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was;

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 Dr Whitaker 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.

8 The first is Dr Nowel, sometime dean of the cathedral church of St Paul, in London, where his monument stands yet undefaced; a man that, in the reformation of Queen 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

VARIATION.

8 Let me give you the example of two men more, that have lived nearer to our own times first Doctor Nowel, sometimes Dean of St Paul's (in which church his monument stands yet undefaced), a man, &c.

* William Perkins was a learned divine, and a pious and painful preacher: Dr William Whitaker was an able writer in the Romish controversy, and Regius Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge. They both flourished at the latter end of the sixteenth century. I remark the extreme caution of our author in this passage; for he says not of Perkins, as he does of Whitaker, that he was a practiser of, but only that he bestows (in some of his writings we must conclude) great commendations on angling. Perkins had the misfortune to want the use of his right hand; as we find intimated in this distich on him :

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Dextera quamtumvis fuerat tibi manca, docendi
Pollebas mira dexteritate tamen,

Though Nature hath thee of thy right hand bereft,
Right well thou writest with thy hand that's left.

And therefore can hardly be supposed capable of even baiting his hook. The fact respecting Whitaker is thus attested by Dr Fuller, in his Holy State, book iii. chap. 13: Fishing with an angle is to some rather a torture than a pleasure, to stand an hour as mute as the fish they mean to take; yet herewithal Dr Whitaker was much delighted." To these examples of divines lovers of Angling, I here add (1784) that of Dr Leigh, the present Master of Baliol College, Oxford, who, though turned of ninety, makes it the recreation of his vacant hours.-H. He died in 1790.

† Dr Alexander Nowel, a learned divine, and a famous preacher in the reign of King Edw. VI.; upon whose death he, with many other Protestants, fled to Germany, where he lived many years. In 1561 he was made Dean of St Paul's; and in 1601 died. The monument mentioned in the text was undoubtedly consumed, with the church, in the fire of London; but the inscription thereon is preserved in Stow's Survey, edit. 1633, page 362. See Athen. Oxon. 313. An engraving of the monument itself is in Dugdale's History of St Paul's Cathedral.-H. Dr Dunham Whitaker, in his History of Whalley, says of Nowel, "He is recorded by Isaac Walton, a man of the same tranquil devotion, and who attained nearly to the same length of days with himself, to have spent a tenth part of his time in Angling, an amusement suited beyond every other to calm and contemplative minds, and sacred, as it should seem, to the relaxation of eminent divines. Donne, Herbert, Whitaker, and after them Archbishop Sheldon, having been fondly attached to it."-P. 482.

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 many primitive Christians, I say, besides 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

*The question who was the compiler of our Church Catechism must. I fear, be reckoned among the desiderata of our ecclesiastical history. It is certain that Nowel drew up two catechisms, a greater and a less; the latter in the Title, as it stands in the English translation, expressly directed "to be learned of all youth, next after the little Catechisme appoynted in the Booke of Common Prayer." But, besides that both were originally written in Latin, and translated by other hands, the lesser, though declared to be an abridgment of the greater, was at least twenty times longer than that in the Common Prayer Book. And whereas, Walton says, that in the reformation of Elizabeth, the then Parliament enjoined Nowel to make a Catechism, &c., and that he made that which is printed in our old Service-book, the catechism in question is to be found in both the Liturgies of Edw. VI. (the first whereof was set forth in 1549), and also in his Primer, printed in 1552; and Nowel is not enumerated among the compilers of the Service-book. Further, both the Catechisms of Nowel contain the doctrine of the sacraments; but that in the old Service-book is silent on that head, and so continued, till, upon an objection of the Puritans in the conference at Hampton Court, an expla nation of the sacraments was drawn up by Dr John Overall, and printed in the next impression of the Book of Common Prayer. It may further be remarked that, in the conference above mentioned, the two Catechisms are contradistinguished, in an expression of Dr Reynolds; who objected that the Catechism in the Common Prayer Book was too brief, and that by Dean Nowel too long for novices to learn by heart. See Fuller's Ch. Hist. book x. page 14. So much of Walton's assertion as respects the sanction given to a catechism of Nowel's is true; but it was the larger catechism, drawn up at the request of Secretary Cecil and other great persons, that was so approved, and that not by Parliament, but by a convocation held anno 1562, temp. Eliz. See Strype's Life of Archbishop Parker, 202. From all which particulars it must be inferred that Walton's assertion with respect to the Catechism in the Service-book, i.e., the Book of Common Prayer, is a mistake; and although Strype, in his Memorials, vol. ii. page 442, concludes a catechism of Nowel's (mentioned in the said book, page 368, et in loc. cit.) to be the Church Catechism joined, ordinarily with our Common Prayer, he also must have misunderstood the fact.-H.

