Z-siteA Companion to the Works of Louis Zukofsky

The following catalogues all the passages from The Compleat Angler found in “A”-21, presented in the order that they appear in LZ’s text. Except for the quotation at 451.11-13, all selections used appear in sequence as found in Walton, aside from occasional rearrangement within given chapters. LZ’s text was probably the Temple Classics edition of 1905, since this is the copy that was in his library.

Chapter I

450.28-451.4

As first the lark, when she means to rejoice, to cheer herself and those that hear her; she then quits the earth, and sings as she ascends higher into the air, and having ended her heavenly employment, grows then mute and sad, to think she must descend to the dull earth, which she would not touch but for necessity.

But the nightingale, another of my airy creatures, breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at midnight, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, Lord, what music hast thou provided for the saints in heaven, when thou affordest bad men such music on earth!

The earth feeds and carries those horses that carry us.

457.11-13 [from Chap. XXI]

And therefore my advice is, that you endeavour to be honestly rich, or contentedly poor: but be sure that your riches be justly got, or you spoil all.

477.23-480.38
As namely of a river in Epirus that puts out any lighted torch, and kindles any torch that was not lighted.

<and the drafts hurt>

And it is yet more observable, that when our blessed Saviour went up into the mount, when he left the rest of his disciples, and chose only three to bear him company at his Transfiguration, that those three were all fishermen.

The Cuttle-fish will cast a long gut out of her throat, which, like as an Angler doth his line, she sendeth forth, and pulleth in again at her pleasure, according as she sees some little fish come near to her […]

And there is a fish called a Hermit, that at a certain age gets into a dead fish’s shell, and, like a hermit, dwells there alone, studying the wind and weather and so turns her shell. that she makes it defend her from the injuries that they would bring upon her.

Venator: Sir, take what liberty you think fit, for your discourse seems to be musick, and charms me to an attention. Piscator: Why then, Sir, I will take a little liberty to tell, or rather to remember you what is said of Turtle-doves; first, that they silently plight their troth, and marry; and that then the survivor scorns, as the Thracian women are said to do, to outlive his or her mate, and this is taken for a truth; and if the survivor shall ever couple with another, then, not only the living, but the dead, be it either the he or the she, is denied the name and honour of a true Turtle-dove.

Let them that list, these pastimes still pursue,
And on such pleasing fancies feed their fill;
So I the fields and meadows green may view,
And daily by fresh rivers walk at will
Among the daisies and the violets blue,
Red hyacinth, and yellow daffodil,
Purple Narcissus like the morning rays,
Pale gander-grass, and azure culver-keys. [Jo. Davors (John Dennys)]

[The “thatch” at 478.3 is probably suggested by the “Thatch’d-house” toward which the conversationalists walk during the first day.]

Chapter II
Venator: My friend Piscator, you have kept time with my thoughts; for the sun is just rising, and I myself just now come to this place, and the dogs have just now put down an Otter. Look ! down at the bottom of the hill there, in that meadow, chequered with water-lilies and lady-smocks; there you may see what work they make; look! look! you may see all busy; men and dogs; dogs and men; all busy.

But I remember that a wise friend of mine did usually say, “that which is everybody’s business is nobody’s business “: if it were otherwise, there could not be so many nets and fish, that are under the statute size, sold daily amongst us; and of which the conservators of the waters should be ashamed.

<(take it at / different times should / be or shouldn’t>

I’ll now lead you to an honest ale-house, where we shall find a cleanly room, lavender in the windows, and twenty ballads stuck about the wall.

Chapter III
But it is likely the Chubs will sink down towards the bottom of the water, at the first shadow of your rod (for Chub is the fearfullest of fishes), and will do so if but a bird flies over him and makes the least shadow on the water; but they will presently rise up to the top again, and there lie soaring till some shadow affrights them again.

And he [a trout] never refuses a grasshopper, on the top of a swift stream, nor, at the bottom, the young humble bee that breeds in long grass, and is ordinarily found by the mower of it.

Chapter IV
And so Albertus observes, That there is one kind of frog that hath her mouth naturally shut up about the end of August, and that she lives so all the winter: and though it be strange to some, yet it is known to too many among us to be doubted.

Chapter V
But the best of them [brandlings, small red worms] are to be found in the bark of the tanners, which they cast up in heaps after they have used it about their leather.

And when you fish with a fly, if it be possible, let no part of your line touch the water, but your fly only; and be still moving your fly upon the water, or casting it into the water, you yourself being also always moving down the stream.

Pliny holds an opinion, that many [caterpillars] have their birth, or being, from a dew that in the spring falls upon the leaves of trees; and that some kinds of them are from a dew left upon herbs or flowers; and others from a dew left upon coleworts or cabbages: all which kinds of dews being thickened and condensed, are by the sun’s generative heat, most of them, hatched, and in three days made living creatures. and these of several shapes and colours; some being hard and tough, some smooth and soft; some are horned in their head, some in their tail, some have none; some have hair, some none: some have sixteen feet, some less, and some have none: but, as our Topsel hath with great diligence observed, those which have none, move upon the earth, or upon broad leaves, their motion being not unlike to the waves of the sea.

