shall in all the Old Testament find fish-hooks, I think, but twice mentioned; namely, by meek Moses, the friend of God, and by the humble Prophet Amos. Concerning which last, namely, the Prophet Amos, I shall make but this observation, - that he that shall read the humble, lowly, plain style of that prophet, and compare it with the high, glorious, eloquent style of the Prophet Isaiah, though they be both equally true, may easily believe Amos to be, not only a shepherd, but a good-natured, plain fisherman. Which I do the rather believe by comparing the affectionate, loving, lowly, humble Epistles of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John, whom we know were all Fishers, with the glorious language and high metaphors of St. Paul, who we may believe was not. And for the lawfulness of fishing, it may very well be maintained by our Saviour's bidding St. Peter cast his hook into the water and catch a fish, for money to pay tribute to Caesar. And let me tell you, that Angling is of high esteem, and of much use in other nations. He that reads the Voyages of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto shall find that there he declares to have found a king and several priests a-fishing. m 44 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART r. And he that reads Plutarch shall find that Angling was not contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and that they in the midst of their wonderful glory used Angling as a principal recreation. And let me tell you, that in the Scripture Angling is always taken in the best sense; and that, though Hunting may be sometimes so taken, yet it is but seldom to be so understood. And let me add this more, -he that views the ancient Ecclesiastical Canons shall find Hunting to be forbidden to churchmen, as being a turbulent, toilsome, perplexing recreation; and shall find Angling allowed to clergymen, as being a harmless recreation, a recreation that invites them to contemplation and quietness. I might here enlarge myself by telling you what commendations our learned Perkins bestows on Angling; and how dear a lover and great a practiser of it our learned Doctor Whitaker was, as indeed many others of great learning have been. But I will content myself with two memorable men, that lived near to our own time, whom I also take to have been ornaments to the art of Angling. The first is Doctor Nowel, sometime 1550. Dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in London, where his monument stands yet undefaced: a man that in the Reformation of Queen CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 45 Elizabeth, not that of Henry VIII., was so noted for his meek spirit, deep learning, prudence, and piety, that the then Parliament and Convocation both chose, enjoined, and trusted him to be the man to make a Catechism for public use, such a one as should stand as a rule for faith and manners to their posterity. And the good old man, though he was very learned, yet knowing that God leads us not to heaven by many nor by hard questions, like an honest Angler, made that good, plain, unperplexed Catechism which is printed with our good old Service-Book. I say, this good man was a dear lover and constant practiser of Angling as any age can produce; and his custom was to spend, besides his fixed hours of prayer, those hours which by command of the Church were enjoined the clergy, and voluntarily dedicated to devotion by 46 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. / many primitive Christians,- I say, beside those, hours, this good man was observed to spend a tenth part of his time in Angling; and also, for I have conversed with those which have conversed with him, to bestow a tenth part of his revenue, and usually all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to those rivers in which it was caught; saying often, "that Charity gave life to Religion:" and at his return to his house would praise God he had spent that day free from worldly trouble; both harmlessly, and in a recreation that became a churchman. And this good man was well content, if not desirous, that posterity should know he was an Angler, as may appear by his picture now to be seen, and carefully kept in Brazen-nose College, to which he was a liberal benefactor; in which picture he is drawn leaning on a desk with his Bible before him, and on one hand of him his lines, hooks, and other tackling, lying in a round; and on his other hand are his Angle-rods of several sorts: and by them this is written, "that he died I3 Feb. i6oi, being aged ninety-five years, forty-four of which he had been Dean of St. Paul's Church; and that his age had neither impaired his hearing, nor dimmed his eyes, nor weakened his memory, nor made any of the faculties of his mind weak or useless." 'T is said CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 47 that Angling and temperance were great causes of these blessings, and I wish the like to all that imitate him and love the memory of so good a man. My next and last example shall be that undervaluer of money, the late Provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton; a man with whom I have often fished and conversed, a man whose foreign employments in the service of this nation, and whose experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness made his company to be esteemed one of the delights of mankind. This man, whose very approbation of Angling were sufficient to convince any modest censurer of it, this man was also a most dear lover, and a frequent practiser, of the art of Angling; of which he would say, "'Twas an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent: " for Angling was, after tedious study, " a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness;" and "that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it." Indeed, my friend, you will find Angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other blessings attending upon it. Sir, this was the saying of that learned man, and 48 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. I do easily believe that peace, and patience, and a calm content, did cohabit in the cheerful heart of Sir Henry Wotton, because I know that, when he was beyond seventy years of age, he made this description of a part of the present pleasure that possessed him, as he sat quietly in a summer's evening on a bank a-fishing. It is a description of the Spring, which because it glided as soft and sweetly from his pen as that river does at this time, by which it was then made, I shall repeat it unto you. "This day Dame Nature seemed in love: The lusty sap began to move; Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines, And birds had drawn their valentines. The jealous Trout, that low did lie, Rose at a well-dissembled fly: There stood my friend, with patient skill, Attending of his trembling quill. Already were the eaves possest With the swift Pilgrim's daubed nest: The groves already did rejoice In Philomel's triumphing voice: The showers were short, the weather mild, The morning fresh, the evening smiled. Joan takes her neat rubbed pail, and now She trips to milk the sand-red cow; Where, for some sturdy foot-ball swain, Joan strokes a syllabub or twain. The fields and gardens were beset With tulips, crocus, violet: CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 49 And now, though late, the modest rose Did more than half a blush disclose. Thus all looks gay, and full of cheer, To welcome the new-liveried year." These were the thoughts that then possessed the undisturbed mind of Sir Henry Wotton. Will you hear the wish of another Angler, and the commendation of his happy life, which he also sings in verse? viz. Jo. Davors, Esq.: — "Let me live harmlessly, and near the brink Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place; Where I may see my quill or cork down sink With eager bite of Perch, or Bleak, or Dace; And on the world and my Creator think: Whilst some men strive ill-gotten goods t' embrace, And others spend their time in base excess Of wine, or, worse, in war and wantonness. "Let them that list these pastimes still pursue, And on such pleasing fancies feed their fill, So I the fields and meadows green may view, And daily by fresh rivers walk at will, Among the daisies and the violets blue, Red hyacinth, and yellow daffodil, Purple Narcissus like the morning rays, Pale gander-grass, and azure culver-keys. "I count it higher pleasure to behold The stately compass of the lofty sky, And in the midst thereof, like burning gold, The flaming chariot of the world's great eye; 4 50 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. The watery clouds that in the air up-rolled With sundry kinds of painted colors fly; And fair Aurora lifting up her head, Still blushing, rise from old Tithonus' bed; "The hills and mountains raised from the plains, The plains extended level with the ground, The grounds divided into sundry veins, The veins enclosed with rivers running round; These rivers making way through Nature's chains With headlong course into the sea profound; The raging sea, beneath the valleys low, Where lakes and rills and rivulets do flow; "The lofty woods, the forests wide and long, Adorned with leaves, and branches fresh and green, In whose cool bowers the birds with many a song Do welcome with their quire the Summer's Queen; The meadows fair where Flora's gifts among Are intermixed, with verdant grass between; The silver-scaled fish that softly swim Within the sweet brook's crystal watery stream. "All these, and many more of His creation That made the heavens, the Angler oft doth see; Taking therein no little delectation, To think how strange, how wonderful, they be! Framing thereof an inward contemplation, To set his heart from other fancies free; And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye, His mind is rapt above the starry sky." Sir, I am glad my memory has not lost these last verses, because they are somewhat more pleasant and more suitable to May-day than my harsh CHAP. I.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 51 I discourse; and I am glad your patience hath held out so long as to hear them and me, for both together have brought us within the sight of the Thatched House; and I must be your debtor, if you think it worth your attention, for the rest of my promised discourse, till some other opportunity and a like time of leisure. VEN. Sir, you have Angled me on with much pleasure to the Thatched House; and I now find your words true, that " good company makes the way seem short: " for trust me, Sir, I thought we had wanted three miles of this house till you showed it to me; but now we are at it, we '11 turn into it, and refresh ourselves with a cup of drink and a little rest. Pisc. Most gladly, Sir, and we '11 drink a civil cup to all the Otter-hunters that are to meet you to-morrow. VEN. That we will, Sir, and to all the lovers of Angling too, of which number I am now willing to be one myself; for, by the help of your good discourse and company, I have put on new thoughts both of the art of Angling, and of all that profess it: and if you will but meet me to-morrow at the time and place appointed, and bestow one day with me and my friends in hunting the Otter, I will dedicate the next two days to wait upon you, 52 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART L and we two will for that time do nothing but angle, and talk of fish and fishing. PIsc. 'T is a match, Sir; I '11 not fail you, God willing, to be at Amwell Hill to-morrow morning before sun-rising. CHAP. II.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 53 THE SECOND DAY. CHAP. II. - Observations of the OTTER and CHUB. VENATOR. M Y friend Piscator, you have kept time with my thoughts; for the sun is just rising, and I myself just now come to this place, and the dogs have just now put down an Otter. Look down at the bottom of the hill there in that meadow, checkered with water-lilies and ladysmocks; there you may see what work they make. Look look! you may see all busy, men and dogs, dogs and men, all busy. Pisc. Sir, I am right glad to meet you, and glad to have so fair an entrance into this day's sport, and glad to see so many dogs, and more men all in pursuit of the Otter. Let's compliment no longer, but join unto them. Come, honest Venator, let's be gone, let us make haste; I long to be doing: no reasonable hedge or ditch shall hold me. VEN. Gentleman Huntsman, where found you this Otter? HUNT. Marry, Sir, we found her a mile from this place, a-fishing: she has this morning eaten 54 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. the greatest part of this Trout; she has only left thus much of it, as you see, and was fishing for more. When we came, we found her just at it: but we were here very early, we were here an hour before sunrise, and have given her no rest since we came; sure she will hardly escape all these dogs and men. I am to have the skin if we kill her. VEN. Why, Sir, what's the skin worth?...___ --- =.. HUNT. 'T is worth ten shillings to make gloves; the gloves of an Otter are the best fortification for your hands that can be thought on against wet weather. Pisc. I pray, honest Huntsman, let me ask you a pleasant question: Do you hunt a beast or a fish? CHAP. II.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 55 HUNT. Sir, it is not in my power to resolve you. I leave it to be resolved by the College of Carthusians, who have made vows never to eat flesh. But I have heard the question hath been debated among many great clerks, and they seem to differ about it; yet most agree that her tail is fish: and if her body be fish too, then I may say that a fish will walk upon land, for an Otter does so sometimes five, or six, or ten miles in a night, to catch for her young ones, or to glut herself with fish, and I can tell you that pigeons will fly forty miles for v a breakfast; but, Sir, I am sure the Otter devours much fish, and kills and spoils much more than he eats: and I can tell you that this Dog-fisher, for so the Latins call him, can smell a fish in the water an hundred yards from him: Gesner says much farther, and that his stones are good against the falling-sickness; and that there is an herb, Benione, which being hung in a. linen-cloth near a fish-pond, or any haunt that he uses, makes him to avoid the place; which proves he smells both by water and land. And I can tell you there is brave hunting this water-dog in Cornwall; where there have been so many, that our learned Camden says there is a river called Ottersey, which was so named by reason of the abundance of Otters that bred and fed in it. 56 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. And thus much for my knowledge of the Otter, which you may now see above water at vent, and the dogs close with him; I now see he will not last long: follow, therefore, my masters, follow, for Sweetlips was like to have him at this last vent. VEN. Oh me! all the horse are got over the river. What shall we do now? shall we follow them over the water? HUNT. No, Sir, no, be not so eager: stay a little and follow me, for both they and the dogs will be suddenly on this side again, I warrant you; and the Otter too, it may be. Now have at him with Kilbuck, for he vents again. VEN. Marry, so he does, for look, he vents in that corner. Now, now Ringwood has him: now he's gone again, and has bit the poor dog. Now Sweetlips has her; hold her, Sweetlips! Now all the dogs have her, some above and some under water; but now, now she's tired, and past losing: come, bring her to me, Sweetlips. Look, 'tis a Bitch-Otter, and she has lately whelped: let's go to the place where she was put down, and not far from it you will find all her young ones, I dare warrant you, and kill them all too. HUNT. Come, Gentlemen! come all! let's go to the place where we put down the Otter. Look CHAP. II.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 57 you, hereabout it was that she kennelled; look you, here it was indeed, for here's her young ones, no less than five: come, let's kill them all. PIsc. No, I pray, Sir, save me one, and I '11 try if I can make her tame, as I know an ingenious gentleman in Leicestershire, Mr. Nich. Seagrave, has done; who hath not only made her tame, but to catch fish, and do many other things of much pleasure. HUNT. 'ake one with all my heart, but let us kill the rest. And now let's go to an honest alehouse, where we may have a cup of good barleywine, and sing "Old Rose," and all of us rejoice together. VEN. Come, my friend Piscator, let me invite you along with us. I'11 bear your charges this night, and you shall bear mine to-morrow; for my intention is to accompany you a day or two in fishing. PIsc. Sir, your request is granted, and I shall be right glad, both to exchange such a courtesy, and also to enjoy your company., VEN. Well, now let 's go to your sport of Angling. PIsc. Let's be going with all my heart. God keep you all, Gentlemen, and send you meet this 58 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. day with another Bitch-Otter, and kill her merrily, and all her young ones too. VEN. Now, Piscator, where will we begin to fish? PIsc. We are not yet come to a likely place: I must walk a mile further yet, before I begin. VEN. Well then, I pray, as we walk, tell me freely how do you like your lodging, and mine host, and the company? Is not mine host a witty man? Pisc. Sir, I will tell you presently what I think of your host; but first I will tell you, I am glad these Otters were killed, and I am sorry that there tf are no more otter-killers: for I know that the want of otter-killers, and the not keeping the Fence-months for the preservation of fish, will in time prove the destruction of all rivers; and those very few that are left, that make conscience of the laws of the nation, and of keeping days of abstinence, will be forced to eat flesh, or suffer more inconveniences than are yet foreseen. VEN. Why, Sir, what be those that you call the Fence-months? Pisc. Sir, they be principally three, namely, March, April, and May; for these be the usual months that Salmon come out of the sea to spawn in most fresh rivers, and their fry would about a CHAP. II.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 59 certain time return back to the salt water, if they were not hindered by weirs and unlawful gins, which the greedy fishermen set, and so destroy them by thousands; as they would, being so taught by Nature, change the fresh for salt water. He that shall view the wise statutes made in the I3th of Edward I., and the like in Richard II., may see several provisions made against the destruction of fish; and though I profess no knowledge of the law, yet I am sure the regulation of these defects might be easily mended. But I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business; " if it were otherwise, there could not be so many nets and fish that are under the statute size sold daily amongst us, and of which the conservators of the waters should be ashamed. But above all, the taking fish in spawning-time may be said to be against nature; it is like the taking the dam on the nest when she hatches her young; a sin so against nature, that Almighty God hath in the Levitical law (Deuteronomy xxii. 6, 7) made a law against it. But the poor fish have enemies enough beside such unnatural Fishermen, as namely, the Otters that I spake of, the Cormorant, the Bittern, the 60 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Osprey, the Sea-gull, the Heron, the Kingfisher, the Gorara, the Puet, the Swan, Goose, Ducks, and the Craber, which some call the Water-rat: against all which any honest man may make a just quarrel, but I will not, I will leave them to be quarrelled with and killed by others; for I am, not of a cruel nature, - I love to kill nothing but fish. And now to your question concerning your host. To speak truly, he is not to me a good companion: for most of his conceits were either Scripture jests, or lascivious jests; for which I count no man witty, for the Devil will help a man that way inv dined, to the first, and his own corrupt nature, which he always carries with him, to the latter: but a companion that feasts the company with wit and mirth, and leaves out the sin which is usually mixed with them, he is the man; and indeed such v a companion should have his charges borne, and to such company I hope to bring you this night; for at Trout Hall, not far from this place, where I purpose to lodge to-night, there is usually an Angler that proves good company. And let me tell you, good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue: but for such discourse as we heard last night, it infects others; the very boys will learn to talk and swear as they heard CHAP. II.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. mine host, and another of the company that shall be nameless; I am sorry the other is a gentleman, for less religion will not save their souls than a beggar's: I think more will be required at the last great day. Well, you know what example is able to do; and I know what the poet says in the like case, which is worthy to be noted by all parents and people of civility:"Many a one Owes to his country his religion: And in another would as strongly grow, Had but his nurse or mother taught him so." This is reason put into verse, and worthy the consideration of a wise man. But of this not more, for though I love civility, yet I hate severe censures: I'11 to my own art, and I doubt not but at yonder tree I shall catch a Chub, and then we '11 v turn to an honest cleanly hostess, that I know right well, rest ourselves there, and dress it for our dinner. VEN. 0 Sir! a Chub is the worst fish that swims; I hoped for a Trout to my dinner. PIsc. Trust me, Sir, there is not a likely place for a Trout hereabout, and we stayed so long to take our leave of your huntsmen this morning, that the sun is got so high, and shines so clear, that I 62 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. will not undertake the catching of a Trout till evening. And though a Chub be by you and many others reckoned the worst of fish, yet you shall see I '11 make it a good fish by dressing it. VEN. Why, how will you dress him? PIsc. I '11 tell you by and by, when I have caught him. Look you here, Sir, do you see?but you must stand very close, -there lie upon the top of the water in this very hole twenty Chubs. I '11 catch only one, and that shall be the biggest of them all; and that I will do so I '11 hold you twenty to one, and you shall see it done. VEN. Ay, marry, Sir! now you talk like an artist; and I '11 say you are one, when I shall see you perform what you say you can do: but I yet doubt it. PIsc. You shall not doubt it long, for you shall see me do it presently. Look, the biggest of these Chubs has had some bruise upon his tail, by a pike or some other accident, and that looks like a white spot; that very Chub I mean to put into your hands presently; sit you but down in the shade, and stay but a little while, and I '11 warrant you I '11 bring him to you. VEN. I '11 sit down and hope well, because you seem to be so confident. CHAP. II.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 63 PIsc. Look you, Sir, there is a trial of my skill; there he is: _.a.-:.. $ 7rr, /i~'~.. - - -__ - that very Chub that I showed you with the white spot on his tail; and I 'll be as certain to make him a good dish of meat, as I was to catch him. I '11 now lead you to an honest ale-house, where we ' shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, '*, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall: there my hostess, which I may tell you is both cleanly, and handsome, and civil, hath dressed many a one for me, and shall now dress it after my fashion, and I warrant it good meat. VEN. Come, Sir, with all my heart, for I begin to be hungry, and long to be at it, and indeed to rest myself too; for though I have walked but four miles this morning yet I begin to be weary; yesterday's hunting hangs still upon me. Pisc. Well, Sir, and you shall quickly be at 64 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART r. rest, for yonder is the house I mean to bring you to. Come, Hostess, how do you? Will you first give us a cup of your best drink, and then dress this Chub, as you dressed my last, when I and my friend were here about eight or ten days ago? But you must do me one courtesy, it must be done instantly. HosTEss. I will do it, Mr. Piscator, and with all the speed I can. Pisc. Now, Sir, has not my hostess made haste? and does not the fish look lovely? VEN. Both, upon my word, Sir; and therefore let's say grace, and fall to eating of it. Pisc. Well, Sir, how do you like it? VEN. Trust me, 'tis as good meat as I ever tasted: but now let me thank you for it, drink to you, and beg a courtesy of you; but it must not be denied me. Pisc. What is it, I pray, Sir? You are so modest, that methinks I may promise to grant it before it is asked. VEN. Why, Sir, it is that from henceforth you would allow me to call you Master, and that really I may be your scholar; for you are such a companion, and have so quickly caught and so excellently cooked this fish, as makes me ambitious to be your scholar. CHAP. 11.