Piscator. Look you, scholar, I have yet another. And now, having caught
three brace of Trouts, I will tell you a short tale as we walk towards
our breakfast. A scholar, a preacher I should say, that was to preach to
procure the approbation of a parish that he might be their lecturer, had
got from his fellow-pupil the copy of a sermon that was first preached
with great commendation by him that composed it: and though the borrower
of it preached it, word for word, as it was at first, yet it was utterly
disliked as it was preached by the second to his congregation, which the
sermon-borrower complained of to the lender of it: and was thus
answered: "I lent you, indeed, my fiddle, but not my fiddle-stick; for
you are to know, that every one cannot make musick with my words, which
are fitted for my own mouth". And so, my scholar, you are to know, that
as the ill pronunciation or ill accenting of words in a sermon spoils
it, so the ill carriage of your line, or not fishing even to a foot in a
right place, makes you lose your labour: and you are to know, that
though you have my fiddle, that is, my very rod and tacklings with which
you see I catch fish, yet you have not my fiddle-stick, that is, you yet
have not skill to know how to carry your hand and line, nor how to guide
it to a right place: and this must be taught you; for you are to
remember, I told you Angling is an art, either by practice or a long
observation, or both. But take this for a rule, When you fish for a
Trout with a worm, let your line have so much, and not more lead than
will fit the stream in which you fish; that is to say, more in a great
troublesome stream than in a smaller that is quieter; as near as may be,
so much as will sink the bait to the bottom, and keep it still in
motion, and not more.
But now, let's say grace, and fall to breakfast. What say you, scholar,
to the providence of an old angler? Does not this meat taste well? and
was not this place well chosen to eat it? for this sycamore-tree will
shade us from the sun's heat.
Venator. All excellent good; and my stomach excellent good, too. And now
I remember, and find that true which devout Lessius says, "that poor
men, and those that fast often, have much more pleasure in eating than
rich men, and gluttons, that always feed before their stomachs are empty
of their last meat and call for more; for by that means they rob
themselves of that pleasure that hunger brings to poor men". And I do
seriously approve of that saying of yours, "that you had rather be a
civil, well-governed, well-grounded, temperate, poor angler, than a
drunken lord ": but I hope there is none such. However, I am certain of
this, that I have been at many very costly dinners that have not
afforded me half the content that this has done; for which I thank God
and you.
And now, good master, proceed to your promised direction for making and
ordering my artificial fly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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