Come, come the other fifh, good Master.

Pifc. But Scholer, have you nothing to mix with this Discourse, which now grows both tedious and tirefome? fhall I have nothing that seems to have both a good memorie, and a chearful Spirit?

from you

Viat. Yes, Mafter, I will speak you a Coppie of Verses that were made by Doctor Donne, and made to fhew the world that hee could make soft and smooth Verses, when he thought them fit and worth his labour; and I love them the better, because they allude to Rivers, and fish, and fishing. They bee thefe :

Come live with me,and be my love, And we will fome new pleasures prove, of golden fands,and Christal brooks, With filken lines and filver books.

There

There will the River wifpering run, Warm'd by thy eyes more then the Sun; And there th' inamel'd fish wil ftay, Begging themselves they may betray.

When thou wilt fwim in that live bath, Each fish, which every channel hath Moft amorously to thee will fwim, Gladder to catch thee, then thou him.

If thou,to be fo feen, beeft loath
By Sun or Moon, thou darkneft both;
And, if mine eyes have leave to fee,
I need not their light,having thee.

Let others freeze with Angling Reeds,
And cut their legs with fhels & weeds,
Or treacherously poor fish befet,
With strangling Snares,or windowy net.

Let coarfe bold hands, from flimy neft,
The bedded fish in banks outwreft,
Let curious Traitors fleave filk flies,
To'witch poor wandring fishes eyes.

For

For thee, thou needft no fuch deceit,
For thou thy felf art thine own bait ;
Tha fifh that is not catch'd thereby,
Is wifer far, alas,then I.

Pifc. Well remembred, honest Scholer,I thank you for thefe choice Verses, which I have heard formerly, but had quite forgot, till they were recovered by your happie memorie. Well, being I have now refted my felf a little, I will make you fome requital, by telling you fome obfervations of the Eele, for it rains ftill, and (as you fay) our Angles are as money put to Ufe, that thrive when we play.

I'

CHA P. X.

T is agreed by most men, that the Eele is both a good and a

moft daintie fish; but most men differ about his breeding; fome fay, they breed by generation as other fish do; and others, that they breed (as fome worms do) out of the putrifaction of the earth, and divers other waies; thofe that denie them to breed by generation, as other fish do, ask, if any man ever faw an Eel to have Spawn or Melt? and they are answered, That they may be as certain of their breeding, as if they had feen Spawn; for they say, that they are certain that Eeles have all parts fit for generation, like other fish, but fo fmal as not to be eafily discerned, by reafon of their fatnefs; but that difcerned they may

be

be; and that the Hee and the She Eele may be distinguished by their fins.

And others fay, that Eeles growing old, breed other Eeles out of the corruption of their own age, which Sir Francis Bacon fayes, exceeds not ten years. And others fay,that Eeles are bred of a particular dew falling in the Months of May or June on the banks of fome particular Ponds or Rivers (apted by nature for that end) which in a few dayes is by the Suns heat turned into Eeles. I have seen in the beginning of July, in a River not far from Canterbury, fome parts of it covered over with young Eeles about the thickness of a ftraw; and these Eeles did lye on the top of that water, as thick as motes are faid to be in the Sun; and I have heard the like of other Rivers, as namely,in Severn, and in a pond or Mere in Stafford-fhire, where about a fet time in Summer, fuch small Eeles