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. PIsc. Give me your hand; from this time forward I will be your master, and teach you as much of this art as I am able; and will, as you desire me, tell you somewhat of the nature of most of the fish that we are to angle for; and I am sure I both can and will tell you more than any common Angler yet knows. 6. 66 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. THE THIRD DAY. CHAP. III. -How to fish for, and to dress, the CHAVENDER, or CHUB. PISCATOR. THE Chub, though he eat well thus dressed, yet as he is usually dressed he does not: he is objected against, not only for being full of small forked bones, dispersed through all his body, but that he eats waterish, and that the flesh of him is not firm, but short and tasteless. The French esteem him so mean, as to call him un Vilain; nevertheless he may be so dressed as to make him very good meat: as, namely, if he be a large Chub, then dress him thus: - First scale him, and then wash him clean, and then take out his guts; and to that end make the hole as little and near to his gills as you may conveniently, and especially make clean his throat from the grass and weeds that are usually in it, for if that be not very clean, it will make him to taste vexy sour. Having so done, put some sweet herbs tto his belly; and then tie him with two or three splinters to a spit, and roast him, basted // - 26 a CHAP. III.] THE COMPLETE ANGUER. 67 often with vinegar, or rather verjuice and butter, with good store of salt mixed with it. Being thus dressed, you will find him a much better dish of meat than you, or most folk, even than Anglers themselves, do imagine; for this dries up the fluid watery humor with which all Chubs do abound. But take this rule with you, that a Chub newly taken and newly dressed is so much better than a Chub of a day's keeping after he is dead, that I can compare him to nothing so fitly as to cherries newly gathered from a tree, and others that have been bruised and lain a day or two in water. But the Chub being thus used and dressed presently, and not washed after he is gutted, - for note, that, lying long in water, and washing the blood out of any fish after they be gutted, abates much of their sweetness, - you will find the Chub, being dressed in the blood and quickly, to be such meat as will recompense your labor, and disabuse your opinion. Or you may dress the Chavender or Chub thus: When you have scaled him, and cut off his tail and fins, and washed him very clean, then chine or slit him through the middle, as a salt fish is usually cut; then give him three or four cuts or scotches on the back with your knife, and broil him 68 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. on charcoal, or wood-coal that is free from smoke; and all the time he is a-broiling, baste him with the best sweet butter, and good store of salt mixed with it; and to this add a little thyme cut exceeding small, or bruised into the butter. The Cheven thus dressed hath the watery taste taken away, for which so many except against him. Thus was the Cheven dressed that you now liked so well, and commended so much. But note again, that if this Chub that you ate of had been kept till to-morrow, he had not been worth a rush. And remember that his throat be washed very clean, - I say very clean, -and his body not washed after he is gutted, as indeed no fish should be. Well, Scholar, you see what pains I have taken to recover the lost credit of the poor, despised Chub. And now I will give you some rules how to catch him: and I am glad to enter you into the art of Fishing by catching a Chub, for there is no fish better to enter a young Angler, he is so easily v caught; but then it must be this particular way. Go to the same hole in which I caught my Chub, where in most hot days you will find a dozen or twenty Chevens floating near the top of the water. Get two or three grasshoppers as you go over the meadow; and get secretly behind the tree, and stand as free from motion as is possible. Then CHAP. III.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 69 put a grasshopper on your hook, and let your hook hang a quarter of a yard short of the water, to which end you must rest your rod on some bough of the tree. But it is likely the Chubs will sink down towards the bottom of the water at the first shadow of your rod, for a Chub is the fearfullest of fishes, and will do so if but a bird flies over him, and makes the least shadow on the water; but they will presently rise up to the top again, and there lie soaring till some shadow affrights them again. I say, when they lie upon the top of the water, look out the best Chub, which you, setting yourself in a fit place, may very easily see, and move your rod as softly as a snail moves to that Chub you intend to catch: let your bait fall gently upon the water three or four inches before him, and he will infallibly take the bait. And you will be as sure to catch him; for he is one of the leathermouthed fishes, of which a hook does scarcely ever lose its hold; and, therefore, give him play enough before you offer to take him out of the water. Go your way presently; take my rod, and do as I bid you, and I will sit down and mend my tackling till you return back. VEN. Truly, my loving Master, you have offered me as fair as I could wish. I '11 go and observe your directions. 70 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Look you, Master, what I have done! that which joys my heart, caught just such another Chub as yours was. PIsc. Marry, and I am glad of it; I am like to have a towardly scholar of you. I now see that, with advice and practice, you will make an Angler in a short time. Have but a love to it, and I '11 warrant you. VEN. But, Master, what if I could not have found a grasshopper? PIsc. Then I may tell you, that a black snail, with his belly slit to show his white, or a piece of soft cheese, will usually do as well. Nay, sometimes a worm, or any kind of fly, as the Ant-fly, the Flesh-fly, or Wall-fly, or the Dor or Beetle, which you may find under cow-dung, or a Bob, which you will find in the same place, and in time will be a Beetle, - it is a short white worm, like to and bigger than a gentle, - or a Cod-worm, or a Case-worm, -any of these will do very well to fish in such a manner. And after this manner you may catch a Trout in a hot evening; when, as you walk by a brook, and shall see or hear him leap at flies, then if you get a grasshopper, put it on your hook, with your line about two yards long, standing behind a bush or tree where his hole is, and make your bait stir up CHAP. III.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 7I and down on the top of the water. You may, if you stand close, be sure of a bite, but not sure to catch him, for he is not a leather-mouthed fish: and after this manner you may fish for him with almost any kind of live fly, but especially with a grasshopper. VEN. But before you go further, I pray, good Master, what mean you by a leather-mouthed fish? PIsc. By a leather-mouthed fish, I mean such as have their teeth in their throat, as the Chub or Cheven; and so the Barbel, the Gudgeon, and Carp, and divers others have; and the hook, being stuck into the leather, or skin, of the mouth of such fish, does very seldom or never lose its hold: but on the contrary, a Pike, a Perch, or Trout, and so some other fish, -which have not their teeth in their throats, but in their mouths, which you shall observe to be very full of bones, and the skin very thin, and little of it; - I say, of these fish the hook never takes so sure hold but you often lose your fish, unless he have gorged it. VEN. I thank you, good Master, for this observation; but now what shall be done with my Chub or Cheven that I have caught? PIsc. Marry, Sir, it shall be given away to some poor body, for I '11 warrant you I '11 give you a 72 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Trout for your supper: and it is a good beginning ' of your art to offer your first-fruits to the poor, who will both thank God and you for it, which I see by your silence you seem to consent to. And for your willingness to part with it so charitably, I will also teach you more concerning Chub-fishing. -You are to note that in March and April he is I, usually taken with worms; in May, June, and July he will bite at any fly, or at cherries, or at beetles with their legs and wings cut off, or at any kind of snail, or at the black bee that breeds in clay-walls; and he never refuses a grasshopper on the top of a swift stream, nor, at the bottom, the young humblebee that breeds in long grass, and is ordinarily found by the mower of it. In August, and in the cooler months, a yellow paste, made of the strongest cheese, and pounded in a mortar with a little butter and saffron, so much of it as being beaten small will turn it to a lemon color. And some make a paste for the winter months,- at which time the Chub is accounted best, for then it is observed that the forked bones are lost or turned into a kind of gristle, especially if he be baked, - of cheese and turpentine. He will bite also at a Minnow or Penk, as a Trout will; of which I shall tell you more hereafter, and of divers other baits. But take this for a rule, that in hot weather he is / f4 CHAP. III.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 73 to be fished for towards the mid-water, or near the top; and in colder weather nearer the bottom. And if you fish for him on the top with a beetle or any fly, then be sure to let your line be very long, and to keep out of sight. And having told you that his spawn is excellent meat, and that the head of a large Cheven, the throat being well washed, is the best part of him, I will say no more of this fish at the present, but wish you may catch the next you fish for. But lest you may judge me too nice in urging to have the Chub dressed so presently after he is taken, I will commend to your consideration how curious former times have been in the like kind. You shall read in Seneca his " Natural Questions," Lib. iii. cap. 17, that the ancients were so curious in the newness of their fish, that that seemed not new enough that was not put alive into the guest's hand; and he says that to that end they did usually keep them living in glass bottles in their dining-rooms; and they did glory much, in their entertaining of friends, to have that fish taken from under their table alive, that was instantly to be fed upon. And he says they took great pleasure to see their Mullets change to several colors, when they were dying. But enough 74 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. of this, for I doubt I have stayed too long from giving you some observations of the Trout, and how to fish for him, which shall take up the next of my spare time. T CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 75 THE THIRD DAY. CHAP. IV. - Observations izf the NATURE and BREEDING of the TROUT, and how to fish for him. And the Milkmaid's SonZg. PISCAToR. HE Trout is a fish highly valued both in this and foreign nations. He may be justly said, as the old poet said of wine, and we English say of venison, to be a generous fish: a fish that is so like the buck that he also has his seasons; for it is observed, that he comes in and goes out of season with the stag and buck. Gesner says his name is of a German offspring, and says he is a fish that feeds clean and purely, in the swiftest streams, and on the hardest gravel; and that he may justly contend with all fresh-water fish, as the Mullet may with all sea-fish, for precedency and daintiness of taste, and that, being in right season, the most dainty palates have allowed precedency to him. And before I go further in my discourse, let me tell you that you are to observe, that, as there be some barren does, that are good in summer, so there be some barren Trouts that are good in winter; but there are not many that are so, for 76 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. usually they be in their perfection in the month of May, and decline with the buck. Now you are to take notice, that in several countries, as in Germany and in other parts, compared to ours, fish do differ much in their bigness, and shape, and other ways, and so do Trouts. It is well known that in the Lake Leman, the Lake of Geneva, there are Trouts taken of three cubits long, as is affirmed by Gesner, a writer of good credit; and Mercator says, the Trouts that are taken in the Lake of Geneva are a great part of the merchandise of that famous city. And you are further to know, that there be certain waters that breed Trouts remarkable both for their number and smallness. I know a little brook in Kent that breeds them to a number incredible, and you may take them twenty or forty in an hour, but none greater than about the size of a gudgeon. There are also in divers rivers, especially that relate to, or be near to the sea, as CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 77 Winchester, or the Thames about Windsor, a little Trout called a Samlet or Skegger-Trout, - in both which places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing, -that will bite as fast and as freely as minnows; these be by some taken to be young Salmons, but in those waters they never grow to be bigger than a herring. There is also in Kent near to Canterbury a Trout called there a Fordidge Trout, a Trout that bears the name of the town where it is usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish; many of them near the bigness of a Salmon, but known by their different color, and in their best season they cut very white: and none of these have been known to be caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught by Sir George Hastings, an 4 excellent Angler, and now with God; and he hath told me, he thought that Trout bit not for hunger but wantonness; and is the rather to be believed, because both he then, and many others before him, have been curious to search into their bellies, what the food was by which they lived: and have found out nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity. Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported by good authors, that grasshoppers, and some fish, have no mouths, but are nourished 78 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. and take breath by the porousness of their gills, man knows not how; and this may be believed, if we consider that, when the Raven hath hatched her eggs, she takes no further care, but leaves her young ones to the care of the God of nature, who is said in the Psalms (Psal. cxlvii. 9) "to feed the young ravens that call upon him." And they be kept alive, and fed by a dew, or worms that breed in their nests, or some other ways that we mortals know not; and this may be believed of the Fordidge Trout, which, as it is said of the Stork (Jere. viii. 7), that 1"he knows his season," so he knows his times, I think almost his day of coming into that river out of the sea; where he lives, and, it is like, feeds, nine months of the year, and fasts three in the river of Fordidge. And you are to note that those townsmen are very punctual in observing the time of beginning to fish for them; and boast much that their river affords a Trout that exceeds all others. And just so does Sussex boast of several fish; as namely, a Shelsey Cockle, a Chichester Lobster, an Arundel Mullet, and an Amerly Trout. And now for some confirmation of the Fordidge Trout: you are to know that this Trout is thought to eat nothing in the fresh water; and it may be the better believed, because it is well known that CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 79 swallows and bats and wagtails, which are called half-year birds, and not seen to fly in England for six months in the year, but about Michaelmas leave us for a hotter climate; yet some View Sir of them that have been left behind Fran. Bacon, Exper. 899. their fellows have been found, many thousands at a time, in hollow trees, or clay caves, where they have been observed to live and sleep out the whole winter without meat. And so Albertus observes, that there is one kind of See Topsel frog that hath her mouth naturally shut of Frogs. up about the end of August, and that she lives so all the winter: and though it be strange to some, yet it is known to too many among us to be doubted. And so much for these Fordidge Trouts, which never afford an Angler sport, but either live their time of being in the fresh water by their meat formerly gotten in the sea, not unlike the swallow or frog, or by the virtue of the fresh water only; or as the Bird of Paradise and the Chameleon are said to live, by the sun and the air. There is also in Northumberland a Trout called a Bull-Trout, of a much greater length and bigness than any in these southern parts: and there are in many rivers that relate to the sea Salmon-Trouts, as much different from others, both in shape and in their spots, as we see sheep in some countries 80 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. differ one from another in their shape and bigness, and in the fineness of their wool; and certainly, as some pastures breed larger sheep, so do some rivers, by reason of the ground over which they run, breed larger Trouts. Now the next thing that I will commend to your consideration is, that the Trout is of a more sudden growth than other fish: concerning which you are also to take notice, that he lives not so long as the Perch and divers other fishes do, as Sir Francis Bacon hath observed in his " History of Life and Death." And next you are to take notice, that he is not like the Crocodile, which, if he lives never so long, yet always thrives till his death: but 't is not so with the Trout; for after he has come to his full growth, he declines in his body, and keeps his bigness or thrives only in his head, till his death. And you are to know, that he will about, especially before, the time of his spawning, get almost miraculously through weirs and flood-gates against the streams: even through such high and swift places as is almost incredible. Next, that the Trout usually spawns about October or November, but in some rivers a little sooner or later: which is the more observable, because most other fish spawn in the spring or summer, when the sun hath warmed CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. both the earth and water, and made it fit for generation. And you are to note, that he continues many months out of season: for it may be observed of the Trout, that he is like the Buck or the Ox, that will not be fat in many months, though he go in the very same pasture that horses do, which will be fat in one month; and so you may observe, that most other fishes recover strength, and grow sooner fat and in season, than the Trout doth. And next you are to note, that till the sun gets to such a height as to warm the earth and the water, the Trout is sick, and lean, and lousy, and unwholesome: for you shall in winter find him to have a big head, and then to be lank, and thin, and lean: at which time many of them have sticking on them Sugs, or Trout-lice, which is a kind of a worm, in shape like a clove or pin, with a big head, and sticks close to him and sucks his moisture; those, I think, the Trout breeds himself, and never thrives till he free himself from them, which is when warm weather comes; and then, as he grows stronger, he gets from the dead still water into the sharp streams and the gravel, and there rubs off these worms or lice; and then, as he grows stronger, so he gets him into swifter and swifter streams, and there lies at the watch for any 6 82 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. fly or minnow that comes near to him: and he especially loves the/lMay-fly which is bred of the Cod-worm, or Cadis; and these make the Trout bold and lusty, and he is usually fatter and better meat at the end of that month than at any time of the year. Now you are to know, that it is observed that usually the best Trouts are either red or yellow; though some, as the Fordidge Trout, be white and yet good; but that is not usual: and it is a note observable, that the female Trout hath usually a less head and a deeper body than the male Trout, and is usually the better meat. And note, that a hog-back and a little head, to either Trout, Salmon, or any other fish, is' a sign that that fish is in season. But yet you are to note, that as you see some willows, or palm-trees, bud and blossom sooner than others do, so some Trouts be in rivers sooner in season: and as some hollies or oaks are longer before they cast their leaves, so are some Trouts in rivers longer before they go out of season. And you are to note, that there are several kinds of Trouts; but these several kinds are not considered but by very few men, for they go under the general name of Trouts: just as Pigeons do in most places; though it is certain there are tame CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 83 and wild Pigeons: and of the tame, there be Helmits and Runts, and Carriers and Cropers, and indeed too many to name. Nay, the Royal Society have found and published lately, that there be thirty and three kinds of Spiders: and yet all, for aught I know, go under that one general name of Spider. And 't is so with many kinds of fish, and of Trouts especially, which differ in their bigness, and shape, and spots, and color. The great Kentish Hens may be an instance compared to other hens; and doubtless there is a kind of small Trout, which will never thrive to be big, that breeds very many more than others do that be of a larger size: which you may rather believe, if you consider that the little Wren or Titmouse will have twenty young ones at a time, when usually the noble Hawk, or the musical Thrassel or Blackbird, exceed not four or five. And now you shall see me try my skill to catch a Trout, and at my next walking, either this evening or to-morrow morning, I will give you direction how you yourself shall fish for him. VEN. Trust me, Master, I see now it is a harder matter to catch a Trout than a Chub: for I have put on patience, and followed you these two hours, and not seen a fish stir, neither at your minnow nor your worm. 84 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. PisC. Well, Scholar, you must endure worse luck some time, or you will never make a good Angler. But what say you now? there is a Trout now, and a good one too, if I can but hold him, and two or three turns more will tire him. Now you see he lies still, and the sleight is to land him: reach me that landing-net. So, Sir, now he is mine own, what say you now? is not this worth all my labor and your patience? VEN. On my word, Master, this is a gallant Trout; what shall we do with him? PIsc. Marry, e'en eat him to supper: we '11 go to my Hostess, from whence we came: she told me, as I was going out of door, that my brother Peter, a good Angler and a cheerful companion, had sent word he would lodge there to-night, and bring a friend with him. My Hostess has two beds, and I know you and I may have the best: we '11 rejoice with my brother Peter and his friend, tell tales, or sing ballads, or make a catch, or find some harmless sport to content us, and pass away a little time without offence to God or man. VEN. A match, good Master: Let's go to that house, for the linen looks white, and smells of lav/ ender, and I long to lie in a pair of sheets that smell so. Let's be going, good Master, for I am hungry again with fishing. CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 85 Pisc. Nay, stay a little, good Scholar: I caught my last Trout with a worm; now I will put on a minnow and try a quarter of an hour about yonder trees for another, and so walk towards our lodging. Look you, Scholar, thereabout we shall have a bite presently, or not at all. Have with you, Sir, o' my word, I have hold of him. Oh! it is a great logger-headed Chub; come, hang him upon that willow-twig, and let's be going. But turn out of the way a little, good Scholar, towards yonder high honeysuckle hedge; there we '11 sit and sing whilst this shower falls so gently upon the teeming earth, and gives yet a sweeter smell to the lovely flowers that adorn these verdant meadows. Look, under that broad beech-tree I sat