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My next and last example shall be that undervaluer 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 not then 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 practised
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 so softly
and sweetly from his pen, as that river does, at this time, by which
it was then made, I shall repeat it unto you:---
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