of Socrates, and only know they know 35 picture, though it be but of a horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there is music even in the beauty, and the silent 5 note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a music wherever there is a harmony, order or proportion; and thus far we may maintain the music of the spheres: for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whosoever is harmonically composed, delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church-music. For myself, not only from my obedience, but my particular genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern-music, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is a hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of God; such a melody to the ear, as the whole world well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony, which intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say with Plato, the soul is a harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto music: thus some whose temper of body agrees, and humors the constitution of their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto rhythm. This made Tacitus in the very first line of his story, fall upon a verse,1 and Cicero the worst of poets, but declaiming for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect hexameter.2 I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions who never marry twice: 45 I feel not in me those sordid and un not that I disallow of second marriage; * * * I christian desires of my profession; I do not secretly implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve ephemerides. and almanacs, in expectation of malignant aspects, fatal conjunctions and eclipses: I rejoice not at unwholesome springs, nor unseasonable winters; my prayer goes with the husbandman's; I desire everything in its proper season, that neither men nor the times be put out of temper. 1 Urbem Romam in principio reges habuere. 2 Pro Archia Poeta: In qua me non inficior mediocriter esse. What time the persons of these ossuaries Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease unto me; I desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own necessities: where I do him no good, methinks it is scarce 5 honest gain; though I confess 't is but the worthy salary of our well-intended endeavors. I am not only ashamed, but heartily sorry, that besides death, there are diseases incurable; yet not for my to own sake, or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause and sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as mine own. And to speak more generally, those three noble profes- 15 sions which all civil commonwealths do honor are raised upon the fall of Adam, and are not exempt from their infirmities; there are not only diseases incurable in physic, but cases indissolvable in laws, 20 vices incorrigible in divinity. If general councils may err, I do not see why particular courts should be infallible; their perfectest rules are raised upon the erroneous reasons of man; and the laws of one do but condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle oft-times the opinions of his predecessors, because, though agreeable to reason, yet were not consonant to his own rules, and logic of his 30 proper principles. Again, to speak nothing of the sin against the Holy Ghost, whose cure not only, but whose nature is unknown; I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than divinity pride or 35 avarice in others. I can cure vices by physic, when they remain incurable by divinity; and shall obey my pills, when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, we all labor 40 live within two Methuselahs of Hector.* against our own cure; for death is the cure of all diseases. There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is 45 nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality. From HYDRIOTAPHIA URN- 25 3 And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories unto present considerations seems a vanity almost out of date, and a superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons: one face of Janus holds no proportion to the other. "I is too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of 50 the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our ex What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling 55 questions,1 are not beyond all conjecture. 1 The puzzling questions of Tiberius unto grammarians. Marcel. Donatus in Suet. * Κλυτὰ έθνεα νεκρῶν. Ηom. Job. 3 That the world may last but six thousand years. Hector's fame lasting above two lives of Methuselah, before that famous prince was extant. the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse, pectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and, 5 confounded that of himself. In vain we being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration which maketh 10 pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a moment. compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon, without the favor of the everlasting register. Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembered in the known account of time? The first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle. Oblivion is not to be hired: the greater part must be content to be as though they Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right-lined circle must conclude and shut up al. 15 There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things. Our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. 20 had not been, to be found in the register Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years.2 Generations pass while some trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions, like many in Gruter, to hope for eternity 25 by enigmatical epithets or first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of per- 30 petuity, even by everlasting languages. 35 of God, not in the record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementoes, and time, that grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration: diuturnity is a dream and folly of expec To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan, disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself. Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates' patients, or Achilles' horses in Homer, under naked nominations, without deserts and noble 40 acts, which are the balsam of our memories, the entelechia and soul of our subsistences. To be nameless in worthy deed exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives more happily 45 a great part even of our living beings; without a name, than Herodias with one. And who had not rather have been the good thief, than Pilate? But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals with the 50 memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who can but pity 10 The character of death. 2 Old ones being taken up, and other bodies laid under them. 8 Gruteri Inscriptiones Antiquae. Cuperem notum esse quòd sim, non opto ut sciatur qualis sim. Card. in vita propria. tation. Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosites, miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and 55 forgetful of evils past, is merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are In vain do individuals hope for im- 45 from the power of itself. But the sufficiency of christian immortality frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after death makes a folly 5 of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath directly promised no duration; wherein there is so much of chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold long subsistence, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal luster nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus. But the wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced undoing fires, unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn. Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus. The man of God lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias, without either tomb or burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great examples of perpetuity in their long and living memory, in strict account being still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act upon this stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all die, but be changed, according to received translation, the last day will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections will anticipate lasting sepultures: some graves will be opened before they be quite closed, and Lazarus be no wonder, when many that feared to die shall groan that There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality; whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end: (all others have a dependent being, and within the reach of destruction) which is the 50 they can die but once. The dismal state peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy itself; and the highest strain of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even 1 Omnia vanitas et pastio venti, vouǹ ȧvéμov, Bookmois ut olim Aquila et Symmachus. v. Drus. Eccles. is the second and living death, when life puts despair on the damned; when men shall wish the coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and annihila55 tion shall be courted. ISAAK WALTON (1593-1683) The Complete Angler (1653) is one of the best established of the English classics, holding its place through succeeding ages by its unaffected simplicity and charming naturalness. Its author, when he was not fishing and enjoying country sights and sounds, was a London linen draper with many pleasant friendships, including some of the leading men of the time; his life was happy and uneventful. THE COMPLETE ANGLER CHAPTER IV OBSERVATIONS OF THE NATURE AND BREED- 25 affirmed by Gesner, a writer of good credit; and Mercator says the trouts that are taken in the Lake of Geneva are a great part of the merchandise of 5 that famous city. And you are further to know that there be certain waters that breed trouts remarkable both for their number and smallness. I know a little brook in Kent that breeds them to a number incredible, and you may take them twenty or forty in an hour, but none greater than about the size of a gudgeon: there are also in divers rivers, especially that relate to or be near to the sea, as Winchester or the Thames about Windsor, a little trout called a samlet or skegger trout (in both which places I have caught twenty or forty at a standing), that will bite as fast and as freely as minnows; these be by some taken to be young salmons; but in those waters they never grow to be bigger than a herring. There is also in Kent, near to Canterbury, a trout called there a Fordidge trout, a trout that bears the name of the town where it is usually caught, that is accounted the rarest of fish: many of them near the bigness of salmon, but And before I go further in my discourse, let me tell you, that you are to observe, that as there be some barren does that are good in summer, so there be some barren trouts that are good in 30 known by their different color; and in winter; but there are not many that are so, for usually they be in their perfection in the month of May, and decline with the buck. Now you are to take notice that in several countries, as in Germany and in other parts, compared to ours, fish differ much in their bigness and shape, and other ways, and so do trouts it is well known that in the Lake Leman, the Lake of Geneva, there are 40 trouts taken of three cubits long, as is their best season they cut very white; and none of these have been known to be caught with an angle, unless it were one that was caught by Sir George 35 Hastings, an excellent angler, and now with God: and he hath told me, he thought that trout bit not for hunger but wantonness; and it is rather to be believed, because both he then, and many others before him, have been curious to search into their bellies, what the food |