down, when I was last this way a-fishing, and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly contention with an echo, whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree, near to the brow of that primrose hill; there I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently towards their centre, the tempestuous sea; yet sometimes opposed by rugged roots, and pebble-stones, which broke their waves, and turned them into foam: and sometimes I beguiled time by viewing the harmless lambs, some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw others 86 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. craving comfort from the swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and other sights had so fully possessed my soul with content, that I thought, as the poet has happily expressed it, " I was for that time lifted above earth, And possessed joys not promised in my birth." As I left this place, and entered into the next field, a second pleasure entertained me; 't was a handsome Milkmaid that had not yet attained so much age and wisdom as to load her mind with any fears of many things that will never be, as too many men too often do; but she cast away all v care, and sung like a nightingale. Her voice was good, and the ditty fitted for it; 't was that smooth song, which was made by Kit Marlowe, now at least fifty years ago: and the Milkmaid's mother sung an answer to it, which was made by Sir Walter Raleigh in his younger days. They were old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good, I think much better than the strong lines v that are now in fashion in this critical age. Look yonder! on my word, yonder they both be a-milking again. I will give her the Chub, and persuade them to sing those two songs to us. God speed you, good woman! I have been afishing, and am going to Bleak Hall to my bed; CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 87 and having caught more fish than will sup myself and my friend, I will bestow this upon you and your daughter, for I use to sell none. MILK-W. Marry, God requite you! Sir, and we '11 eat it cheerfully; and if you come this way a-fishing two months hence, a-grace of God I '11 give you a syllabub of new verjuice in a new-made hay-cock for it, and my Maudlin shall sing you one of her best ballads; for she and I both love all Anglers, they be such honest, civil, quiet men. In the mean time will you drink a draught of red cow's milk? you shall have it freely. PIsc. No, I thank you; but I pray do us a courtesy that shall stand you and your daughter in nothing, and yet we will think ourselves still something in your debt: it is but to sing us a song that was sung by your daughter when I last passed over this meadow, about eight or nine days since. MILK-W. What song was it, I pray? Was it "Come, Shepherds, deck your herds "? or " As at noon Dulcina rested"? or "Philida flouts me"? or Chevy Chace? or Johnny Armstrong? or Troy Town? PIsc. No, it is none of those: it is a song that your daughter sung the first part, and you sung the answer to it. 88 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. MILK-W. -, I know it now; I learned the first part in my golden age, when I was about the age of my poor daughter; and the latter part, which indeed fits me best now, but two or three years ago, when the cares of the world began to take hold of me: but you shall, God willing, hear them both, and sung as well as we can, for we both love Anglers. Come, Maudlin, sing the first part to the gentlemen with a merry heart, and I '11 sing the second, when you have done. "THE MILK-MAID'S SONG. " Come, live with me, and be my love, And we will all the pleasure prove That valleys, groves, or hills, or field, Or woods and steepy mountains yield. "Where we will sit upon the rocks, And see the shepherds feed our flocks, By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. "And I will make thee beds of roses, And then a thousand fragrant posies; A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle; " A gown made of the finest wool, Which from our pretty lambs we pull; CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 89 Slippers lined choicely for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold; A belt of straw, and ivy-buds, With coral clasps and amber studs; - And if these pleasures may thee move, Come, live with me, and be my love. "Thy silver dishes for thy meat, As precious as the Gods do eat, Shall on an ivory table be Prepared each day for thee and me. "The shepherd swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May morning: If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me, and be my love." VEN. Trust me, Master, it is a choice song, and sweetly sung by honest Maudlin. I now see it was not without cause that our good Queen Elizabeth did so often wish herself a Milkmaid all the month of May, because they are not troubled with fears and cares, but sing sweetly all the day, and sleep securely all the night: and, without doubt, honest, innocent, pretty Maudlin does so. I'11 bestow Sir Thomas Overbury's Milkmaid's wish upon her, - "that she may die in the Spring; and, being dead, may have good store of flowers stuck round about her winding-sheet." 90 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. "THE MILK-MAID'S MOTHER'S ANSWER. "If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue, These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee, and be thy love. "But time drives flocks from field to fold: When rivers rage, and rocks grow cold, Then Philomel becometh dumb, And age complains of cares to come. "The flowers do fade, and wanton fields To wayward Winter reckoning yields: A honey tongue, a heart of gall, Is fancy's spring, but sorrow's fall. "Thy gowns, thy shoes, thy beds of roses, Thy cap, thy kirtle, and thy posies, Soon break, soon wither, soon forgotten; In folly ripe, in reason rotten. "Thy belt of straw, and ivy-buds, Thy coral clasps and amber studs, All these in me no means can move To come to thee, and be thy Love. "What should we talk of dainties then, Of better meat than's fit for men? These are but vain: that's only good Which God hath blest, and sent for food. CHAP. IV.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 9I; But could youth last, and love still breed, Had joys no date, nor age no need, - Then those delights my mind might move, To live with thee, and be thy love." MOTHER. Well, I have done my song. But stay, honest Anglers, for I will make Maudlin to sing you one short song more. Maudlin, sing that song that you sung last night, when young Coridon the Shepherd played so purely on his oaten pipe to you and your Cousin Retty. MAUD. I will, Mother. "I married a wife of late, The more's my unhappy fate: I married her for love, As my fancy did me move, And not for a worldly estate: "But oh! the green-sickness Soon changed her likeness, And all her beauty did fail. But 't is not so With those that go, Through frost and snow, As all men know, And carry the milking-pail." PIsc. Well sung! Good woman, I thank you. I '11 give you another dish of fish one of these days; and then beg another song of you. Come, Scholar, let Maudlin alone: do not you offer to spoil her 92 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. voice. Look! yonder comes mine Hostess, to call us to supper. How now! is my brother Peter come? HOST. Yes, and a friend with him; they are both glad to hear that you are in these parts, and long to see you, and long to be at supper, for they be very hungry. CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 93 THE THIRD AND FOURTH DAYS. CHAP. V.-More Directions how to fish for, and how to make for the TROUT an ARTIFICIAL MINNOW and FLIFS, with some AMerriment. PISCATOR. WE7ELL met, Brother Peter! I heard you and a friend would lodge here to-night, and that hath made me to bring my friend to lodge here too. My friend is one that would fain be a Brother of the Angle: he hath been an Angler but this day, and I have taught him how to catch a Chub by daping with a grasshopper; and the Chub he caught was a lusty one of nineteen inches long. But pray, Brother Peter, who is your companion? PETER. Brother Piscator, my friend is an honest Countryman, and his name is Coridon, and he is a downright witty companion, that met me here purposely to be pleasant and eat a Trout; and I have not yet wetted my line since we met together: but I hope to fit him with a Trout for his breakfast, for I '11 be early up. 94 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. PisC. Nay, brother, you shall not stay so long: for, look you! here is a TROUT will fill six reasonable bellies. Come, Hostess, dress it presently, and get us what other meat the house will afford, and give us some of your best barley-wine, the good liquor that our honest forefathers did use to drink of; the drink which preserved their health, and made them live so long, and do so many good deeds. PETER. O' my word, this Trout is perfect in season. Come, I thank you, and here is a hearty draught to you, and to all the Brothers of the Angle wheresoever they be, and to my young brother's good fortune to-morrow. I will furnish him with a rod, if you will furnish him with the rest of the tackling; we will set him up and make him a fisher. And I will tell him one thing for his encouragement, that his fortune hath made him CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 95 happy to be scholar to such a master; a master that knows as much both of the nature and breeding of fish as any man: and can also tell him as well how to catch and cook them, from the Minnow to the Salmon, as any that I ever met withal. PIsc. Trust me, Brother Peter, I find my Scholar to be so suitable to my own humor, which is to be free, and pleasant, and civilly merry, that my resolution is to hide nothing that I know from him. Believe me, Scholar, this is my resolution; and so here 's to you a hearty draught, and to all that love us, and the honest art of Angling. VEN. Trust me, good Master, you shall not sow your seed in barren ground; for I hope to return you an increase answerable to your hopes: but, however, you shall find me obedient, and thankful, and serviceable to my best ability. Pisc. 'T is enough, honest Scholar: come, let's to supper. Come, my friend Coridon, this Trout looks lovely; it was twenty-two inches when it was taken; and the belly of it looked, some part of it as yellow as a marigold, and part of it as white as a lily; and yet methinks it looks better in this good sauce. CORIDON. Indeed, honest friend, it looks well, and tastes well: I thank you for it, and so doth my friend Peter, or else he is to blame. 96 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. PET. Yes, and so I do; we all thank you, and when we have supped, I will get my friend Coridon to sing you a song for requital. COR. I will sing a song, if anybody will sing another; else, to be plain with you, I will sing none: I am none of those that sing for meat, but for company: I say, "'T is merry in hall, when men sing all." PIsc. I '11 promise you I '11 sing a song that was lately made, at my request, by Mr. William Basse, one that hath made the choice songs of the " Hunter in his career," and of " Tom of Bedlam," and many others of note; and this that I will sing is in praise of Angling. COR. And then mine shall be the praise of a countryman's life. What will the rest sing of? PET. I will promise you, I will sing another song in praise of Angling to-morrow night; for we will not part till then; but fish to-morrow, and sup together, and the next day every man leave fishing, and fall to his business. VEN. 'T is a match; and I will provide you a song or a catch against then, too, which shall give some addition of mirth to the company; for we will be civil, and as merry as beggars. PIsc. 'T is a match, my masters. Let's even say grace, and turn to the fire, drink the other CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 97 cup to wet our whistles, and so sing away all sad thoughts. Come on, my masters, who begins? I think it is best to draw cuts, and avoid contention. PET. It is a match. Look, the shortest cut falls to Coridon. COR. Well, then, I will begin, for I hate contention. CORIDON'S SONG. " the sweet contentment The countryman doth find! Heigh trolollie lollie loe, Heigh trolollie lee, That quiet contemplation Possesseth all my mind: Then care away, And wend along with me. "For courts are full of flattery, As hath too oft been tried; Heigh trolollie lollie loe, etc. The city full of wantonness, And both are full of pride: Then care away, etc. "But oh! the honest countryman Speaks truly from his heart, Heigh trolollie lollie loe, etc. His pride is in his tillage, His horses, and his cart: Then care away, etc. 7 98 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. "Our clothing is good sheep-skins, Gray russet for our wives, Heigh trolollie lollie loe, etc. 'T is warmth, and not gay clothing, That doth prolong our lives: Then care away, etc. "The ploughman, though he labor hard, Yet on the holiday, Heigh trolollie lollie loe, etc. No emperor so merrily Does pass his time away: Then care away, etc. "To recompense our tillage, The heavens afford us showers; Heigh trolollie lollie loe, etc. And for our sweet refreshments The earth affords us bowers: Then care away, etc. "The cuckoo and the nightingale Full merrily do sing, Heigh trolollie lollie loe, etc. And with their pleasant roundelays Bid welcome to the spring: Then care away, etc. "This is not half the happiness The countryman enjoys; Heigh trolollie lollie loe, etc. Though others think they have as much, Yet he that says so lies: Then come away, turn Countryman with me." Jo. CHALKHILL. CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 99 Pisc. Well sung! Coridon, this song was sung with mettle; and it was choicely fitted to the occasion: I shall love you for it as long as I know you. I would you were a Brother of the Angle, for a companion that is cheerful, and free from swearing and scurrilous discourse, is worth gold. I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning; nor men, that cannot well bear it, to repent the money they spend when they be warmed with drink. And take this for a rule, you may pick out such times and such companies, that you may make yourselves merrier for a little than a great deal of money; for "'T is the company and not the charge that makes the feast:" and such a companion you prove; I thank you for it. But I will not compliment you out of the debt that I owe you, and therefore I will begin my song, and wish it may be so well liked. THE ANGLER'S SONG. "As inward love breeds outward talk, The hound some praise, and some the hawk: Some, better pleased with private sport, Use tennis, some a mistress court: But these delights I neither wish, Nor envy, while I freely fish. * * * *.. 0. * ~ e e I00 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART 1. "Who hunts, doth oft in danger ride; Who hawks, lures oft both far and wide; Who uses games shall often prove A loser; but who falls in love Is fettered in fond Cupid's snare: My angle breeds me no such care. "Of recreation there is none So free as Fishing is alone; All other pastimes do no less Than mind and body both possess: My hand alone my work can do, So I can fish and study too. "I care not, I, to fish in seas; Fresh rivers best my mind do please, Whose sweet calm course I contemplate, And seek in life to imitate: In civil bounds I fain would keep, And for my past offences weep. "And when the timorous Trout I wait To take, and he devours my bait, How poor a thing sometimes I find Will captivate a greedy mind! And when none bite, I praise the wise, Whom vain allurements ne'er surprise. "But yet, though while I fish I fast, I make good fortune my repast; And thereunto my friend invite, In whom I more than that delight: Who is more welcome to my dish, Than to my angle was my fish..o *: *. CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. IOI "As well content no prize to take, As use of taken prize to make: For so our Lord was pleased when He fishers made fishers of men: Where, which is in no other game, A man may fish and praise his name. "The first men that our Saviour dear Did choose to wait upon him here Blest fishers were, and fish the last Food was that he on earth did taste: I therefore strive to follow those Whom he to follow him hath chose." X COR. Well sung, Brother! you have paid your debt in good coin. We Anglers are all beholden to the good man that made this song. Come, Hostess, give us more ale, and let 's drink to him. And now let's every one go to bed that we may rise early: but first let 's pay our reckoning, for I will have nothing to hinder me in the morning; for my purpose is to prevent the sun rising. PET. A match. Come, Coridon, you are to be my bedfellow: I know, Brother, you and your Scholar will lie together. But where shall we meet to-morrow night? for my friend Coridon and I will go up the water towards Ware. Pisc. And my Scholar and I will go down towards Waltham. I02 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. COR. Then let's meet here, for here are fresh sheets that smell of lavender; and I am sure we cannot expect better meat or better usage in any place. PET. 'T is a match. Good night to everybody! PIsc. And so say I. VEN. And so say I. THE FOURTH DAY. PIsc. Good morrow, good Hostess! I see my Brother Peter is still in bed: come, give my Scholar and me a morning drink, and a bit of meat to breakfast, and be sure to get a good dish of meat or two against supper, for we shall come home as hungry as hawks. Come, Scholar, let's be going. VEN. Well now, good Master, as we walk towards the river give me direction, according to your promise, how I shall fish for a Trout. PIsc. My honest Scholar, I will take this very convenient opportunity to do it. The Trout is usually caught with a worm or a minnow, which some call a Penk, or with a fly, viz. either a natural or an artificial fly: concerning which three I will give you some observations and directions. And, first, for worms: of these there be very many sorts; some breed only in the earth, as the Earth-worm; others of or amongst plants, as the CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. Io3 Dug-worm; and others breed either out of excrements, or in the bodies of living creatures, as in the horns of sheep or deer; or some of dead flesh, as the maggot or gentle, and others. Now these be most of them particularly good for particular fishes: but for the Trout, the Dewworm, which some also call the Lob-worm, and the Brandling, are the chief; and especially the first for a great Trout, and the latter for a less. There be also of Lob-worms some called Squirrel-tails, a worm that has a red head, a streak down the back, and a broad tail, which are noted to be the best, because they are the toughest and most lively, and live longest in the water: for you are to know, that a dead worm is but a dead bait, and like to catch nothing, compared to a lively, quick, stirring worm. And for a Brandling, he is usually found in an old dunghill, or some very rotten place near to it: but most usually in cow-dung, or hog's dung, rather than horse-dung, which is somewhat too hot and dry for that worm. But the best of them are to be found in the bark of the tanners, which they cast up in heaps after they have used it about their leather. There are also divers other kinds of worms, which for color and shape alter even as the ground out of which they are got; as the Marsh-worm, the Tag-tail, the Flag-worm, the Dock-worm, the Oak Io4 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. worm, the Gilt-tail, the Twachel or Lob-worm, which of all others is the most excellent bait for a Salmon, and too many to name, even as many sorts as some think there be of several herbs or shrubs, or of several kinds of birds in the air: of which I shall say no more, but tell you, that what worms soever you fish with are the better for being well scoured, that is, long kept before they be used: and in case you have not been so provident, then the way to cleanse and scour them quickly is to put them all night in water, if they be Lob-worms, and then put them into your bag with fennel; but you must not put your Brandlings above an hour in water, and then put them into fennel for sudden use; but if you have time, and purpose to keep them long, then they be best preserved in an earthen pot with good store of moss, which is to be fresh every three or four days in summer, and every week or eight days in winter; or at least the moss taken from them, and clean washed, and wrung betwixt your hands till it be dry, and then put it to them again. And when your worm, especially the Brandling, begins to be sick and lose of his bigness, then you may recover him by putting a little milk or cream, about a spoonful in a day, into them by drops on the moss; and if there be added to the cream an egg beaten and boiled CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I05 in it, then it will both fatten and preserve them long. And note, that when the knot, which is near to the middle of the Brandling, begins to swell, then he is sick, and, if he be not well looked to, is near dying. And for moss you are to note, that there be divers kinds of it, which I could name to you, but will only tell you that that which is likest a buck's horn is the best, except it be soft white moss, which grows on some heaths, and is hard to be found. And note, that in a very dry time, when you are put to an extremity for worms, walnut-tree leaves squeezed into water, or salt in water, to make it bitter or salt, and then that water poured on the ground where you shall see worms are used to rise in the night, will make them to appear above ground presently. And you may take notice, some say that camphor put into your bag with your moss and worms gives them a strong and so tempting a smell, that the fish fare the worse and you the better for it. And now I shall show you how to bait your hook with a worm, so as shall prevent you from much trouble, and the loss of many a hook too, when you fish for a Trout with a running-line; that is to say, when you fish for him by hand at the ground. I will direct you in this as plainly as I can, that you may not mistake. Io6 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Suppose it be a big Lob-worm; put your hook into him somewhat above the middle, and out again a little below the middle: having so done, draw your worm above the arming of your hook; but note, that at the entering of your hook it must not be at the head-end of the worm, but at the tail-end of him, that the point of your hook may come out toward the head-end, and having drawn him above the arming of your hook, then put the point of your hook again into the very head of the worm, till it come near to the place where the point of the hook first came out: and then draw back that part of the worm that was above the shank or arming of your hook, and so fish with it. And if you mean to fish with two worms, then put the second on before you turn back the hook's head of the first worm. You cannot lose above two or three worms before you attain to what I direct you; and having attained it, you will find it very useful, and thank me for it, for you will run on the ground without tangling. Now for the Minnow or Penk; he is not easily found and caught till March, or in April, for then he appears first in the river; Nature having taught him to shelter and hide himself in the winter in ditches that be near to the river, and there both to hide and keep himself warm in the mud or in the CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 107 weeds, which rot not so soon as in a running river, in which place if he were in winter, the distempered floods that are usually in that season would suffer him to take no rest, but carry him headlong to mills and weirs, to his confusion. And of these Minnows, first you are to know, that the biggest size is not the best; and next, that the middle size and the whitest are the best: and then you are to know, that your Minnow must be so put on your hook, that it must turn round when 'tis drawn against the stream, and that it may turn nimbly, you must put it on a big-sized hook as I shall now direct you, which is thus. Put your hook in at his mouth and out at his gill; then, having drawn your hook two or three inches beyond or through his gill, put it again into his mouth, and the point and beard out at his tail; and then tie the hook and his tail about very neatly with a white thread, which will make it the apter to turn quick in the water: that done, pull back that part of your line which was slack when you did put your hook into the Minnow the