by them this is written, "that he died 13 Feb. 1601, being aged ninety-five years, forty-four of which he had been Dean of St Paul's Church; (and that his age neither impaired his hearing, nor dimmed his eyes, nor weakened his memory, nor made any of the faculties of his mind weak or useless." It is said 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, "it was 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 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

*The inscription under Dean Nowel's picture at Brazenose College, which Walton translated, is

"ALEXANDER NOWELLUS, Sacræ Theologiæ Professor,
S. Pauli Decanus, obiit 13 Febr. Anno Dom. 1601. R.R. Eliz. 44.
An. Decanatus 42. Etatis suæ 95: cum neque Oculi
caligarent, neque Aures obtusiores, neque Memoria
infirmior, neque Animi ullæ facultates victæ essent.
Piscator Hominum."

The portrait has been lately engraved in Churton's Life of Nowei, 8vo, Oxford, 1809, p. 366.-E.

† Of whom see an account in the Life of Walton.

sweetly from his pen as that river does at this time, by which it was then made, I shall repeat it unto you :9

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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.?*

VARIATIONS.

9 These verses occur in every edition of the Angler exactly as they are here printed, but the following variations exist between them and the copy printed by Wotton in his Reliquia Wottonian, p. 384, where they are entitled, On a Bank as I sate a Fishing; a Description of the Spring."

1 And now all Nature.

2 New.

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3 look'd.

4 all. It can scarcely be doubted that the "Friend" alluded to was Izaak Walton.

* John Davors, Esq., was the author of a poem entitled the Secrets of Angling, teaching the choicest tools, baits, and seasons for the taking of any Fish in pond or river, practised and familiarly opened in three books, by F. D., Esquire, 12mo, 1613, augmented with many approved experiments, by W. Lauson, and reprinted in 1652. Again reprinted from that edition by Triphook in 1811. The verses in the text have been collated with the reprint, and the most important variations are shown in the notes. The work was, however, entered on the books of the Stationers' Company as the production of John Dennys, Esq. "1612, 23 Martij. Mr Roger Jackson entred for his copie under thands of Mr Mason and Mr Warden Hooper, a booke called the Secrete of Angling, teaching the choycest tooles, bates, and seasons for the taking of any Fish in any pond or river, practised and opened in three bookes, by John Dennys, Esquire." It was dedicated to John Harboone, of Tackley in Oxfordshire, Esq., by "R. I.," who states in the dedication that the author was dead. Fourteen lines "in due praise of his praiseworthy skill and work," signed "Jo. Daves," are prefixed.

7 his.

9 then.

3 ganderglas.

7 running rivers.

3 the.

5 And takes.

Let me live harmlessly, and near the brink
Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place; 5
Where I may see my quill, or cork, down sink
With eager bite of Perch, or Bleak, or Dace; 6
And on the world and my 7 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.

pursue,

Let them that list, these pastimes still 9
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,2
Among the daisies and the violets blue,

Red hyacinth, and yellow daffodil,
Purple Narcissus like the morning rays,
Pale gander-grass,3 and azure culver-keys.
I count it higher 4 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:
The watery clouds that in the air up-roll'd
With sundry kinds of painted colours fly;
And fair Aurora, lifting up her head,
Still 6 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 inclos'd with rivers running 7 round;
These 8 rivers making way through nature's chains,
With headlong course, into the sea profound;
The raging sea, beneath the vallies low,
Where lakes, and rills, and rivulets do flow: 1

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,2
Do welcome with their quire the summer's Queen;
The meadows fair, where Flora's gifts, among

Are intermixt, with 3 verdant grass between;
The silver-scaled fish that softly swim
Within the sweet brook's crystal, watery stream.4
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, now wonderful they be :
Framing thereof an inward contemplation

To set his heart from 6 other fancies free;
And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye,
His mind is rapt above the starry sky.

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