Good company and good discourse are the of virtue.

The Complete Angler.

An excellent angler, and now with God.

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

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.

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.

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 his own. - GRAY: The Epitaph.

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

SHIRLEY.

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.)1

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.3

Death calls ye to the crowd of common men.

Ibid.

Cupid and Death.

SAMUEL BUTLER. 1600-1680.

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastick,

Was beat with fist instead of a stick.

Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 11.

We grant, although he had much wit,
He was very shy of using it.

Line 45.

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.

8.46 'Their dust" in Works edited by Dyce.

Beside, 't is known he could speak Greek
As naturally as pigs squeak;1
That Latin was no more difficile
Than to a blackbird 't is to whistle.

He could distinguish and divide

Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 51.

A hair 'twixt south and southwest side.

Line 67.

For rhetoric, he could not ope

His mouth, but out there flew a trope.

Line 81

And wisely tell what hour o' the day
The clock does strike, by algebra.
Whatever sceptic could inquire for,
For every why he had a wherefore.2

Line 125.

Line 131.

Where entity and quiddity,

The ghosts of defunct bodies, fly.

Line 145.

He knew what 's what, and that's as high

As if religion was intended.
For nothing else but to be mended.

Hudibras. Part i. Canto i. Line 205.

Compound for sins they are inclined to,
By damning those they have no mind to.

The trenchant blade, Toledo trusty,

Line 215.

For want of fighting was grown rusty,
And ate into itself, for lack

Of somebody to hew and hack.

Line 359.

For rhyme the rudder is of verses,

With which, like ships, they steer their courses.

Quoth Hudibras, "I smell a rat!?
Ralpho, thou dost prevaricate."

Or shear swine, all cry and no wool.3
And bid the devil take the hin'most.*

With many a stiff thwack, many a bang,
Hard crab-tree and old iron rang.

Like feather bed betwixt a wall
And heavy brunt of cannon ball.

Ay me! what perils do environ

The man that meddles with cold iron! 5

Who thought he'd won

The field as certain as a gun."

1 See Heywood page 11.

8 See Fortescue, page 7.

Line 821.

Line 852.

Canto ii. Line 633.

Line 831.

Line 872.

Canto iii. Line 1.

Line 11.

2 See Middleton, page 172.

4 Bid the Devil take the slowest. - PRIOR: On the Taking of Namur. Deil tak the hindmost.

5 See Spenser, page 27.

BURNS: To a Haggis.

6 Sure as a gun. - DRYDEN: The Spanish Friar, act iii. sc. 2. CERVANTES: Don Quixote, part i. book iii. chap. vii.

Nor do I know what is become

Of him, more than the Pope of Rome.

Hudibras. Parti. Canto iii. Line 263.

For those that run away and fly,
Take place at least o' the enemy.
I am not now in fortune's power:
He that is down can fall no lower.2

Cheer'd up himself with ends of verse
And sayings of philosophers.

If he that in the field is slain

Line 609.

Line 877.

Line 1011.

Some force whole regions, in despite
O' geography, to change their site;

Make former times shake hands with latter,
And that which was before come after.

1 See Middleton, page 172.

2 He that is down needs fear no fall.

part ii.

Line 1047.

Line 1145.

Line 1367.

8 Outrun the constable. RAY: Proverbs, 1670.