second time; I say, pull that part of your line back so that it shall fasten the head so that the body of the Minnow shall be almost straight on your hook; this done, try how it will turn by drawing it across the water or against a stream; and if it do not turn nimbly, then turn Io8 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. the tail a little to the right or left hand, and try again, till it turn quick; for if not, you are in danger to catch nothing; for know, that it is impossible that it should turn too quick. And you are yet to know, that in case you want a Minnow, then a small Loach or a Stickle-bag, or any other small fish that will turn quick, will serve as well. And you are yet to know, that you may salt them, and by that means keep them ready and fit for use three or four days, or longer; and that of salt, baysalt is the best. And here let me tell you, what many old Anglers know right well, that at some times, and in some waters, a Minnow is not to be got, and therefore let me tell you, I have - which I will show to you - an artificial Minnow, that will catch a Trout as well as an artificial fly; and it was made by a handsome woman, that had a fine hand, and a live Minnow lying by her: the mould or body of the Minnow was cloth, and wrought upon or over it thus with a needle; the back of it with very sad French green silk, and paler green silk towards the belly, shadowed as perfectly as you can imagine, just as you see a Minnow; the belly was wrought also with a needle, and it was a part of it white silk, and another part of it with silver thread: the tail and fins were of a quill, which was shaven thin; CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. IO9 the eyes were of two little black beads, and the head was so shadowed, and all of it so curiously wrought, and so exactly dissembled, that it would beguile any sharp-sighted Trout in a swift stream. And this Minnow I will now show you; look, here it is: and if you like it, lend it you, to have two or three made by it, for they be easily carried about an Angler and be of excellent use; for note, that a large Trout will come as fiercely at a Minnow, as the highest mettled hawk doth seize on a partridge, or a greyhound on a hare. I have been told, that one hundred and sixty Minnows have been found in a Trout's belly; either the Trout had devoured so many, or the miller that gave it a friend of mine had forced them down his throat after he had taken him. Now for Flies, which is the third bait wherewith Trouts are usually taken. You are to know, that there are so many sorts of flies as there be of fruits: I will name you but some of them; as the Dun-fly, the Stone-fly, the Red-fly, the Moor-fly, the Tawnyfly, the Shell-fly, the Cloudy or Blackish-fly, the Flag-fly, the Vine-fly: there be of flies, Caterpillars, and Canker-flies, and Bear-flies; and indeed too many either for me to name or for you to remember: and their breeding is so various and wonderful, that I might easily amaze myself and tire you in a relation of them. I IO THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. And yet I will exercise your promised patience by saying a little of the Caterpillar, or the Palmerfly or worm, that by them you may guess what a work it were in a discourse but to run over those very many flies, worms, and little living creatures with which the sun and summer adorn and beautify the river-banks and meadows, both for the recreation and contemplation of us Anglers: pleasures which, I think, myself enjoy more than any other man that is not of my profession. Pliny holds an opinion, that many have their birth or being from a dew, that in the spring falls upon the leaves of trees; and that some kinds of them are from a dew left upon herbs or flowers; and others from a dew left upon coleworts or cabbages; all which kinds of dews being thickened and condensed, are by the sun's generative heat most of them hatched, and in three days made living creatures: and these of several shapes and colors; some being hard and tough, some smooth and soft; some are horned in their head, some in their tail, some have none: some have hair, some none: some have sixteen feet, some less, and In his History of Ser- some have none: but, as our Topsel pents. hath, with great diligence, observed, those which have none move upon the earth, or upon broad leaves, their motion being not unlike CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I I I to the waves of the sea. Some of them he also observes to be bred of the eggs of other caterpillars, and that those in their time turn to be butterflies; and again, that their eggs turn the following year to be caterpillars. And some affirm, that every plant has his particular fly or caterpillar, which it breeds and feeds. I have seen, and may therefore affirm it, a green caterpillar, or worm, as big as a small peascod, which hacd fourteen legs; eight on the belly, four under the neck, and two near the tail. It was found on a hedge of privet; and was taken thence, and put into a large box, and a little branch or two of privet put to it, on which I saw it feed as sharply as a dog gnaws a bone: it lived thus five or six days, and thrived, and changed the color two or three times; but, by some neglect in the keeper of it, it then died and did not turn to a fly: but if it had lived, it had doubtless turned to one of those flies that some call Flies-of-prey, which those that walk by the rivers may, in summer, see fasten on smaller flies, and, I think, make them their food. And 't is observable, that, as there be these Flies-ofprey which be very large, so there be others, very little, created, I think, only to feed them, and breed out of I know not what; whose life, they say, Nature intended not to exceed an hour; and 112 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. yet that life is thus made shorter by other flies, or accident. 'T is endless to tell you what the curious searchers into Nature's productions have observed of these worms and flies: but yet I shall tell you what Aldrovandus, our Topsel, and others, say of the Palmer-worm or Caterpillar: that whereas others content themselves to feed on particular herbs or leaves, - for most think those very leaves that gave them life and shape give them a particular feeding and nourishment, and that upon them they usually abide; - yet he observes that this is called a Pilgrim or Palmer-worm, for his very wandering life and various food; not contenting himself, as others do, with any one certain place for his abode, nor any certain kind of herb or flower for his feeding; but will boldly and disorderly wander up and down, and not endure to be kept to a diet, or fixed to a particular place. Nay, the very colors of Caterpillars are, as one has observed, very elegant and beautiful. I shall, for a taste of the rest, describe one of them, which I will some time the next month show you feeding on a willow-tree, and you shall find him punctually to answer this very description: his lips and mouth somewhat yellow, his eyes black as jet, his forehead purple, his feet and hinder parts green, his tail two CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. II3 forked and black; the whole body stained with a kind of red spots which run along the neck and shoulder-blade, not unlike the form of Saint Andrew's cross, or the letter X, made thus crosswise, and a white line drawn down his back to his tail; all which add much beauty to- his whole body. And it is to me observable, that at a fixed age this Caterpillar gives over to eat, and towards winter comes to be covered over with a strange shell or crust, called an Aurelia; and so lives a View Sir Fra. kind of dead life, without eating, all the Bacon Exper. 728 and 729, winter. And, as others of several kinds in his Natural History. turn to be several kinds of flies and vermin the spring following, so this caterpillar then turns to be a painted butterfly. Come, come, my Scholar, you see the river stops our morning walk, and I will also here stop my discourse: only, as we sit down under this honeysuckle hedge, whilst I look a line to fit the rod that our Brother Peter hath lent you, I shall, for a little confirmation of what I have said, repeat the observation of Du Bartas: " God, not contented to each kind to give, 6. Day of Du Bartas. And to infuse the virtue generative, D artas. By his wise power made many creatures breed Of lifeless bodies, without Venus' deed. 8 iI4 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. "So the cold humor breeds the Salamander; Who, in effect, like to her birth's commander, With child with hundred winters, with her touch Quencheth the fire, though glowing ne'er so much. "So in the fire, in burning furnace, springs The fly Perausta with the flaming wings: Without the fire it dies; in it it joys; Living in that which all things else destroys. "So, slow Bootes underneath him sees ViHebal ad In th' icy islands goslings hatched of trees; Camden. Whose fruitful leaves, falling into the water, Are turned, 't is known, to living fowls soon after. "So rotten planks of broken ships do change To barnacles. 0 transformation strange! 'T was first a green tree, then a broken hull, Lately a mushroom, now a flying gull." VEN. 0 my good Master! this morning walk has been spent to my great pleasure and wonder: but I pray, when shall I have your direction how to make Artificial Flies, like to those that the Trout loves best? and also how to use them? PIsc. My honest Scholar, it is now past five of the clock; we will fish till nine, and then go to breakfast. Go you to yonder sycamore-tree, and hide your bottle of drink under the hollow root of it; for about that time, and in that place, we will make a brave breakfast with a piece of powdered beef, and a radish or two that I have in my fish CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I 5 bag: we shall, I warrant you, make a good, honest, wholesome, hungry breakfast; and I will then give you direction for the making and using of your flies: and in the mean time there is your rod and line; and my advice is, that you fish as you see me do, and let's try which can catch the first fish. VEN. I thank you, Master, I will observe and practise your direction, as far as I am able. PIsc. Look you, Scholar; you see I have hold of a good fish: I now see it is a Trout. I pray put that net under him, and touch not my line, for if you do, then we break all. Well done, Scholar, I thank you. Now for another. Trust me I have another bite. Come, Scholar, come, lay down your rod, and help me to land this, as you did the other. So now we shall be sure to have a good dish of fish to supper. VEN. I am glad of that; but I have no fortune: sure, Master, your's is a better rod and better tackling. Pisc. Nay, then, take mine, and I will fish with yours. Look you, Scholar, I have another. Come, do as you did before. And now I have a bite at another. Oh me! he has broke all; there 's half a line and a good hook lost. VEN. Ay, and a good Trout too. II6 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Pisc. Nay, the Trout is not lost; for pray take notice, no man can lose what he never had. VEN. Master, I can neither catch with the first nor second angle: I have no fortune. PIsc. Look you, Scholar, I have yet another. And now, having caught three brace of Trouts, I will tell you eL short tale as we walk towards our breakfast. A scholar, a preacher I should say, that was to preach to procure the approbation of a parish, that he might be their lecturer, had got from his fellow-pupil the copy of a sermon that was first preached with great commendation by him that composed it: and though the borrower of it preached it word for word, as it was at first, yet it was utterly disliked as it was preached by the second to his congregation; which the sermonborrower complained of to the lender of it, and was thus answered: " I lent you indeed my fiddle, but not my fiddlestick; for you are to know, that every one cannot make music with my words, which are fitted for my own mouth." And so, my Scholar, you are to know, that as the ill pronunciation or ill accenting of words in a sermon spoils it, so the ill carriage of your line, or not fishing even to a foot in a right place, makes you lose your labor; and you are to know, that though you have my fiddle, that is, my very rod and tacklings with which CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I 7 you see I catch fish, yet you have not my fiddlestick: that is, you yet have not skill to know how to carry your hand and line, nor how to guide it to a right place: and this must be taught you, - for you are to remember I told you Angling is an art, - either by practice, or a long observation, or both. But take this for a rule, when you fish for a Trout with a worm, let your line have so much, and not more lead than will fit the stream in which you fish; that is to say, more in a great troublesome stream than in a smaller that is quieter: as near as may be, so much as will sink the bait to the bottom, and keep it still in motion, and not more. But now let's say grace and fall to breakfast. What say you, Scholar, to the providence of an old Angler? Does not this meat taste well? and was not this place well chosen to eat it? for this sycamore-tree will shade us from the sun's heat. VEN. All excellent good; and my stomach excellent good too. And now I remember, and find that true which devout Lessius says, "that poor men, and those that fast often, have much more pleasure in eating than rich men and gluttons, that always feed before their stomachs are empty of their last meat, and call for more; for by that means they rob themselves of that pleasure that THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. hunger brings to poor men." And I do seriously approve of that saying of yours, "that you had rather be a civil, well-governed, well-grounded, temperate, poor Angler, than a drunken lord:" but I hope there is none such. However, I am certain of this, that I have been at many very costly dinners that have not afforded me half the content that this has done, for which I thank God and you. And now, good Master, proceed to your promised direction for making and ordering my Artificial Fly. PIsc. My honest Scholar, I will do it, for it is a debt due unto you by my promise. And because you shall not think yourself more engaged to me than indeed you really are, I will freely give you such directions as were lately given to me by an ingenious Brother of the Angle, an honest man, / and a most excellent fly-fisher. kou are to note, that there are twelve kinds of / artificial-made Flies to angle with upon the top of the water. Note by the way, that the fittest season of using these is a blustering, windy day, when the waters are so troubled that the natural fly cannot be seen, or rest upon them. The first is the Dunfly, in March: the body is made of dun wool, the wings of the partridge's feathers. The second is CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. il9 another Dun-fly: the body of black wool, and the wings made of the black drake's feathers, and of the feathers under his tail. The third is the Stonefly, in April: the body is made of black wool, made yellow under the wings, and under the tail, and so made with wings of the drake. The fourth is the Ruddy-fly, in the beginning of May: the body made of red wool wrapt about with black silk, and the feathers are the wings of the drake; with the feathers of a red capon also, which hang dangling on his sides next to the tail. The fifth is the yellow or greenish fly, in May likewise: the body made of yellow wool, and the wings made of the red cock's hackle or tail. The sixth is the Blackfly, in May also: the body made of black wool, and lapped about with the herle of a peacock's tail; the wings are made of the wings of a brown capon with his blue feathers in his head. The seventh is the Sad-yellow-fly in June: the body is made of black wool, with a yellow list on either side, and the wings taken off the wings of a buzzard, bound with black braked hemp. The eighth is the Moorish-fly: made with the body of duskish wool, and the wings made of the blackish mail of the drake. The ninth is the Tawny-fly, good until the middle of June: the body made of tawny wool, the wings made contrary one against the I20 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. other, made of the whitish mail of the wild-drake. The tenth is the Wasp-fly, in July: the body made of black wool, lapped about with yellow silk; the wings made of the feathers of the drake, or of the buzzard. The eleventh is the Shell-fly, good in mid-July: the body made of greenish wool, lapped about with the herle of a peacock's tail, and the wings made of the wings of the buzzard. The twelfth is the dark Drake-fly, good in August: the body made with black wool, lapped about with black silk; his wings are made with the mail of the black-drake, with a black head. Thus have 1 a jury of flies likely to betray and condemn all the Trouts in the river. I shall next give you some other directions for fly-fishing, such as are given by Mr. Thomas Barker, a gentleman that hath spent much time in fishing; -ut I shall do it with a little variation. First, let your rod be light, and very gentle: I take the best to be of two pieces. And let not your line exceed,- especially for three or four links next to the hook, - I say, not exceed three or four hairs at the most, though you may fish a little stronger above in the upper part of your line; but if you can attain to angle with one hair, you shall have more rises and catch more fish. Now you must be sure not to cumber yourself with too CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I2I long a line, as most do. And before you begin to angle, cast to have the wind on your back, and the sun, if it shines, to be before you, and to fish down the stream; and carry the point or top of your rod downward, by which means the shadow of yourself, and rod too, will be the least offensive to the fish; for the sight of any shade amazes the fish, and spoils your sport, of which you must take a great care. In the middle of March, till which time a man should not in honesty catch a Trout; or in April, if the weather be dark, or a little windy or cloudy, the best fishing is with the Palmer-worm, of whi I last spoke to you; but of these there be divers kinds, or at least of divers colors: these and the May-fly are the ground of all fly-angling, which are to be thus made. First, you must arm your hook with tai line in the inside of it; then take your scissors, and cut so much of a brown mallard's feather as in your own reason will make the wings of it, you having withal regard to the bigness or littleness of your hook: then lay the outmost part of your feather next to your hook, then the point of your feather next the shank of your hook; and, having so done, whip it three or four times about the hook with the same silk with which your hook was armed; and, 122 THE COMPLETE ANGLER [PART I. having made the silk fast, take the hackle of a cock or capon's neck, or a plover's top, which is usually better: take off the one side of the feather, and then take the hackle, silk, or crewel, gold or silver thread, make these fast at the bent of the hook, that is to say, below your arming; then you must take the hackle, the silver or gold thread, and work it up to the wings, shifting or still removing your finger as you turn the silk about the hook; and still looking at every stop or turn, that your gold, or what materials soever you make your fly of, do lie right and neatly, and if you find they do so, then, when you have made the head, make all fast: and then work your hackle up to the head, and make that fast: and then, with a needle or pin, divide the wing into two; and then with the arming silk whip it about cross-ways betwixt the wings; and then with your thumb you must turn the point of the feather towards the bent of the hook; and then work three or four times about the shank of the hook; and then view the proportion, and if all be neat and to your liking, fasten. / I confess, no direction can be given to make a man of a dull capacity able to make a fly well: and yet I know this, with a little practice, will help an ingenious Angler in a good degree: but to see a fly made by an artist in that kind, is the best CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I23 teaching to make it. And, then, an ingenious Angler may walk by the river and mark what flies fall on the water that day, and catch one of them, if he see the Trouts leap at a fly of that kind: and then having always hooks ready-hung with him, and having a bag also always with him, with bear's hair, or the hair of a brown or sad-colored heifer, hackles of a cock or a capon, several colored silk and crewel to make the body of the fly, the feathers of a drake's head, black or brown sheep's wool, or hog's wool, or hair, thread of gold and of silver, silk of several colors, especially sad-colored, to make the fly's head; and there be also other colored feathers both of little birds and of speckled fowl: — I say, having those with him in a bag, and trying to make a fly, though he miss at first, yet shall he at last hit it better, even to such a perfection as none can well teach him. And if he hit to make his fly right, and have the luck to hit also where there is store of Trouts, a dark day, and a right wind, he will catch such store of them as will encourage him to grow more and more in love with the art of fly-making. VEN. But, my loving Master, if any wind will not serve, then I wish I were in Lapland, to buy a good wind of one of the honest witches, that sell so many winds there, and so cheap. 124 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Pisc. Marry, Scholar, but I would not be there, nor indeed from under this tree: for look how it begins to rain, and by the clouds, if I mistake not, we shall presently have a smoking shower: and therefore sit close; this sycamore-tree will shelter us: and I will tell you, as they shall come into my mind, more observations of Fly-fishing for a Trout. But first for the wind: you are to take notice, that of the winds the south wind is said to be best. One observes, that i" when the wind is south, It blows your bait into a fish's mouth." Next to that, the west wind is believed to be the best: and having told you that the east wind is the worst, I need not tell you which wind is the best in the third degree: and yet, as Solomon observes (Eccles. xi. 4), that "he that considers the wind shall never sow; " so he that busies his head too much about them, if the weather be not made extreme cold by an east wind, shall be a little superstitious: for as it is observed by some, that there is no good horse of a bad color, so I have observed that if it be a cloudy day, and not extreme cold, let the wind sit in what corner it will, and do its worst, I heed it not. And yet take' this for a rule, that I would willingly fish standing CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I25 on the lee-shore: and you are to take notice, that the fish lies or swims nearer the bottom, and in deeper water, in winter than in summer; and also nearer the bottom in a cold day, and then gets nearest the lee-side of the water. But I promised to tell you more of the Flyfishing for a Trout, which I may have time enough to do, for you see it rains May butter. First for a May-fly: you may make his body with greenishcolored crewel, or willowish color; darkening it in most places with waxed silk, or ribbed with black hair, or some of them ribbed with silver thread; and such wings, for the color, as you see the fly to have at that season, - nay, at that very day on the water. Or you may make the Oak-fly with an orange tawny and black ground, and the brown of a mallard's feather for the wings; and you are to know, that these two are most excellent flies, that is, the May-fly and the Oak-fly. And let me again tell you, that you keep as far from the water as you can possibly, whether you fish with a fly or worm, and fish down the stream: and when you fish with a fly, if it be possible, let no part of your line touch the water, but your fly only; and be still moving your fly upon the water, or casting it into the water, you yourself being also always moving down the stream. 