My next and last example shall be that under-valuer 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 practiced 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 sweetly from his pen, as that river does at this time, by which it was then made, I shall repeat it unto you:--
This day dame Nature seem'd in love The lusty sap began to move; Fresh juice did stir th' embracing vines. And birds had drawn their valentines.
The jealous trout, that low did lie Rose at a well-dissembled fly There stood my Friend, with patient skill, Attending of his trembling quill.
Already were the eaves possess'd With the swift pilgrim's daubed nest; The groves already did rejoice In Philomel's triumphing voice:
The showers were short, the weather mild, The morning fresh, the evening smil'd. Joan takes her neat-rubb'd pail, and now, She trips to milk the sand-red cow;
