V.

How calm and quiet a delight

It is alone

To read, and meditate, and write,

By none offended, and offending none !

To walk, ride, sit, or sleep at one's own ease, And pleasing a man's self, none other to displease!

VI.

Oh my beloved nymph! fair Dove;
Princess of rivers, how I love

Upon thy flowery banks to lie;
And view thy silver stream,

When gilded by a summer's beam,
And in it all thy wanton fry
Playing at liberty,

And with my angle upon them
The all of treachery

I ever learnt, industriously to try.

VII.

Such streams Rome's yellow Tyber cannot show,
Th' Iberian Tagus, nor Ligurian Po;

The Meuse, the Danube, and the Rhine
Are puddle-water all compar'd with thine;
And Loire's pure streams yet too polluted are
With thine, much purer to compare ;
The rapid Garonne, and the winding Seine,
Are both too mean,

Beloved Dove, with thee

To vie priority;

Nay, Tame and Isis, when conjoin'd, submit,
And lay their trophies at thy silver feet.

VIIL

Oh my beloved rocks! that rise

To awe the earth, and brave the skies,
From some aspiring mountain's crown,
How dearly do I love,

Giddy with pleasure, to look down;

And, from the vales to view the noble heights above!

IX.

Oh my beloved caves! from dog-star's heat

And all anxieties, my safe retreat: 5

What safety, privacy, what true delight,

In the artificial night,

Your gloomy entrails make,
Have I taken, do I take!

VARIATIONS.

4 I ever learn'd to practise and to try!
And hotter persecution safe retreats.

How oft when grief has made me fly,
To hide me from society

Even of my dearest friends, have I,

In your recesses' friendly shade,

All my sorrows open laid,

And my most secret woes, intrusted to your privacy!

X.

Lord! would men let me alone,

What an over-happy one

Should I think myself to be;

Might I in this desert place

(Which most men in discourse disgrace)
Live but undisturb'd and free!
Here, in this despis'd recess,

Would I, maugre winter's cold,
And the summer's worst excess,
Try to live out to sixty full years old; *
And, all the while,

Without an envious eye

On any thriving under fortune's smile,
Contented live, and then contented die.

VARIATION. 6 by their voice disgrace.

*This he did not; for he was born 1630, and died in 1687.

C. C.

PISCAT

CHAPTER I.

PISCATOR JUNIOR, AND VIATOR.

ISCATOR. You are happily overtaken, Sir: may a man be so bold as to inquire, how far you travel this way?

VIATOR. Yes sure, Sir, very freely; though it be a question I cannot very well resolve you, as not knowing myself how far it is to Ashbourn, where I intend to-night to take up my inn.

PISCATOR. Why then, Sir, seeing I perceive you to be a stranger in these parts, I shall take upon me to inform you, that from the town you last came through, called Brailsford, it is five miles; and you are not, yet, above half a mile on this side.

VIATOR. So much! I was told it was but ten miles from Derby; and, methinks, I have rode almost so far already.

PISCATOR. O, Sir, find no fault with large measure of good land; which Derbyshire abounds in, as much as most counties of England.

VIATOR. It may be so; and good land, I confess, affords a pleasant prospect: but by your good leave, Sir, large measure of foul way is not altogether so acceptable.

PISCATOR. True, Sir, but the foul way serves to justify the fertility of the soil, according to the proverb, "There is good land

* Brailsford is six miles from Ashbourn, and Ashbourn thirteen miles from Derby.