126 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Mr. Barker commends several sorts of the Palmer-flies; not only those ribbed with silver and gold, but others that have their bodies all made of black, or some with red, and a red hackle. You may also make the Hawthorn-fly, which is all black, and not big, but very small, the smaller the better: or the Oak-fly, the body of which is orange-color and black crewel, with a brown wing: or a fly made with a peacock's feather is excellent in a bright day. You must be sure you want not in your magazine-bag the peacock's feather, and grounds of such wool and crewel as will make the Grasshopper; and note, that usually the smallest flies are the best. And note also, that the light fly does usually make most sport in a dark day, and the darkest and least fly in a bright or clear day: and lastly note, that you are to repair upon any occasion to your magazinebag; and upon any occasion vary, and make them - lighter or sadder according to your fancy or the day. And now I shall tell you, that the fishing with a natural fly is excellent, and affords much pleasure. They may be found thus: the May-fly usually in and about that month near to the river-side, especially against rain: the Oak-fly on the but or body of an oak or ash, from the beginning of May to the CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I27 end of August; it is a brownish fly, and easy to be so found, and stands usually with his head downward, that is to say, towards the root of the tree: the small black fly, or Hawthorn-fly, is to be had on any hawthorn-bush after the leaves be come forth: with these and a short line, as I showed to angle for a Chub, you may dape or dop; and also with a grasshopper behind a tree, or in any deep hole; still making it to move on the top of the water, as if it were alive, and still keeping yourself out of sight, you shall certainly have sport if there be Trouts; yea, in a hot day, but especially in the evening of a hot day, you will have sport. And now, Scholar, my direction for fly-fishing is ended with this shower, for it has done raining. And now look about you, and see how pleasantly that meadow looks; nay, and the earth smells as sweetly too. Come, let me tell you what holy Mr. Herbert says of such days and flowers as these; and then we will thank God that we enjoy them, and walk to the river, and sit down quietly, and try to catch the other brace of Trouts. Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, The bridal of the earth and sky, Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night,For thou must die I 128 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. "Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye, Thy root is ever in its grave, - And thou must die! "Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, A box where sweets compacted lie; My music shows you have your closes, - And all must die! "Only a sweet and virtuous soul, Like seasoned timber, never gives, But when the whole world turns to coal, - Then chiefly lives! " VEN. I thank you, good Master, for your good direction for fly-fishing, and for the sweet enjoyment of the pleasant day, which is so far spent without offence to God or man: and I thank you for the sweet close of your discourse with Mr. Herbert's verses; who, I have heard, loved Angling: and I do the rather believe it, because he had a spirit suitable to Anglers, and to those primitive Christians that you love, and have so much commended. PIsc. Well, my loving Scholar, and I am pleased to know that you are so well pleased with my direction and discourse. And since you like these verses of Mr. Herbert's so well, let me tell you what a reverend and learned CHAP. V.J THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I29 divine that professes to imitate him, and has indeed done so most excellently, hath writ of our Book of Common Prayer: which I know you will like the better because he is a friend of mine, and I am sure no enemy to Angling. "What? Prayer by the Book? and Common? Yes; why not? The spirit of grace And supplication Is not left free alone For time and place, But manner too: to read or speak by rote, Is all alike to him, that prays In's heart what with his mouth'he says. "They that in private by themselves alone Do pray, may take What liberty they please, In choosing of the ways Wherein to make Their soul's most intimate affections known To Him that sees in secret, when Th' are most concealed from other men. "But he that unto others leads the way In public prayer, Should do it so, As all that hear may know They need not fear To tune their hearts unto his tongue, and say, Amen I not doubt they were betrayed To blaspheme, when they meant to have prayed. 9 130 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART r. "Devotion will add life unto the letter, And why should not That which authority Prescribes esteemed be Advantage got? If th' prayer be good, the commoner the better, Prayer in the Church's words, as well As sense, of all prayers bears the bell." CH. HARVIE. And now, Scholar, I think it will be time to repair to our angle-rods, which we left in the water to fish for themselves; and you shall choose which shall be yours; and it is an even lay one of them catches. And let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a dead-rod, and laying night-hooks, are like putting money to use; for they both work for the owners when they do nothing but sleep, or eat, or rejoice; as you know we have done this last hour, and sat as quietly and as free from cares under this sycamore, as Virgil's Tityrus and his Meliboeus did under their broad beech-tree. No life, my honest Scholar, no life so happy and so pleasant as the life v of a well-governed Angler; for when the lawyer is swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip banks, hear the birds sing, and possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams, which we now see glide so quietly by us. CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 3 Indeed, my good Scholar, we may say of Angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries: " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did:" and so, if I might be judge, t "God never did make a more calm, quiet, inno-: cent recreation than Angling." I '11 tell you, Scholar, when I sat last on this primrose-bank, and looked down these meadows, I thought of them as Charles the Emperor did of the city of Florence, - " that they were too pleasant to be looked on, but only on holy-days:" as I then sat on this very grass, I turned my present thoughts into verse: 't was a Wish, which I '11 repeat to you. THE ANGLER'S WISH. I in these flowery meads would be; These crystal streams should solace me; To whose harmonious, bubbling noise I with my angle would rejoice: Sit here, and see the turtle-dove Court his chaste mate to acts of love: Or, on that bank, feel the west wind Breathe health and plenty; please my mind To see sweet dew-drops kiss these flowers, And then washed off by April showers: Here, hear my Kenna sing* a song; There, see a blackbird feed her young, * Like Hermit poor. 132 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Or a leverock build her nest; Here, give my weary spirits rest, And raise my low-pitched thoughts above Earth, or what poor mortals love: Thus free from lawsuits, and the noise Of princes' courts, I would rejoice: Or, with my Bryan, and a book, Loiter long days near Shawford Brook; There sit by him, and eat my meat, There see the sun both rise and set: There bid good morning to next clay, There meditate my time away: And angle on, and beg to have A quiet passage to a welcome grave. When I had ended this composure, I left this place, and saw a Brother of the Angle sit under that honeysuckle hedge, one that will prove worth your acquaintance. I sat down by him, and presently we met with an accidental piece of merriment which I will relate to you; for it rains still. On the other side of this very hedge sat a gang of Gypsies, and near to them sat a gang of beggars. The Gypsies were then to divide all the money that had been got that week, either by stealing linen or poultry, or by fortune-telling, or legerdemain, or, indeed, by any other sleights and secrets belonging to their mysterious government. And the sum that was got that week proved to be but twenty and CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 133 some odd shillings. The odd money was agreed to be distributed amongst the poor of their own corporation: and for the remaining twenty shillings, that was to be divided unto four Gentlemengypsies, according to their several degrees in their commonwealth. And the first or chiefest Gypsy was by consent to have a third part of the twenty shillings, which all men know is 6s. 8d. The second was to have a fourth part of the 2os., which all men know to be 5s. The third was to have a fifth part of the 2os., which all men know to be 4s. The fourth and last Gypsy was to have a sixth part of the 20s., which all men know to be 3s. 4d. As, for example, 3 times 6s. 8d. is....... 2o. And so is 4 times 5s....2. os. And so is 5 times 4s....... 20s. And so is 6 times 3s. 4d..... 2os. And yet he that divided the money was so very a Gypsy, that, though he gave to every one these said sums, yet he kept one shilling of it for himself. As, for example, s. d. 6 8 5 o 4 o 3 4 make but 19 o I34 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. But now you shall know, that when the four Gypsies saw that he had got one shilling by dividing the money, though not one of them knew any reason to demand more, yet, like lords and courtiers, every Gypsy envied him that was the gainer, and wrangled with him; and every one said the remaining shilling belonged to him: and so they fell to so high a contest about it, as none that knows the faithfulness of one Gypsy to another will easily believe; only we that have lived these last twenty years are certain that money has been able to do much mischief. However, the Gypsies were too wise to go to law, and did therefore choose their choice friends Rook and Shark, and our late English Gusman, to be their arbitrators and umpires. And so they left this honeysuckle hedge; and went to tell fortunes, and cheat, and get more money and lodging in the next village. When these were gone, we heard as high a contention amongst the beggars, whether it was easiest to rip a cloak, or to unrip a cloak? One beggar affirmed it was all one: but that was denied, by asking her if doing and undoing were all one. Then another said, 't was easiest to unrip a cloak, for that was to let it alone: but she was answered by asking her how she unripped it, if she let it alone? and she confessed herself mistaken. These CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 135 and twenty such like questions were proposed, and answered with as much beggarly logic and earnestness as was ever heard to proceed from the mouth of the most pertinacious schismatic; and sometimes all the beggars, whose number was neither more nor less than the poets' nine Muses, talked all together about this ripping and unripping, and so loud that not one heard what the other said: but at last one Beggar craved audience, and told them, that old Father Clause, whom Ben Jonson in his Beggar's Bush created king of their corporation, was that night to lodge at an ale-house, called Catch-her-by-the-way, not far from Waltham Cross, and in the high-road towards London; and he therefore desired them to spend no more time about that and such like questions, but to refer all to Father Clause at night, for he was an upright judge, and in the mean time draw cuts what song should be next sung, and who should sing it. They all agreed to the motion, and the lot fell to her that was the youngest, and veriest virgin of the company, and she sung Frank Davison's song, which he made forty years ago; and all the others of the company joined to sing the burden with her. The ditty was this, - but first the burden: - "Bright shines the sun: play, beggars, play, Here 's scraps enough to serve to-day. I36 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. "What noise of viols is so sweet As when our merry clappers ring? What mirth doth want when beggars meet? A beggar's life is for a king. Eat, drink, and play; sleep when we list, Go where we will, -so stocks be mist. Bright shines the sun: play, beggars, play, Here's scraps enough to serve to-day. "The world is ours, and ours alone, For we alone have world at will; We purchase not, all is our own, Both fields and streets we beggars fill: Nor care to get, nor fear to keep, Did ever break a beggar's sleep. Bright shines the sun: play, beggars, play, Here 's scraps enough to serve to-day. "A hundred herds of black and white Upon our gowns securely feed; And yet if any dare us bite, He dies therefore as sure as creed. Thus beggars lord it as they please, And only beggars live at ease. Bright shines the sun: play, beggars, play, Here 's scraps enough to serve to-day." VEN. I thank you, good Master, for this piece of merriment, and this song, which was well humored by the maker, and well remembered by you. PIsc. But I pray forget not the catch which you promised to make against night; for our countryman, honest Coridon, will expect your catch and my song, which I must be forced to patch up, for CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I37 it is so long since I learned it that I have forgot a part of it. But come, now it hath done raining, let's stretch our legs a little in a gentle walk to the river, and try what interest our angles will pay us for lending them so long to be used by the Trouts: lent them indeed, like usurers, for our profit and their destruction. VEN. 0 me! look you Master, a fish, a fish! O alas, Master, I have lost her 1 Pisc. Ay, marry, Sir, that was a good fish indeed: if I had had the luck to have taken up that rod, then 'tis twenty to one he should not have broke my line by running to the rod's end, as you suffered him. I would have held him within the bent of my rod, unless he had been fellow to the great Trout that is near an ell long, which was of such a length and depth that he had his picture drawn, and is now to be seen at mine Host Rickabie's, at the George in Ware; and it may be, by giving that very great Trout the rod, that is, by casting it to him into the water, I might have caught him at the long run; for so I use always to do when I meet with an overgrown fish, and you will learn to do so too hereafter: for I tell you, Scholar, fishing is an art, or, at least, it is an art to catch fish. YEN. But, Master, I have heard that the great Trout you speak of is a Salmon. I38 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. Pisc. Trust me, Scholar, I know not what to say to it. There are many country people that believe Hares change sexes every year; and there be very many learned men think so too, for in their dissecting them they find many reasons to incline them to that belief. And to make the wonder seem yet less, that Hares change sexes, note that Doctor Mer. Casaubon affirms, in his book "Of Credible and Incredible Things," that Gaspar Peucerus, a learned physician, tells us of a people that once a year turn wolves, partly in shape, and partly in conditions. And so, whether this were a Salmon when he came into the fresh water, and his not returning into the sea hath altered him to another color or kind, I am not able to say; but I am certain he hath all the signs of being a Trout, both for his shape, color, and spots; and yet many think he is not. VEN. But, Master, will this Trout which I had hold of die? for it is like he hath the hook in his belly. Pisc. I will tell. you, Scholar, that unless the hook be fast in his very gorge, 't is more than probable he will live; and a little time, with the help of the water, will rust the hook, and it will in time wear away, as the gravel doth in the horsehoof, which only leaves a false quarter. CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I139 And now, Scholar, let 's go to my rod. Look youi, Scholar, I have a fish too, but it proves a logger-headed Chub; and this is not much amiss, for this will pleasure some poor body, as we go to our lodgings to meet our brother Peter and honest Coridon. Come, now bait your hook again, and lay it into the water, for it rains again; and we will even retire to the sycamore-tree, and there I will give you more directions concerning fishing, for I would fain make you an artist. VEN. Yes, good Master, I pray let it be so. PISC. Well, Scholar, now we are sat down and are at ease, I shall tell you a little more of Troutfishing, before I speak of the Salmon, which I purpose shall be next, and then of the Pike or Luce. You are to know, there is night as well as day fishing for a Trout, and that in the night the best Trouts come out of their holes; and the manner of taking them is, on the top of the water with a great lob or garden-worm, or rather two, which you are to fish with in a place where the waters run somewhat quietly, for in a stream the bait will not be so well discerned. I say in a quiet or dead place near to some swift, there draw your bait over the top of the water, to and fro, and if there be a good Trout in the hole, he will take it, especially if the night be dark: for then he is bold and lies 140 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. near the top of the water, watching the motion of any frog or water-rat or mouse that swims betwixt him and the sky; these he hunts after, if he sees the water but wrinkle or move in one of these dead holes, where these great old Trouts usually lie near to their holds: for you are to note, that the great old Trout is both subtle and fearful, and lies close all day, and does not usually stir out of his hold, but lies in it as close in the day as the timorous Hare does in her form; for the chief feeding of either is seldom in the day, but usually in the night, and then the great Trout feeds very boldly. And you must fish for him with a strong line, and not a little hook; and let him have time to gorge your hook, for he does not usually forsake it, as he oft will in the day fishing. And if the night be not dark, then fish so with an artificial fly of a light color, and at the snap: nay, he will sometimes rise at a dead mouse, or a piece of cloth, or anything that seems to swim cross the water, or to be in motion. This is a choice way, but I have not oft used it, because it is void of the pleasures that such days as these, that we two now enjoy, afford an Angler. And you are to know, that in Hampshire, which I think exceeds all England for swift, shallow, clear, pleasant brooks, and store of Trouts, they use to CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I4I catch Trouts in the night by the light of a torch or straw, which when they have discovered, they strike with a trout-spear or other ways. This kind of way they catch very many; but I would not believe it till I was an eyewitness of it, nor do I like it now I have seen it. VEN. But, Master, do not Trouts see us in the night? Pisc. Yes, and hear and smell too, both then and in the day-time; for Gesner observes, the Otter smells a fish forty furlongs off him in the water: and that it may be true seems to be affirmed by Sir Francis Bacon, in the Eighth Century of his Natural History, who there proves that waters may be the medium of sounds, by demonstrating it thus: "That if you knock two stones together very deep under the water, those that stand on a bank near to that place may hear the noise without any diminution of it by the water." He also offers the like experiment concerning the letting an anchor fall, by a very long cable or rope, on a rock or the sand within the sea. And this being so well observed and demonstrated, as it is by that learned man, has made me to believe that Eels unbed themselves, and stir at the noise of thunder, and not only, as some think, by the motion or stirring of the earth which is occasioned by that thunder. 142 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. CPART I. And this reason of Sir Francis Bacon, Exper. 792, has made me crave pardon of one that I laughed at for affirming, that he knew Carps come to a certain place in a pond, to be fed, at the ringing of a bell or the beating of a drum: and however, it shall be a rule for me to make as little noise as I can when I am fishing, until Sir Francis Bacon be confuted; which I shall give any man leave to do. And, lest you may think him singular in this opinion, I will tell you, this seems to be believed by our learned Doctor Hakewill, who in his Apology of God's Power and Providence, fol. 360, quotes Pliny to report, that one of the Emperors had particular fish-ponds, and in them several fish, that appeared and came when they were called by their particular names. And St. James tells us, Chap. iii. 7, that all things in the sea have been tamed by mankind. And Pliny tells us, Lib. ix. 35, that Antonia, the wife of Drusus, had a Lamprey, at whose gills she hung jewels, or earrings: and that others have been so tender-hearted as to shed tears at the death of fishes which they have kept and loved. And these observations, which will to most hearers seem wonderful, seem to have a further confirmation from Martial, Lib. iv. Epigr. 30, who writes thus: --- " Piscator, fuge, ne nocens," etc. CHAP. V.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I43 "Angler, wouldst thou be guiltless? then forbear, For these are sacred fishes that swim here, Who know their sovereign, and will lick his hand, Than which none's greater in the world's command; Nay, more, th' have names, and when they called are, Do to their several owners' call repair." All the further use that I shall make of this shall be, to advise Anglers to be patient, and forbear vi swearing, lest they be heard and catch no fish. And so I shall proceed next to tell you, it is certain, that certain fields near Leominster, a town in Herefordshire, are observed to make the sheep that graze upon them more fat than the next, and also to bear finer wool; that is to say, that that year in which they feed in such a particular pasture they shall yield finer wool than they did that year before they came to feed in it, and coarser again if they shall return to their former pasture; and again return to a finer wool, being fed in the finewool ground. Which I tell you, that you may the better believe that I am certain, if I catch a Trout in one meadow, he shall be white and faint, and very like to be lousy; and as certainly, if I catch a Trout in the next meadow, he shall be strong, and red, and lusty, and much better meat. Trust me, Scholar, I have caught many a Trout in a particular meadow, that the very shape and the enamelled color of him hath been such as hath joyed 144 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. me to look on him; and I have then with much pleasure concluded with Solomon, "Everything is beautiful in his season" (Eccles. iii. i ). I should by promise speak next of the Salmon; but I will, by your favor, say a little of the Umber or Grayling; which is so like a Trout for his shape and feeding, that I desire I may exercise your patience with a short- discourse of him; and then the next shall be of the Salmon. CHAP. VI.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I45 THE FOURTH DAY. CHAP. VI. - Observations of the UMBER or GRAYLING, and Dzrectzons how to fish for them. PISCATOR. T HE Umber and Grayling are thought by some to differ, as the Herring and Pilcher do. But though they may do so in other nations, I think those in England differ nothing but in their names. Aldrovandus says, they be of a Trout kind; and Gesner says that, in his country, which is Switzerland, he is accounted the choicest of all fish. And in Italy he is, in the month of May, so highly valued, that he is sold then at a much higher rate than any other fish. The French, which call the Chub Un Vilain, call the Umber of the Lake Leman Un Umble Chevalier; and they value the Umber or Grayling so highly, that they say he feeds on gold; and say that many have been caught out of their famous river of Loire, out of whose bellies grains of gold have been often taken. And some think that he feeds on waterthyme, and smells of it at his first taking out of 10 I46 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. the water; and they may think so with as good reason as we do that our Smelts smell like violets at their being first caught, which I think is a truth. Aldrovandus says, the Salmon, the Grayling, and Trout, and all fish that live in clear and sharp streams, are made by their mother Nature of such exact shape and pleasant colors, purposely to invite us to a joy and contentedness in feasting with her. Whether this is a truth or not, it is not my purpose to dispute; but 't is certain, all that write of the Umber declare him to be very medicinable. And Gesner says, that the fat of an Umber or Grayling being set, with a little honey, a day or two in the sun, in a little glass, is very excellent against redness or swarthiness, or anything that breeds in the eyes. Salvian takes him to be called vUmber from his swift swimming, or gliding out of sight more like a shadow or a ghost than a fish. Much more might be said both of his smell and taste: but I shall only tell you, that St. Ambrose, the glorious Bishop of Milan, who lived when the Church kept fasting-days, calls him the Flowerfish, or Flower of Fishes, and that he was so far in love with him, that he would not let him pass without the honor of a long discourse; but I must; and pass on to tell you how to take this dainty fish. CHAP. VI.