Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

Dare to be true: nothing can need a lie;

A fault which needs it most, grows two thereby.1

The Church Porch.

Chase brave employment with a naked sword
Throughout the world.

Sundays observe; think when the bells do chime,
'Tis angels' music.

The worst speak something good; if all want sense,
God takes a text, and preacheth Pa-ti-ence.

Bibles laid open, millions of surprises.

Ibid.

Ibid.

Ibid

Sin

Religion stands on tiptoe in our land,
Ready to pass to the American strand.

Man is one world, and hath

Another to attend him.

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

May toss him to my breast.

The Church Militant,

The fineness which a hymn or psalm affords
If when the soul unto the lines accords.

Man

The Pulley.

A True Hymn.

Wouldst thou both eat thy cake and have it??

Do well and right, and let the world sink.

His bark is worse than his bite.

After death the doctor.1

8

The Size.

[blocks in formation]

Hell is full of good meanings and wishings.

2

3

1 And he that does one fault at first,

And lies to hide it, makes it two.

WATTS: Song xv.

See Heywood, page 20. BICKERSTAFF: Thomas and Sally.

Ruat cœlum, fiat voluntas tua (Though the sky fall, let Thy will be done). SIR T. BROWNE: Religio Medici, part ii. sect. xi.

4

After the war, aid. — Greek proverb.

After me the deluge. - MADAME DE POMPADOUR.

SE Hell is paved with good intentions. - DR. JOHNSON (Boswell's Life of Johnson, Annus 1775).

No sooner is a temple built to God, but the Devil

[blocks in formation]

It is a poor sport that is not worth the candle.

Ibid.

To a close-shorn sheep God gives wind by measure.*

Ibid.

The lion is not so fierce as they paint him."

Ibid.

Help thyself, and God will help thee."

Ibid.

Words are women, deeds are men.' 7

Ibid.

The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken.'

Ibid.

A dwarf on a giant's shoulders sees farther of the two.

Ibid.

IZAAK WALTON. 1593–1683.

Of which, if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge.

The Complete Angler. Author's Preface.

Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics

that it can never be fully learnt.

Ibid.

As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.

1 See Burton, page 192.

Ibid.

2 Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small. —

F. VON LOGAU (1614-1655): Retribution (translation).

8 They ne'er pardon who have done the wrong. - DRYDEN: The Conquest of Grenada.

4 God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. STERNE: Sentimental Journey.

6 The lion is not so fierce as painted.-FULLER: Expecting Preferment. 6 God helps those who help themselves. - SIDNEY: Discourses on Government, sect. xxiii. FRANKLIN Poor Richard's Almanac.

7 Words are men's daughters, but God's sons are things. — Dr. MADDEN. Boulter's Monument (supposed to have been inserted by Dr. Johnson, 1745) 8 See Chaucer, page 4. 9 See Burton, page 185

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. The Complete Angler. Author's Preface. As the Italians say, Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter.

Part i. Chap. 1.

Ibid.

I am, sir, a Brother of the Angle. It [angling] deserves commendations; . . . it is an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.

Angling is somewhat like poetry, born so.

Ibid. -men are to be

Ibid.

Doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant that it will prove to be, like virtue, a reward to itself.1

Ibid.

Sir Henry Wotton was a most dear lover and a frequent practiser of the Art of Angling; of which he would say, ""T was an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent, 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.”

Ibid.

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.

Ibid.

I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, "That which is everybody's business is nobody's business."

Chap. ii.

1 Virtue is her own reward. - DRYDEN: Tyrannic Love, act iii. sc. 1. Virtue is to herself the best reward. - HENRY MORE: Cupid's Conflict. Virtue is its own reward. - PRIOR: Imitations of Horace, book iii. ode 2. GAY: Epistle to Methuen. HOME: Douglas, act iii. sc. 1. Virtue was sufficient of herself for happiness. — DIOGENES LAERTIUS: Plato, xlii.

Ipsa quidem virtus sibimet pulcherrima merces (Virtue herself is her own fairest reward). — SILIUS ITALICUS (25?-99): Punica, lib. xiii. line 663

Good company and good discourse are the very sinews of virtue. The Complete Angler. Parti. Chap. ii.

An excellent angler, and now with God.

Old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good.
No man can lose what he never had.

Chap. iv.

Ibid.

Chap. v.

We may say of angling as Dr. Boteler1 said of strawberries: "Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did;". and so, if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.

Ibid.

Thus use your frog: 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 so doing use him as though you loved him.

Chap. 8. This dish of meat is too good for any but anglers, or very honest men.

[ocr errors]

Ibid

Health is the second blessing that we mortals are capable of, a blessing that money cannot buy. Chap. 21. And upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his Providence, and be quiet and go a-angling.

Ibid.

But God, who is able to prevail, wrestled with him; marked him for his own.2

Life of Donne.

8

The great secretary of Nature, Sir Francis Bacon. Life of Herbert.

1 William Butler, styled by Dr. Fuller in his "Worthies" (Suffolk) the "Esculapius of our age." He died in 1621. This first appeared in the second edition of "The Angler," 1655. Roger Williams, in his "Key into the Language of America," 1643, p. 98, says: "One of the chiefest doctors of England was wont to say, that God could have made, but God never did make, a better berry."

2 Melancholy marked him for her own. - GRAY: The Epitaph.

8 Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates are secretaries of Nature. HOWELL: Letters, book ii. letter xi.

Oh, the gallant fisher's life!

It is the best of any;

'Tis full of pleasure, void of strife,

And 't is beloved by many.

The Angler. (John Chalkhill.)

JAMES SHIRLEY. 1596-1666.

The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hands on kings.

Contention of Ajax and Ulysses. Sc. 3.

Only the actions of the just 2

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.

Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.

Ibid.

[blocks in formation]

1 In 1683, the year in which he died, Walton prefixed a preface to a work edited by him: "Thealma and Clearchus, a Pastoral History, in smooth and easy verse; written long since by John Chalkhill Esq., an acquaintant and friend of Edmund Spenser."

Chalkhill, — a name unappropriated, a verbal phantom, a shadow of a shade. Chalkhill is no other than our old piscatory friend incoginto. ZOUCH: Life of Walton.

2 The sweet remembrance of the just
Shall flourish when he sleeps in dust.

TATE AND BRADY: Psalm cxxii. 6.

"Their dust" in Works edited by Dyce.

« AnteriorContinuar »