Izaak next illustrates his idea of becoming mirth, which excludes 'Scripture jests and lascivious jests,' both of them highly distasteful to anglers. Then he comes to practice, beginning with chub, for which I have never angled, but have taken them by misadventure, with a salmon fly. Thence we proceed to trout, and to the charming scene of the milkmaid and her songs by Raleigh and Marlowe, 'I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age,' for Walton, we have said, was the last of the Elizabethans and the new times were all for Waller and Dryden. 'Chevy Chace' and 'Johnny Armstrong' were dear to Walton as to Scott, but through a century these old favourites were to be neglected, save by Mr. Pepys and Addison. Indeed, there is no more curious proof of the great unhappy change then coming to make poetry a mechanic art, than the circumstance that Walton is much nearer to us, in his likings, than to the men between 1670 and 1770. Gay was to sing of angling, but in 'the strong lines that are now in fashion.' All this while Piscator has been angling with worm and minnow to no purpose, though he picks up 'a trout will fill six reasonable bellies' in the evening. So we leave them, after their ale, in fresh sheets that smell of lavender.' Izaak's practical advice is not of much worth; we read him rather for sentences like this: 'I'll 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 upon, but only on holy-days."' He did not say, like Fox, when Burke spoke of 'a seat under a tree, with a friend, a bottle, and a book,' 'Why a book?' Izaak took his book with him--a practice in which, at least, I am fain to imitate this excellent old man. As to salmon, Walton scarcely speaks a true word about their habits, except by accident. Concerning pike, he quotes the theory that they are bred by pickerel weed, only as what 'some think.' In describing the use of frogs as bait, he makes the famous, or infamous, remark, 'Use him as though you loved him . . . that he may live the longer.' A bait-fisher _may_ be a good man, as Izaak was, but it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. As coarse fish are usually caught only with bait, I shall not follow Izaak on to this unholy and unfamiliar ground, wherein, none the less, grow flowers of Walton's fancy, and the songs of the old poets are heard. _The Practical Angler_, indeed, is a book to be marked with flowers, marsh marigolds and fritillaries, and petals of the yellow iris, for the whole provokes us to content, and whispers that word of the apostle, 'Study to be quiet.' FISHING THEN AND NOW