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 147 First, note, that he grows not to the bigness of a Trout; for the biggest of them do not usually exceed eighteen inches. He lives in such rivers as the Trout does, and is usually taken with the same baits as the Trout is, and after the same manner, for he will bite both at the minnow, or worm, or fly: though he bites not often at the minnow, and '."Mr X is very gamesome at the fly, and much simpler, and therefore bolder than a Trout; for he will rise twenty times at a fly, if you miss him, and yet rise again. He has been taken with a fly made of the red feathers of a Parakita, a strange outlandish bird; and he will rise at a fly not unlike a gnat or a small moth, or, indeed, at most flies that are not too big. He is a fish that lurks close all winter, but is very pleasant and jolly after mid-April, and in May, and in the hot months: he is of a very fine shape; his flesh is white, his teeth -those little ones that he has - are in his throat, yet he 148 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART 1. has so tender a mouth that he is oftener lost after an Angler has hooked him than any other fish. Though there be many of these fishes in the delicate river Dove, and in Trent, and some other smaller rivers, as that which runs by Salisbury, yet he is not so general a fish as the Trout, nor to me so good to eat or to angle for. And so I shall take my leave of him, and now come to some observations of the Salmon, and how to catch him. c7: CHAP, VII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I49 THE FOURTH DAY. CHAP. VII.- Observations of the SALMON, with Directions how to fish for him PISCATOR. T Ht Salmon is accounted the King of freshwater fish, and is ever bred in rivers relating to the sea; yet so high, or far from it, as admits of no tincture of salt, or brackishness. He is said to breed or cast his spawn, in most rivers, in the month of August: some say that then they dig a hole or grave in a safe place in the gravel, and there place their eggs or spawn, after the melter has done his natural office, and then hide it most cunningly, and cover it over with gravel and stones; and then leave it to their Creator's protection, who, by a gentle heat which He infuses into that cold element, makes it brood and beget life in the spawn, and to become Samlets early in the spring next following. The Salmons having spent their appointed time, and done this natural duty, in the fresh waters, they then haste to the sea before winter, both the melter and spawner: but if they be stopped by flood-gates 150 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. or weirs, or lost in the fresh waters, then those so left behind by degrees grow sick, and lean, and unseasonable, and kipper; that is to say, have bony 1 gristles grow out of their lower chaps, not unlike a hawk's beak, which hinder their feeding; and, in time, such fish so left behind pine away and die. 'T is observed that he may live thus one year from, the sea; but he then grows insipid, and tasteless, and loses both his blood and strength, and pines and dies the second year. And 't is noted, that those little Salmons called Skeggers, which abound in many rivers relating to the sea, are bred by such sick Salmons that might not go to the sea, and that though they abound, yet they never thrive to any considerable bigness. But if the old Salmon gets to the sea, then that gristle which shows him to be kipper wears away, or is cast off, as the eagle is said to cast his bill, and he recovers his strength, and comes next summer to the same river, if it be possible, to enjoy the former pleasures that there possessed him: for, as one has wittily observed, he has, like some persons of honor and riches, which have both their winter and summer houses, the fresh rivers for summer, and the salt water for winter, to spend his life in; which is not, as Sir Francis Bacon hath observed in his "History of Life and Death," CHAP. VII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I5I above ten years. And it is to be observed, that though the Salmon does grow big in the sea, yet he grows not fat but in fresh rivers; and it is observed, that the farther they get from the sea, they be both the fatter and better. Next I shall tell you, that though they make very hard shift to get out of the fresh rivers into the sea, yet they will make harder shift to get out of the salt into the fresh rivers, to spawn, or possess the pleasures that they have formerly found in them: to which end, they will force themselves/ through flood-gates, or over weirs, or hedges, or! stops in the water, even to a height beyond common belief. Gesner speaks of such places as are known to be above eight feet high above water. And our Camden mentions in his Britannia the like wonder to be in Pembrokeshire, where the river Tivy falls into the sea; and that the fall is so downright, and so high, that the people stand and wonder at the strength and sleight by which they see the Salmon use to get out of the sea into the said river: and the manner and height of the place is so notable, that it is known far by the name of the Salmon-Leap. Concerning which take this also out of Michael Drayton, my honest old friend, as he tells it you in his " Polyolbion." I52 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. " And when the Salmon seeks a fresher stream to find, Which hither from the sea comes yearly by his kind; As he towards season grows, and stems the wat'ry tract Where Tivy, falling down, makes an high cataract, Forced by the rising rocks that there her course oppose, As though within her bounds they meant her to enclose, - Here, when the laboring fish does at the foot arrive, And finds that by his strength he does but vainly strive; His tail takes in his mouth, and, bending like a bow That's to full compass drawn, aloft himself doth throw, Then springing at his height, as doth a little wand, That, bended end to end, and started from man's hand, Far off itself doth cast; so does the Salmon vault: And if at first he fail, his second summersault He instantly essays; and, from his nimble ring Still yerking, never leaves until himself he fling Above the opposing stream." This Michael Drayton tells you of this leap or summersault of the Salmon. And, next, I shall tell you, that it is observed by Gesner and others, that there is no better Salmoni than in England; and that, though some of our northern counties have as fat and as large as the river Thames, yet none are of so excellent a taste. And as I have told you that Sir Francis Bacon observes, the age of a Salmon exceeds not ten years, so let me next tell you, that his growth is very sudden: it is said, that, after he is got into the sea, he becomes, from a Samlet not so big as a Gudgeon, to be a Salmon, in as short a time as a CHAP. VII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I53 gosling becomes to be a goose. Much of this has been observed, by tying a ribbon, or some known tape or thread, in the tail of some young Salmons, which have been taken in weirs as they have swimmed towards the salt water, and then by taking a part of them again, with the known mark, at the same place, at their return from the sea, which is usually about six months after; and the like experiment hath been tried upon young swallows, who have, after six months' absence, been observed to return to the same chimney, there to make their nests and habitations for the summer following: which has inclined many to think, that every Salmon usually returns to the same river in which it was bred, as young pigeons taken out of the same dove-cote have also been observed to do. And you are yet to observe further, that the heSalmon is usually bigger than the Spawner; and that he is more kipper, and less able to endure a winter in the fresh water, than she is: yet she is, at that time of looking less kipper and better, as watery, and as bad meat. And yet you are to observe, that as there is no general rule without an exception, so there are some few rivers in this nation that have Trouts and Salmons in season in winter; as 't is certain there be in the river Wye in Monmouthshire, where they 154 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. be in season, as Camden observes, from September till April. But, my Scholar, the observation of this and many other things, I must in manners omit, because they will prove too large for our narrow compass of time; and therefore I shall next fall upon my direction how to fish for this SALMON. And for that: first you shall observe, that usually he stays not long in a place, as Trouts will, but, as I said, covets still to go nearer the spring-head; and that he does not as the Trout, and many other fish, lie near the water-side, or banks, or roots of trees, but swims in the deep and broad parts of the water, and usually in the middle, and near the ground, and that there you are to fish for him; and that he is to be caught as the Trout is, with a worm, a minnow, which some call a Penk, or with a fly. CHAP. VII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 1 5 5 And you are to observe, that he is very seldom observed to bite at a minnow, yet sometimes he will, and not usually at a fy, but more usually at a worm, and then most usually at a Lob or gardenworm, which should be well scoured, that is to say, kept seven or eight days in moss before you fish with them: and if you double your time of eight into sixteen, twenty, or more days, it is still the better; for the worms will still be clearer, tougher, and more lively, and continue so longer upon your hook. And they may be kept longer by keeping them cool and in fresh moss; and some advise to put camphor into it. Note also, that many use to fish for a Salmon with a ring of wire on the top of their rod, through which the line may run to as great a length as is needful when he is hooked. And to that end, some use a wheel about the middle of their rod, or near their hand, which is to be observed better by seeing one of them, than by a large demonstration of words. And now I shall tell you that which may be called a secret. I have been a-fishing with old Oliver Henley, now with God, a noted fisher both for Trout and Salmon, and have observed that he would usually take three or four worms out of his bag, and put them into a little box in his pocket, where he would usually let them continue half an I56 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. hour or more before he would bait his hook with them; I have asked him his reason, and he has replied, "He did but pick the best out to be in readiness against he baited his hook the next time:" but he has been observed, both by others and myself, to catch more fish than I or any other body that has ever gone a-fishing with him could do, and especially Salmons. And I have been told lately, by one of his most intimate and secret friends, that the box in which he put those worms was anointed with a drop, or two or three, of the oil of ivy-berries, made by expression or infusion; and told, that by the worms remaining in that box an hour, or a like time, they had incorporated a kind of smell that was irresistibly attractive, enough to force any fish within the smell of them to bite. This I heard not long since from a friend, but have not tried it; yet I grant it probable, and refer my reader to Sir Francis Bacon's " Natural History," where he proves fishes may hear, and, doubtless, can more probably smell; and I am certain Gesner says the Otter can smell in the water, and I know not but that fish may do so too. 'T is left for a lover of angling, or any that desires to improve that art, to try this conclusion. I shall also impart two other experiments, but not tried by myself, which I will deliver in the same CHAP. VII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I57 words that they were given me by an excellent angler and a very friend, in writing: he told me the latter was too good to be told, but in a learned language, lest it should be made common. "Take the stinking oil drawn out of Polypody of the oak by a retort, mixed with turpentine and hive-honey, and anoint your bait therewith, and it will doubtless draw the fish to it." The other is this: " Vulnera Hederae grandissimre inflicta sudant Balsamun oleo gelato, albicantique persimile, odoris verb long. suavissimi." 'T is supremely sweet to any fish, and yet assafcetida may do the like. But in these things I have no great faith, yet grant it probable; and have had from some chemical men, namely, from Sir George Hastings and others, an affirmation of them to be very advantageous: but no more of these, especially not in this place. I might here, before I take my leave of the Salmon, tell you, that there is more than one sort of them, as namely, a Tecon, and another called in some places a Samlet, or by some, a Skegger: but these and others, which I forbear to name, may be fish of another kind, and differ, as we know a Herring and a Pilcher do; which, I think, are as different as the rivers in which they breed, and must by me be left to the disquisitions of men of 158 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. more leisure, and of greater abilities than I profess myself to have. And lastly, I am to borrow so much of your promised patience, as to tell you that the Trout or Salmon, being in season, have at their first taking out of the water, which continues during life, their bodies adorned, the one with such red spots, and the other with such black or blackish spots, as give them such an addition of natural beauty as, I think, was never given to any woman by the artificial paint or patches in which they so much pride themselves in this age. And so I shall leave them both, and proceed to some observations on the Pike. I _ __ -i —Z-I — _, -~1ZmagaFlas,; C,~iQBBb5i"I-=-~ - rrpsr;~i%rss;;aE.,-,I; —tY -e=;rran$83asurwnr~ 7 — -Ui4 '5 9Rk —IIY4JI?I-I; iFi I-;;;i CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I59 THE FOURTH DAY. CHAP. VIII. - Observations of the LUCE or PIKE, with Directions how to fish for him. PISCATOR. T HE mighty Luce or Pike is taken to be the Tyrant, as the Salmon is the King, of the fresh waters. 'Tis not to be doubted but that they are bred, some by generation, and some not: as namely, of a weed called Pickerel-weed, unless learned Gesner be much mistaken; for he says, this weed and other glutinous matter, with the help of the sun's heat in some particular months, and some ponds apted for it by nature, do become Pikes. But doubtless divers Pikes are bred after this manner, or are brought into some ponds some such other ways as are past man's finding out, of which we have daily testimonies. Sir Francis Bacon, in his " History of Life and Death," observes the Pike to be the longest-lived of any fresh-water fish, and yet he computes it to be not usually above forty years; and others think it to be not above ten years: and yet Gesner mentions a Pike taken in Swedeland in the year I449, with a ring about his neck, declaring he was put I6o THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART 1. into that pond by Frederick the Second, more than two hundred years before he was last taken, as by the inscription in that ring, being Greek, was interpreted by the then Bishop of Worms. But of this no more, but that it is observed that the old or very great Pikes have in them more of state than goodness; the smaller or middle-sized Pikes being by the most and choicest palates observed to be the best meat: and, contrary, the Eel is observed to be the better for age and bigness. All Pikes that live long prove chargeable to their keepers, because their life is maintained by the death of so many other fish, even those of their own kind; which has made him by some writers to be called the Tyrant of the Rivers, or the FreshWater-Wolf, by reason of his bold, greedy, devouring disposition; which is so keen, as Gesner relates, a man going to a pond, where it seems a Pike had devoured all the fish, to water his mule, had a Pike bit his mule by the lips; to which the Pike hung so fast, that the mule drew him out of the water, and by that accident the owner of the mule angled out the Pike. And the same Gesner observes, that a maid in Poland had a Pike bit her by the foot as she was washing clothes in a pond. And I have heard the like of a woman in Killingworth Pond, not far from Coventry. But I have been assured CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. by my friend Mr. Seagrave, of whom I spake to you formerly, that keeps tame Otters, that he hath known a Pike, in extreme hunger, fight with one of his Otters for a Carp that the Otter had caught, and was then bringing out of the water. I have told you who relate these things, and tell you they are persons of credit; and shall conclude this observation by telling you what a wise man has observed: "It is a hard thing to persuade the belly, because it has no ears." But if these relations be disbelieved, it is too evident to be doubted that a Pike will devour a fish of his own kind, that shall be bigger than his belly or throat will receive, and swallow a part of him, and let the other part remain in his mouth till the swallowed part be digested, and then swallow that other part that was in his mouth, and so put it over by degrees; which is not unlike the ox, and some other beasts, taking their meat, not out of their mouth immediately into their belly, but first into some place betwixt, and then chew it, or digest it by degrees after, which is called chewing the cud. And doubtless Pikes will bite when they are not hungry, but, as some think, even for very anger, when a tempting bait comes near to them. And it is observed that the Pike will eat venomous things, as some kind of frogs are, and yet I I I62 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. live without being harmed by them; for, as some say, he has in him a natural balsam, or antidote against all poison: and he has a strange heat, that, though it appear to us to be cold, can yet digest, or put over, any fish-flesh, by degrees, without being sick. And others observe, that he never cats the venomous frog till he have first killed her, and then-as ducks are observed to do to frogs in spawning-time, at which time some frogs are observed to be venomous - so thoroughly washed her, by tumbling her up and down in the water, that he may devour her without danger. And Gesner affirms that a Polonian gentleman did faithfully assure him he had seen two young geese at one time in the belly of a Pike. And doubtless a Pike, in his height of hunger, will bite at and devour a dog that swims in a pond; and there have been examples of it, or the like; for, as I told you, "The belly has no ears when hunger comes upon it." The Pike is also observed to be a solitary, melancholy, and a bold fish: melancholy, because he always swims or rests himself alone, and never swims in shoals or with company, as Roach and Dace, and most other fish do: and bold, because he fears not a shadow, or to see or be seen of anybody, as the Trout and Chub and all other fish do. CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I63 And it is observed by Gesner, that the jaw-bones and hearts and galls of Pikes are very medicinable for several diseases; or to stop blood, to abate fevers, to cure agues, to oppose or expel the infection of the plague, and to be many ways medicinable and useful for the good of mankind: but he observes, that the biting of a Pike is venomous an(l hard to be cured. And it is observed, that the Pike is a fish that breeds but once a year, and that other fish, as namely Loaches, do breed oftener, as we are certain tame pigeons do almost every month; and yet the hawk, a bird of prey, as the Pike is of fish, breeds but once in twelve months. And you are to note, that his time of breeding, or spawning, is usually about the end of February, or somewhat later, in March, as the weather proves colder or warmer, and to note that his manner of breeding is thus: a he and a she Pike will usually go together out of a river into some ditch or creek, and that there the spawner casts her eggs, and the melter hovers over her all that time that she is casting her spawn, but touches her not. I might say more of this, but it might be thought curiosity or worse, and shall therefore forbear it, and take up so much of your attention as to tell you that the best of pikes are noted to be in rivers; i64 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. next, those in great ponds, or meres; and the worst, in small ponds. But before I proceed further, I am to tell you that there is a great antipathy betwixt the Pike and some frogs: and this may appear to the reader of Dubravius, a Bishop in Bohemia, who, in his book "Of Fish and Fish-Ponds," relates what he says he saw with his own eyes, and could not forbear to tell the reader. Which was: — "As he and the Bishop Thurzo were walking by a large pond in Bohemia, they saw a Frog, when the Pike lay very sleepily and quiet by the shoreside, leap upon his head; and the Frog having expressed malice or anger by his swollen cheeks and staring eyes, did stretch out his legs and embraced the Pike's head, and presently reached them to his eyes, tearing with them and his teeth those tender parts: the Pike, moved with anguish, moves up and down the water, and rubs himself against weeds, and whatever he thought might quit him of his enemy: but all in vain, for the Frog did continue to ride triumphantly, and to bite and torment the Pike, till his strength failed: and then the Frog sunk with the Pike to the bottom of the water: then presently the Frog appeared again at the top and croaked, and seemed to rejoice like a conqueror, after which he presently retired to his CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I65 secret hole. The Bishop, that had beheld the battle, called his fisherman to fetch his nets, and by all means to get the Pike, that they might declare what had happened: and the Pike was drawn forth, and both his eyes eaten out; at which when they began to wonder, the fisherman wished them to forbear, and assured them he was certain that Pikes were often so served." I told this, which is to be read in the sixth chapter of the first book of Dubravius, unto a friend, who replied, "It was as improbable as to have the mouse scratch out the cat's eyes." But he did not consider that there be Fishing-Frogs, which the Dalmatians call the Water-Devil, of which I might tell you as wonderful a story: but I shall tell you, that 't is not to be doubted but that there be some Frogs so fearful of the Water-Snake, that, when they swim in a place in which they fear to meet with him, they then get a reed across into their mouths, which, if they two meet by accident, secures the Frog from the strength and malice of the snake; and note, that the Frog usually swims the fastest of the two. And let me tell you, that as there be Water and Land Frogs, so there be Land and Water Snakes. Concerning which, take this observation, that the Land-Snake breeds and hatches her eggs, which I66 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. become young snakes, in some old dunghill, or a like hot place: but the Water-Snake, which is not venomous, and, as I have been assured by a great observer of such secrets, does not hatch, but breed her young alive; which she does not then forsake, but bides with them, and in case of danger will take them all into her mouth, and swim away from any apprehended danger, and then let them out again when she thinks all danger to be past: these be accidents that we anglers sometimes see, and often talk of. But whither am I going? I had almost lost myself by remembering the discourse of Dubravius. I will therefore stop here, and tell you according to my promise how to catch this PIKE. His feeding is usually of fish or frogs, and sometimes a weed of his own called Pickerel-weed. Of which I told you some think some Pikes are bred; for they have observed, that where none have been CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I67 put into ponds, yet they have there found many; and that there has been plenty of that weed in those ponds, and that that weed both