And, let me tell you, this kind of fishing with a dead rod, and laying
night-hooks, are like putting money to use; for they both work for the
owners when they do nothing but sleep, or eat, or rejoice, as you know
we have done this last hour, and sat as quietly and as free from cares
under this sycamore, as Virgil's Tityrus and his Meliboeus did under
their broad beech-tree. No life, my honest scholar, no life so happy and
so pleasant as the life of a well-governed angler; for when the lawyer is
swallowed up with business, and the statesman is preventing or
contriving plots, then we sit on cowslip-banks, hear the birds sing, and
possess ourselves in as much quietness as these silent silver streams,
which we now see glide so quietly by us. Indeed, my good scholar, we
may say of angling, as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubtless God
could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did "; and so,
if I might be judge, God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent
recreation than angling.

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 on, but
only on holy-days ". As I then sat on this very grass, I turned my present
thoughts into verse: 'twas a Wish, which I'll repeat to you:-