breeds and feeds them; but whether those Pikes so bred will ever breed by generation as the others do, I shall leave to the disquisitions of men of more curiosity and leisure than I profess myself to have; and shall proceed to tell you that you may fish for a Pike, either with a ledger or a walking bait. And you are to note, that I call that a ledger-bait which is fixed or made to rest in one certain place when you shall be absent from it; and I call that a walking-bait which you take with you, and have ever in motion. Concerning which two, I shall give you this direction; that your Ledger-bait is best to be a living bait, though a dead one may catch, whether it be a fish or a frog; and that you may make them live the longer, you may, or indeed you must, take this course. First, for your live-bait. Of fish, a Roach or Dace is, I think, best and most tempting, and a Perch is the longest lived on a hook, and having cut off his fin on his back, which may be done without hurting him, you must take your knife, which cannot be too sharp, and betwixt the head and the fin on the back, cut or make an incision, or such a scar, as you may put the arming wire of I68 TIIE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. your hook into it, with as little bruising or hurting the fish as art and diligence will enable you to do; and so carrying your arming-wire along his back, unto or near the tail of your fish, betwixt the skin and the body of it, draw out that wire or arming of your hook at another scar near to his tail: then tie him about it with thread, but no harder than of necessity to prevent hurting the fish. And the better to avoid hurting the fish, some have a kind of probe to open the way, for the more easy entrance and passage of your wire or arming; but as for these, time, and a little experience, will teach you better than I can by words; therefore I will for the present say no more of this, but come next to give you some directions how to bait your hook with a Frog. VEN. But, good Master, did you not say even now, that some Frogs were venomous, and is it not dangerous to touch them? PIsc. Yes, but I will give you some rules or cautions concerning them: and first, you are to note, that there are two kinds of Frogs; that is to say, if I may so express myself, a Flesh and a Fish Frog. By Flesh-frogs, I mean frogs that breed and live on the land; and of these there be several sorts also, and of several colors, some being speckled, some greenish, some blackish or brown: the Green CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. i69 frog, which is a small one, is by Topsell taken to be venomous; and so is the Padock or Frog-padock, which usually keeps or breeds on the land, and is very large, and bony, and big, especially the shefrog of that kind; yet these will sometimes come into the water, but it is not often: and the Landfrogs are some of them observed by him to breed by laying eggs; and others to breed of the slime and dust of the earth, and that in winter they turn to slime again, and that the next summer that very slime returns to be a living creature; * In his i9th this is the opinion of Pliny. And *Car- Book, De Subtil. ex. danus undertakes to give a reason for the raining of frogs: but if it were in my power, it should rain none but Water-frogs, for those, I think, are not venomous, especially the right Waterfrog, which, about February or March, breeds in ditches by slime, and blackish eggs in that slime: about which time of breeding, the he and she frogs are observed to use divers summersaults, and to croak and make a noise, which the Land-frog or Padock-frog never does. Now of these Waterfrogs, if you intend to fish with a frog for a Pike, you are to choose the yellowest that you can get, for that the Pike ever likes best. And thus use your frog, that he may continue long alive. Put your hook into his mouth, which you may 170 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. LPART I. easily do from the middle of April till August; and then the frog's mouth grows up, and he continues so for at least six months without eating, but is sustained, none but He whose Name is Wonderful knows how: I say, put your hook, I mean the arming-wire, through his mouth, and out at his gills, and then with a fine needle and silk sew the upper part of his leg with only one stitch to the arming-wire of your hook, or tie the frog's leg above the upper joint to the armed wire: and in v7so doing, use him as though you loved him, that is, harm him as little as you may possibly, that he may live the longer. And now, having given you this direction for the baiting your Ledger-hook with a live fish or frog, my next must be to tell you how your hook thus baited must or may be used: and it is thus. Having fastened your hook to a line, which, if it be not fourteen yards long, should not be less than twelve, you are to fasten that line to any bough near to a hole where a Pike is, or is likely to lie, or to have a haunt; and then wind your line on any forked stick, all your line, except half a yard of it, or rather more; and split that forked stick with such a nick or notch at one end of it as may keep the line from any more of it ravelling from about the stick than so much of it as you intend. CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 171 And choose your forked stick to be of that bigness as may keep the fish or frog from pulling the forked stick under the water till the Pike bites, and then the Pike having pulled the line forth of the cleft or nick of that stick in which it was gently fastened, he will have line enough to go to his hold and pouch the bait. And if you would have this Ledger-bait to keep at a fixed place, undisturbed by wind or other accidents, which may drive it to the shore-side, —for you are to note, that it is likeliest to catch a Pike in the midst of the water, -then hang a small plummet of lead, a stone, or piece of tile, or a turf, in a string, and cast it into the water, with the forked stick, to hang upon the ground, to be a kind of anchor to keep the forked stick from moving out of your intended place till the Pike come. This I take to be a very good way to use so many Ledger-baits as you intend to make trial of. Or if you bait your hooks thus with live fish or frogs, and in a windy day, fasten them thus to a bough or bundle of straw, and by the help of that wind can get them to move across a pond or mere, you are like to stand still on the shore and see sport presently if there be any store of Pikes: or these live-baits may make sport, being tied about the body or wings of a goose or duck, and she I72 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. chased over a pond. And the like may be done with turning three or four live-baits, thus fastened to bladders, or boughs, or bottles of hay or flags, to swim down a river, whilst you walk quietly alone on the shore, and are still in expectation of sport. The rest must be taught you by practice, for time will not allow me to say more of this kind of fishing with live-baits. And for your dead-bait for a Pike, for that you may be taught by one day's going a-fishing with me, or any other body that fishes for him; for the baiting your hook with a dead Gudgeon or a Roach, and moving it up and down the water, is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it: and yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this. Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and there- vth anoint your dead-bait for a Pike; and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water, and so up the stream: and it is more than likely that you have a Pike follow with more than common eagerness. And some affirm, that any bait anointed with the marrow of the thigh-bone of an Hern is a great temptation to any fish. CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I73 These have not been tried by me, but told me by a friend of note, that pretended to do me a courtesy. But if this direction to catch a Pike thus do you no good, yet I am certain this direction how to roast him when he is caught is choicely good, for I have tried it; and it is somewhat the - better for not being common: but with my direction you must take this caution, that your Pike must not be a small one, that is, it must be more than half a yard, and should be bigger. First, open your Pike at the gills, and, if need be, cut also a little slit towards the belly. Out of these take his guts; and keep his liver, which you are to shred very small with thyme, sweet marjoram, and a little winter-savory; to these put some pickled oysters, and some anchovies, two or three; both these last whole, for the anchovies will melt, and the oysters should not; to these you must add also a pound of sweet butter, which you are to mix' with the herbs that are shred, and let them all be well salted. If the Pike be more than a yard long, then you may put into these herbs more than a pound, or if he be less, then less butter will suffice. These being thus mixed, with a blade or two of mace, must be put into the Pike's belly, and then his belly so sewed up as to keep all the butter in his belly if it be possible; if not, then as much of 174 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. it as you possibly can: but take not off the scales. Then you are to thrust the spit through his mouth, out at his tail; and then take four, or five, or six split sticks, or very thin laths, and a convenient quantity of tape or filleting; these laths are to be tied round about the Pike's body from his head to his tail, and the tape tied somewhat thick to prevent his breaking or falling off from the spit. Let him be roasted very leisurely, and often basted with claret-wine, and anchovies, and butter, mixed together; and also with what moisture falls from him into the pan. WVhen you have roasted him sufficiently, you are to hold under him, when you unwind or cut the tape that ties him, such a dish as you purpose to eat him out of; and let him fall pinto it with the sauce that is roasted in his belly; and by this means the Pike will be kept unbroken and complete. Then, to the sauce which was within, and also that sauce in the pan, you are to add a fit quantity of the best butter, and to squeeze the juice of three or four oranges: lastly, you may either put into the Pike, with the oysters, two cloves of garlic, and take it whole out, when the Pike is cut off the spit; or to give the sauce a hautgout, let the dish into which you let the Pike fall be rubbed with it. The using or not using of this garlic is left to your discretion. M. B. CHAP. VIII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 175 This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men; and I trust you will prove both, and therefore I have trusted you with this secret. Let me next tell you, that Gesner tells us there are no Pikes in Spain, and that the largest are in the Lake Thrasymene in Italy; and the next, if not equal to them, are the Pikes of England; and that in England, Lincolnshire boasted to have the biggest. Just so doth Sussex boast of four sorts of fish; namely, an Arundel Mullet, a Chichester Lobster, a Shelsey Cockle, and an Amerly Trout. But I will take up no more of your time with this relation, but proceed to give you some observations of the Carp, and how to angle for him, and to dress him: - but not till he is caught. I76 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. THE FOURTH DAY. CHAP. IX. - Observations of the CARP, with Directions how to fish for him. PISCATOR. T HE Carp is the Queen of Rivers: a stately, a good, and a very subtle fish, that was not at first bred, nor hath been long, in England, but is! now naturalized. It is said, they were brought hither by one Mr. Mascal, a gentleman that then lived at Plumsted in Sussex, a county that abounds more with this fish than any in this nation. You may remember that I told you, Gesner says there are no Pikes in Spain; and, doubtless, there was a time, about a hundred or a few more years ago, when there were no Carps in England, as may seem to be affirmed by Sir Richard Baker, in whose Chronicle you may find these verses: - "Hops and Turkeys, Carps and Beer, Came into England all in a year." And doubtless, as of sea-fish the Herring dies soonest out of the water, and of fresh-water fish the K - Ii I CHAP. IX.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I77 Trout, so, except the Eel, the Carp endures most hardness, and lives longest out of his own proper element: and therefore the report of the Carp's being brought out of a foreign country into this nation is the more probable. Carps and Loaches are observed to breed several months in one year, which Pikes and most other fish do not. And this is partly proved by tame and wild rabbits, as also by some ducks, which will lay eggs nine of the twelve months; and yet there be other ducks that lay not longer than about one month. And it is the rather to be believed, because you shall scarce or never take a male Carp without a melt, or a female without a roe or spawn, and for the most part very much; and especially all the summer season: and it is observed, that they breed more naturally in ponds than in running waters, if they breed there at all; and that those that live in rivers are taken by men of the best palates to be much the better meat. And it is observed, that in some ponds Carps will not breed, especially in cold ponds; but where they will breed, they breed innumerably: Aristotle and Pliny say, six times in a year, if there be no Pikes nor Perch to devour their spawn when it is cast upon grass, or flags, or weeds, where it lies ten or twelve days before it be enlivened. 12 I78 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I The Carp, if he have water-room and good feed, will grow to a very great bigness and length; I (have heard, to be much above a yard long. 'T is said by Jovius, who hath writ of fishes, that in the Lake Lurian, in Italy, Carps have thriven to be more than fifty pounds' weight; which is the more probable, for as the bear is conceived and born suddenly, and being born is but short lived, so, on the contrary, the elephant is said to be two years in his dam's belly, some think he is ten years in it, and being born grows in bigness twenty years; and 't is observed too that he lives to the age of a hundred years. And 't is also observed, that the crocodile is very long-lived, and more than that, that all that long life he thrives in bigness: and so I think some Carps do, especially in some places; though I never saw one above twenty-three inches, which was a great and goodly fish; but have been assured there are of a far greater size, and in England too. Now, as the increase of Carps is wonderful for their number, so there is not a reason found out, I think, by any, why they should breed in some ponds and not in others of the same nature for soil and all other circumstances. And as their breeding, so are their decays also very mysterious: I have both read it, and been told by a gentleman CHAP. IX.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I79 of tried honesty, that he has known sixty or more large Carps put into several ponds near to a house, where by reason of the stakes in the ponds, and the owner's constant being near to them, it was impossible they should be stolen away from him: and that when he has, after three or four years, emptied the pond, and expected an increase from them by breeding young ones, —for that they might do so, he had, as the rule is, put in three melters for one spawner, -he has, I say, after three or four years, found neither a young nor old Carp remaining. And the like I have known of one that has almost watched the pond, and at a like distance of time, at the fishing of a pond, found of seventy or eighty large Carps not above five or six: and that he had forborne longer to fish the said pond, but that he saw, in a hot day in summer, a large Carp swim near the top of the water with a frog upon his head; and that he upon that occasion caused his pond to be let dry: and I say, of seventy or eighty Carps, only found five or six in the said pond, and those very sick and lean, and with every one a frog sticking so fast on the head of the said Carps, that the frog would not be got off without extreme force or killing. And the gentleman that did affirm this to me told me he saw it; and did declare his belief to be, and I i8o THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. also believe the same, that he thought the other Carps that were so strangely lost were so killed by frogs, and then devoured. And a person of honor now living in Worcestershire * assured me he had seen a neck* Mr. Fr. Ru. lace or collar of tadpoles hang like a chain or necklace of beads about a Pike's neck, and to kill him: whether it were for meat or malice must be to me a question. But I am fallen into this discourse by accident; of which I might say more, but it has proved longer than I intended, and possibly may not to you be considerable: I shall therefore give you three or four more short observations of the Carp, and then fall upon some directions how you shall fish for him. The age of Carps is by Sir Francis Bacon, in his "History of Life and Death," observed to be but ten years, yet others think they live longer. Gesner says, a Carp has been known to live in the Palatinate above a hundred years: but most conclude,1 that, contrary to the Pike or Luce, all Carps are! the better for age and bigness. The tongues of Carps are noted to be choice and costly meat, especially to them that buy them: but Gesner says, Carps have no tongue like other fish, but a piece of flesh-like fish in their mouth like to a CHAP. IX.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I8I tongue, and should be called a palate: but it is certain it is choicely good, and that the Carp is to be reckoned amongst those leather-mouthed fish which I told you have their teeth in their throat; and for that reason he is very seldom lost by breaking his hold, if your hook be once stuck into his chaps. I told you that Sir Francis Bacon thinks that the Carp lives but ten years; but Janus Dubravius has writ a book " Of Fish and Fish-Ponds," in which he says that Carps begin to spawn at the age ot three years, and continue to do so till thirty: he says also, that in the time of their breeding, which is in summer, when the sun hath warmed both the earth and water, and so apted them also for generation, that then three or four male Carps will follow a female; and that then, she putting on a seeming coyness, they force her through weeds and flags, where she lets fall her eggs or spawn, which sticks fast to the weeds, and then they let fall their melt upon it, and so it becomes in a short time to be a living fish: and, as I told you, it is thought the Carp does this several months in the year; and most believe that most fish breed after this manner, except the Eel. And it has been observed, that when the spawner has weakened herself by doing that natural office, that two or three melters have I82 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART 1. helped her from off the weeds by bearing her up on both sides, and guarding her into the deep. And you may note, that, though this may seem a curiosity not worth observing, yet others have judged it worth their time and costs to make glass hives, and order them in such a manner as to see how bees have bred and made their honeycombs, and how they have obeyed their king and governed their commonwealth. But it is thought that all Carps are not bred by generation, but that some breed other ways, as some Pikes do. The physicians make the galls and stones in the heads of Carps to be very medicinable. But 't is not to be doubted but that in Italy they make great profit of the spawn of Carps, by selling it to the Jews, who make it into red caviare, the Jews not being by their law admitted to eat of caviare made of the Sturgeon, that being a fish that wants scales, and, as may appear in Levit. xi. Io, by them reputed to be unclean. Much more might be said out of him, and out of Aristotle, which Dubravius often quotes in his Discourse of Fishes; but it might rather perplex than satisfy you; and therefore I shall rather choose to direct you how to catch, than spend more time in discoursing either of the nature or the breeding of this CARP, CHAP. IX.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I S3 /A or of any more circumstances concerning him: but yet I shall remember you of what I told you before, that he is a very subtle fish, and hard to be caught. And my first direction is, that, if you will fish for a Carp, you must put on a very large measure of patience; especially to fish for a River-Carp: I have known a very good fisher angle diligently four or six hours in a day, for three or four days together, for a River-Carp, and not have a bite. And you are to note that, in some ponds, it is as hard to catch a Carp as in a river; that is to say, where they have store of feed, and the water is of a clayish color: but you are to remember, that I have told you there is no rule without an exception; i84 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. and therefore, being possessed with that hope and patience, which I wish to all fishers, especially to the Carp-Angler, I shall tell you with what bait to fish for him. But first you are to know, that it must be either early or late; and let me tell you, Vthat in hot weather, for he will seldom bite in cold, you cannot be too early or too late at it. And some have been so curious as to say, the Ioth of April is a fatal day for Carps. ( The Carp bites either at worms or at paste; and of worms I think the bluish marsh or meadow worm is best; but possibly another worm, not too big, may do as well, and so may a green gentle: and as for pastes, there are almost as many sorts as there are medicines for the toothache; but doubtless sweet pastes are best; I mean pastes made with honey or with sugar: which, that you may the better beguile this crafty fish, should be thrown into 'the pond or place in which you fish for him some hours, or longer, before you undertake your trial of skill with the angle-rod: and, doubtless, if it be thrown into the water a day or two before, at several times and in small pellets, you are the likelier when you fish for the Carp to obtain your desired sport. Or in a large pond, to draw them to any certain place, that they may the better and with more hope be fished for, you are CHAP. IX.I THE COlMPLETE ANGLER. I85 to throw into it, in some certain place, either grains, or blood mixed with cow-dung or with bran; or any garbage, as chicken's guts, or the like and then some of your small sweet pellets with which you purpose to angle: and these small pellets being a few of them also thrown in as you are angling, will be the better. And your paste must be thus made: take the flesh of a rabbit or cat cut small, and bean-flour; and if that may not be easily got, get other flour, and then mix these together, and put to them either sugar, or honey, which I think better; and then beat these together in a mortar, or sometimes work them in your hands, your hands being very clean; and then make it into a ball, or two, or three, as you like best for your use; but you must work or pound it so long in the mortar, as to make it so tough as to hang upon your hook without washing from it, yet not too hard: or that you may the better keep it on your hook, you may knead with your paste a little, and not much, white or yellowish wool. And if you would have this paste keep all the year for any other fish, then mix with it virgin-wax and clarified honey, and work them together with your hands before the fire; then make these into balls, and they will keep all the year. I86 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. And if you fish for a Carp with gentles, then put upon your hook a small piece of scarlet about this bigness ~, it being soaked in, or anointed with oil of peter, called by some oil of the rock: and if your gentles be put, two or three days before, into a box or horn anointed with honey, and so put upon your hook as to preserve them to be living, you are as like to kill this crafty fish this way as any other: but still as you are fishing, chew a little white or brown bread in your mouth, and cast it into the pond about the place where your float swims. Other baits there be; but these, with diligence and patient watchfulness, will do it better than any that I have ever practised or heard of: and yet I shall tell you, that the crumbs of white bread and honey made into a paste is a good bait for a Carp; and you know it is more easily made. And having said thus much of the Carp, N my next discourse shall be of the Bream, which shall not prove so tedious: and therefore I desire the continuance of your attention. But first I will tell you how to make this Carp, that is so curious to be caught, so curious a dish of meat, as shall make him worth all your labor and patience; and though it is not without some trouble and charges, yet it will recompense both. Take a Carp, alive if possible, scour him, and CHAP. IX.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I87 rub him clean with water and salt, but scale him not: then open him, and put him with his blood and his liver, which you must save when you open him, into a small pot or kettle; then take sweetmarjoram, thyme, and parsley, of each half a handful; a sprig of rosemary, and another of savory; bind them into two or three small bundles, and put them to your Carp, with four or five whole onions, twenty pickled oysters, and three anchovies. Then pour upon your Carp as much claret-wine as will only cover him; and season your claret well with salt, cloves, and mace, and the rinds of oranges and lemons. That done, cover your pot and set it on a quick fire, till it be sufficiently boiled: then take out the Carp, and lay it with the broth into the dish, and pour upon it a quarter of a pound of the best fresh butter, melted and beaten with half a dozen spoonfuls of the broth, the yolks of two or three eggs, and some of the herbs shred: garnish your dish with lemons, and so serve it up, and much good do you! DR. T. I88 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. THE FOURTH DAY. CHAP. X. -Observations of the BREAM, and Directions to catch him. PISCATOR. T HE Bream, being at a full growth, is a large and stately fish. He will breed both in rivers and ponds; but loves best to live in ponds, and where, if he likes the water and air, he will grow not only to be very large, but as fat as a hog. He is by Gesner taken to be more pleasant, or sweet, than wholesome: this fish is long in growing, but breeds exceedingly in a water that pleases him; yea, in many ponds so fast as to over-store them, and starve the other fish. CHAP. X.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I 89 He is very broad, with a forked tail, and his scales set in excellent order: he hath large eyes, and a narrow sucking mouth; he hath two sets of teeth, and a lozenge-like bone, a bone to help his grinding. The melter is observed to have two large melts, and the female two large bags of eggs or spawn. Gesner reports, that in Poland a certain and a great number of large Breams were put into a pond, which in the next following winter were frozen up into one entire ice, and not one drop of water remaining, nor one of these fish to be found, though they were diligently searched for; and yet the next spring, when the ice was thawed, and the weather warm, and fresh water got into the pond, he affirms they all appeared again. This Gesner affirms, and I quote my author, because it seems almost as incredible as the resurrection to an atheist. But it may win something in point of believing it, to him that considers the breeding or renovation of the silk-worm, and of many insects. And that is considerable which Sir Francis Bacon observes in his "History of Life and Death," fol. 20, that there be some herbs that die and spring every year, and some endure longer. But though some do not, yet the French esteem this fish highly, and to that end have this proverb: I90o THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. " He that hath Breams in his pond is able to bid his friend welcome." And it is noted, that the best part of a Bream is his belly and head. Some say, that Breams and Roaches will mix their eggs and melt together, and so there is in many places a bastard breed of Breams, that never come to be either large or good, but very numerous. The baits good to catch this BREAM are many. First, paste made of brown bread and honey, gentles, or the brcrod of wasps that be young, and then not unlike gentles, and should be hardened in an oven, or dried on a tile before the fire to make them tough: or there is at the root of docks or flags, or rushes in watery places, a worm not unlike a maggot, at which Tench will bite freely. Or he will bite at a grasshopper with his legs nipped off, in June and July; or at several flies, under water, which may be found on flags that grow near CIIAP. X.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I9I to the water-side. I doubt not but that there be many other baits that are good, but I will turn them all into this most excellent one, either for a Carp or Bream, in any river or mere: it was given to me by a most honest and excellent Angler, and, hoping you will prove both, I will impart it to you. i. Let your bait be as big a red-worm as you can find, without a knot: get a pint or quart of them in an evening in garden-walks, or chalky commons, after a shower of rain; and put them with clean moss well washed and picked, and the water squeezed out of the moss as dry as you can, into an earthen pot or pipkin set dry, and change the moss fresh every three or four days for three weeks or a month together; then your bait will be at the best, for it will be clear and lively. 2. Having thus prepared your baits, get your tackling ready and fitted for this sport. Take three long angling-rods, and as-many and more silk, or silk and hair, lines, and as many large swan or goose quill floats. Then take a piece of lead made after this manner, and fasten them to the low-ends of your lines. Then fasten your link-hook also to the lead, and let there be about a foot or ten inches between the lead and the hook; but be sure the lead be heavy enough to sink the float or quill a little under I92 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. the water, and not the quill to bear up the lead, for the lead must lie on the ground. Note that your link next the hook may be smaller than the rest of your line, if you dare adventure, for fear of taking the Pike or Pearch, who will assuredly visit your hooks, till they be taken out, as I will show you afterwards, before either Carp or Bream will come near to bite. Note also, that when the worm is well baited, it will crawl up and down, as far as the lead will give leave, which much enticeth the fish to bite without suspicion. 3. Having thus prepared your baits, and fitted your tackling, repair to the river, where you have seen them to swim in skuls or shoals in the summertime in a hot afternoon, about three or four of the clock; and watch their going forth of their deep holes and returning, which you may well discern, for they return about four of the clock, most of them seeking food at the bottom, yet one or two will lie on the top of the water, rolling and tumbling themselves whilst the rest are under him at the bottom; and so you shall perceive him to keep sentinel: then mark where he plays most, and stays longest, which commonly is in the broadest and deepest place of the river, and there, or near thereabouts, at a clear bottom and a convenient landing-place, take one of your angles ready fitted CHAP. X.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I93 as aforesaid, and sound the bottom, which should be about eight or ten feet deep; two yards from the bank is best. Then consider with yourself whether that water will rise or fall by the next morning, by reason of any water-mills near, and according to your discretion take the depth of the place where you mean after to cast your groundbait, and to fish, to half an inch; that the lead lying on or near the ground-bait, the top of the float may only appear upright half an inch above the water. Thus you having found and fitted for the place and depth thereof, then go home and prepare your ground-bait; which is, next to the fruit of your labors, to be regarded. THE GROUND-BAIT. You shall take a peck, or a peck and a half, according to the greatness of the stream, and deepness of the water, where you mean to angle, of sweet gross-ground barley-malt, and boil it in a kettle; one or two warms is enough; then strain it through a bag into a tub, the liquor whereof hath often done my horse much good; and when the bag and malt is near cold, take it down to the water-side about eight or nine of the clock in the I3 I94 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. evening, and not before: cast in two parts of your ground-bait, squeezed hard between both your hands; it will sink presently to the bottom, and be sure it may rest in the very place where you mean to angle: if the stream run hard, or move a little, cast your malt in handfuls a little the higher, upwards the stream. You may, between your hands, close the malt so fast in handfuls, that the water will hardly part it with the fall. Your ground thus baited, and tackling fitted, leave your bag with the rest of your tackling and ground-bait near the sporting-place all night; and in the morning, about three or four of the clock, visit the water-side, but not too near, for they have a cunning watchman, and are watchful themselves too. Then gently take one of your three rods, and bait your hook, casting it over your ground-bait; and gently and secretly draw it to you, till the lead rests about the middle of the ground-bait. Then take a second rod and cast in about a yard above, and your third a yard below the first rod, and stay the rods in the ground; but go yourself so far from the water-side, that you perceive nothing but the top of the floats, which you must watch most diligently. Then, when you have a bite, you shall perceive the top of your float to sink suddenly CHAP. X.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I95 into the water; yet nevertheless be not too hasty to run to your rods, until you see that the line goes clear away; then creep to the water-side, and give as much line as possibly you can: if it be a good Carp or Bream, they will go to the farther side of the river, then strike gently, and hold your rod at a bent a little while; but if you both pull together, you are sure to lose your game, for either your line, or hook, or hold, will break: and after you have overcome them, they will make noble sport, and are very shy to be landed. The Carp is far stronger and more mettlesome than the Bream. Much more is to be observed in this kind of fish and fishing, but it is far fitter for experience and discourse than paper. Only thus much is necessary for you to know, and to be mindful and careful of; that if the Pike or Pearch do breed in that river, they will be sure to bite first, and must first be taken. And for the most part they are very large; and will repair to your ground-bait, not that they will eat of it, but will feed and sport themselves amongst the young fry that gather about and hover over the bait. The way to discern the Pike and to take him, if you mistrust your Bream-hook, - for I have taken a Pike a yard long several times at my Bream I96 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. hooks, and sometimes he hath had the luck to share my line, - may be thus: - Take a small Bleak, or Roach, or Gudgeon, and bait it; and set it alive among your rods two foot deep from the cork, with a little red-worm on the point of the hook; then take a few crumbs of white bread, or some of the ground-bait, and sprinkle it gently amongst your rods. If Mr. Pike be there, then the little fish will skip out of the water at his appearance, but the live-set bait is sure to be taken. Thus continue your sport from four in the morning till eight, and if it be a gloomy, windy day, they will bite all day long. But this is too long to stand to your rods at one place, and it will spoil your evening sport that day, which is this. About four of the clock in the afternoon repair to your baited place; and as soon as you come to the water-side, cast in one half of the rest of your ground-bait, and stand off: then, whilst the fish are gathering together, for there they will most certainly come for their supper, you may take a pipe of tobacco; and then in with your three rods as in the morning. You will find excellent sport that evening till eight of the clock: then cast in the residue of your ground-bait, and next morning by four of the clock visit them again for four hours, CHAP. X.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. I97 which is the best sport of all; and after that, let them rest till you and your friends have a mind to more sport. From St. James's-tide until Bartholomew-tide is the best; when they have had all the summer's food, they are the fattest. Observe lastly, that after three or four days' fishing together, your game will be very shy and wary, and you shall hardly get above a bite or two at a baiting; then your only way is to desist from your sport about two or three days: and in the mean time, on the place you late baited, and again intend to bait, you shall take a turf of green but short grass, as big or bigger than a round trencher; to the top of this turf, on the green side, you shall, with a needle and green thread, fasten one by one as many little red-worms as will near cover all the turf. Then take a round board or trencher, make a hole in the middle thereof, and through the turf, placed on the board or trencher, with a string or cord as long as is fitting, tied to a pole, let it down to the bottom of the water for the fish to feed upon without disturbance about two or three days; and after that you have drawn it away, you may fall to, and enjoy your former recreation. B. A. I98 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. THE FOURTH DAY. CHAP. XI. - Observations of the TENCH, and Advice how to angle for him. PISCATOR. T HE Tench, the physician of fishes, is observed to love ponds better than rivers, and to love pits better than either; yet Camden observes there is a river in Dorsetshire that abounds with Tenches, but doubtless they retire to the most deep and quiet places in it. This fish hath very large fins, very small and smooth scales, a red circle about his eyes, which are big and of a gold color, and from either angle of his mouth there hangs down a little barb. In every Tench's head there are two little stones, CHAP. XI.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 199 which foreign physicians make great use of; but he is not commended for wholesome meat, though there be very much use made of them, for outward applications. Rondeletius says, that at his being at Rome he saw a great cure done by applying a Tench to the feet of a very sick man. This, he says, was done after an unusual manner by certain Jews. And it is observed, that many of those people have many secrets, yet unknown to Christians; secrets that have never yet been written, but have been since the days of their Solomon, who knew the nature of all things, even from the cedar to the shrub, delivered by tradition from the father to the son, and so from generation to generation without writing; or, unless it were casually, without the least communicating them to any other nation or tribe: for to do that, they account a profanation. And yet it is thought that they, or some spirit worse than they, first told us, that lice swallowed alive were a certain cure for the yellow-jaundice. This and many other medicines were discovered by them, or by revelation; for doubtless we attained them not by study. Well, this fish, besides his eating, is very useful, both dead and alive, for the good of mankind. But I will meddle no more with that; my honest humble art teaches no such boldness: there are too many foolish meddlers in physic and divinity, 200 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. that think themselves fit to meddle with hidden secrets, and so bring destruction to their followers. But I '11 not meddle with them, any farther than to wish them wiser; and shall tell you next, for I hope I may be so bold, that the Tench is the physician of fishes; for the Pike especially, and that the Pike, being either sick or hurt, is cured by the touch of the Tench. And it is observed, that the tyrant Pike will not be a wolf to his physician, but forbears to devour him though he be never so hungry. This fish, that carries a natural balsam in him to cure both himself and others, loves yet to feed in very foul water, and amongst weeds. And yet I am sure he eats pleasantly, and doubtless you will think so too, if you taste him. And I shall therefore proceed to give you some few, and but a few, directions how to catch this TENCH, 0.'-' of which I have given you these observations. He will bite at a paste made of brown bread and CHAP. XI.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 201 honey, or at a marsh-worm, or a lob-worm; he inclines very much to any paste with which tar is mixed, and he will bite also at a smaller worm, with his head nipped off, and a cod-worm put on the hook before that worm; and I doubt not but that he will also in the three hot months, for in the nine colder he stirs not much, bite at a flag-worm, or at a green gentle, but can positively say no more of the Tench, he being a fish that I have not often angled for, but I wish my honest Scholar may, and be ever fortunate when he fishes. 202 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART 1. THE FOURTH DAY. CHAP. XII. - Observations of the PEARCH, and Directions how to fish for him. PISCATOR. T HE Pearch is a very good and a very boldbiting fish. He is one of the fishes of prey that, like the Pike and Trout, carries his teeth in his mouth, which is very large; and he dare venture to kill and devour several other kinds of fish. He has a hooked, or hog-back, which is armed with sharp and stiff bristles, and all his skin armed or covered over with thick, dry, hard scales; and hath, which few other fish have, two fins on his back. He is so bold that he will invade one of his own kind, which the Pike will not do so willingly; and you may therefore easily believe him to be a bold biter. The Pearch is of great esteem in Italy, saith Aldrovandus; and especially the least are there esteemed a dainty dish. And Gesner prefers the Pearch and Pike above the Trout, or any fresh 1Y W-,Z cr ~jr' a:gg a"":;5 3 ir$ P Ctr6i19 I -ri-nsl -. -~MI~ashPrra=F-~-eprrll I C-~ — ~' -r I I CHAP. XII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 203 water fish: he says the Germans have this proverb, " More wholesome than a Pearch of Rhine: " and he says the River-Pearch is so wholesome, that physicians allow him to be eaten by wounded men, or by men in fevers, or by women in childbed. He spawns but once a year, and is by physicians held very nutritive; yet, by many, to be hard of digestion. They abound more in the river Po and in England, says Rondeletius, than other parts, and have in their brain a stone, which is, in foreign parts, sold by apothecaries, being there noted to be very medicinable against the stone in the reins. These be a part of the commendations which some philosophical brains have bestowed upon the freshwater Pearch: yet they commend the Sea-Pearch, which is known by having but one fin on his back, of which, they say, we English see but a few, to be a much better fish. The Pearch grows slowly, yet will grow, as I have been credibly informed, to be almost two foot long; for an honest informer told me, such a one was not long since taken by Sir Abraham Williams, a gentleman of worth, and a Brother of the Angle, that yet lives, and I wish he may. This was a deep-bodied fish, and doubtless durst have devoured a Pike of half his own length; for I have 204 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. told you he is a bold fish, such a one as, but for extreme hunger, the Pike will not devour: for to affright the Pike, and save himself, the Pearch will set up his fins, much like as a turkey-cock will sometimes set up his tail. But, my Scholar, the Pearch is not only valiant to defend himself, but he is, as I said, a bold-biting fish, yet he will not bite at all seasons of the year; he is very abstemious in winter, yet will bite then in the midst of the day, if it be warm: and note, that all fish bite best about the midst of a warm day in winter, and he hath been observed, by some not usually to bite till the mulberry-tree buds; that is to say, till extreme frosts be past the spring: for when the mulberry-tree blossoms, many gardeners observe their forward fruit to be past the danger of frosts; and some have made the like observation of the Pearch's biting. But bite the Pearch will, and that very boldly; and as one has wittily observed, if there be twenty or forty in a hole, they may be, at one standing, all catched one after another; they being, as he says, like the wicked of the world, not afraid, though their fellows and companions perish in their sight. And you may observe, that they are not like the solitary Pike; but love to accompany one another, and march together in troops. CHAP. XII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 205 And the baits for this bold fish are not many: I mean, he will bite as well at some or at any of these three, as at any or all others whatsoever, - a worm, a minnow, or a little frog, of which you may find many in hay-time: and of worms the dunghill-worm, called a Brandling, I take to be best, being well scoured in moss or fennel; or he will bite at a worm that lies under cow-dung, with a bluish head. And if you rove for a Pearch with a minnow, then it is best to be alive, you sticking your hook through his back fin; or a minnow with a hook in his upper lip, and letting him swim up and down, about mid-water or a little lower, and you still keeping him to about that depth by a cork, which ought not to be a very little one: and the like way you are to fish for the Pearch, with a small frog, your hook being fastened through the skin of his leg, towards the 206 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART 1. upper part of it: and lastly, I will give you but this advice, that you give the Pearch time enough when he bites, for there was scarce ever any Angler that has given him too much. And now I think best to rest myself, for I have almost spent my spirits with talking so long. VEN. Nay, good Master, one fish more, for you see it rains still, and you know our Angles are like money put to usury; they may thrive, though we sit still and do nothing but talk and enjoy one another. Come, come, the other fish, good Master. PIsc. But, Scholar, have you nothing to mix with this discourse, which now grows both tedious and tiresome? Shall I have nothing from you, that seem to have both a good memory and a cheerful spirit? VEN. Yes, Master, I will speak you a copy of verses that were made by Doctor Donne, and made to show the world that he could make soft and smooth verses, when he thought smoothness worth his labor; and I love them the better, because they allude to rivers, and fish, and fishing. They be these: - "' Come, live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks, With silken lines and silver hooks. 4, /, /,/ //z I I/ / / // CHAP. XII.] THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 207 "There will the river whispering run, Warmed by the eyes more than the sun; And there the enamel'd fish will stay, Begging themselves they may betray. "When thou wilt swim in that live bath, Each fish, which every channel hath, Most amorously to thee will swim, Gladder to catch thee than thou him. " If thou to be so seen be'st loath, By sun or moon, thou dark'nest both; And if mine eyes have leave to see, I need not their light, having thee. " Let others freeze with angling-reeds, And cut their legs with shells and weeds; Or treacherously poor fish beset With strangling snares, or windowy net: "Let coarse, bold hands from slimy nest The bedded fish in banks outwrest; Let curious traitors sleave silk flies, To 'witch poor fishes' wandering eyes: "For thee, thou need'st no such deceit, For thou thyself art thine own bait: That fish that is not catch't thereby Is wiser far, alas! than I." Pisc. Well remembered, honest Scholar! I thank you for these choice verses, which I have heard formerly, but had quite forgot till they were recovered by your happy memory. Well, being I have now rested myself a little, I will make you some requital, by telling you some observations of 208 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [PART I. the Eel, for it rains still; and because, as you say, our angles are as money put to use, that thrives when we play, therefore we '11 sit still and enjoy ourselves a little longer under this honeysuckle hedge. I IT THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN GRADUATE LIBRARY DATE DUE., -, -, Jf ^. -1 -,", I -,,ow,. **. - O "lk 3I 1x2 Q9T1 21 3 9015 00871 8572 ut,1v.0t,MafrIV I 4 I I 1 I, DO NOT REMOVE OR MUTILATE CARD I Ir 1I I, I I