So of the fire, in burning furnace, springs
The fly Pyrausta with the flaming wings:
Without the fire, it dies: within it joys,
Living in that which each shine else destroys. [from Guillaume Du Bartes]

Piscator: Nay, the Trout is not lost; for pray take notice, no man can lose what he never had.

Piscator: But, I pray, forget not the catch which you promised to make against night; for our countryman, honest Coridon, will expect your catch, and my song, which I must be forced to patch up, for it is so long since I learnt it, that I have forgot a part of it. But, come, now it hath done raining, let’s stretch our legs a little in a gentle walk to the river, and try what interest our angles will pay us for lending them so long to be used by the Trouts; lent them indeed, like usurers, for our profit and their destruction.

You are to note, that there are twelve kinds of artificial made Flies, to angle with upon the top of the water. Note, by the way, that the fittest season of using these is in a blustering windy day, when the waters are so troubled that the natural fly cannot be seen, or rest upon them. […] The sixth is the black-fly, in May also: the body made of black wool, and lapt about with the herle of a peacock’s tail: the wings are made of the wings of a brown capon, with his blue feathers in his head. […] The tenth is the wasp-fly in July; the body made of black wool, lapt about with yellow silk; the wings made of the feathers of the drake, or of the buzzard.

Chapter VII
Next, I shall tell you, that though they make very hard shift to get out of the fresh rivers into the sea, yet they will make harder shift to get out to the salt into the fresh rivers, to spawn, or possess the pleasures that they have formerly found in them […]. This Michael Drayton tells you, of this leap or summersault of the Salmon.

Chapter VIII
And doubtless a pike, in his height of hunger, will bite at and devour a dog that swims in a pond; and there have been examples of it, or the like; for as I told you, “The belly has no ears when hunger comes upon it.”

Chapter X
Your ground thus baited, and tackling fitted, leave your bag, with the rest of your tackling and ground-bait, near the sporting-place all night; and in the morning, about three or four of the clock, visit the water-side, but not too near, for they have a cunning watchman, and are watchful themselves too.

Take a small Bleak, or Roach, or Gudgeon, and bait it; and set it, alive, among your rods, two feet deep from the cork, with a little red worm on the point of the hook: then take a few crumbs of white bread, or some of the ground-bait, and sprinkle it gently amongst your rods.

Chapter XII
There will the river whisp’ring run,
Warm’d by thy eyes more than the sun
And there the enamel’d fish will stay
Begging themselves they may betray. [Dr. John Donne]

Chapter XIV
They [barbell] flock together like sheep, and are at the worst in April, about which time they spawn; but quickly grow to be in season. He is able to live in the strongest swifts of the water: and, in summer, they love the shallowest and sharpest streams: and love to lurk under weeds, and to feed on gravel, against a rising ground; and will root and dig in the sands with his nose like a hog, and there nests himself: yet sometimes he retires to deep and swift bridges, or flood-gates, or weir; where he will nest himself amongst piles, or in hollow places; and take such hold of moss or weeds, that be the water never so swift, it is not able to force him from the place that he contends for.

Chapter XVI
Peter. And Coridon and I have not had an unpleasant day: and yet I have caught but five bouts; for, indeed, we went to a good honest ale-house, and there we played at shovel-board half the day; all the time that it rained we were there, and as merry as they that fished. And I am glad we are now with a dry house over our heads; for, hark ! how it rains and blows.

Chapter XVII
Gather them [ant-fly] alive, with both their wings: and then put them into a glass that will hold a quart or a pottle; but first put into the glass a handful, or more, of the moist earth out of which you gather them, and as much of the roots of the grass of the said hillock; and then put in the flies gently, that they lose not their wings: lay a clod of earth over it; and then so many as are put into the glass, without bruising, will live there a month or more, and be always in readiness for you to fish with: but if you would have them keep longer, then get any great earthen pot, or barrel of three or four gallons. which is better.

About All-hallantide, and so till frost comes, when you see men ploughing up heath ground, or sandy ground, or greenswards, then follow the plough, and you shall find a white worm, as big as two maggots, and it hath a red head: you may observe in what ground most are, for there the crows will be very watchful and follow the plough very close: it is all soft, and full of whitish guts; a worm that is, in Norfolk and some other counties, called a grub; and is bred of the spawn or eggs of a beetle, which she leaves in holes that she digs in the ground under cow or horse dung, and there rests all winter, and in March or April comes to be first a red and then a black beetle.

But if you desire to keep gentles to fish with all the year, then get a dead cat, or a kite, and let it be flyblown; and when the gentles begin to be alive and to stir, then bury it and them in soft moist earth, but as free from frost as you can; and these you may dig up at any time when you intend to use them: these will last till March, and about that time turn to be flies.

There is also a lesser cadis-worm, called a Cockspur, being in fashion like the spur of a cock, sharp at one end: and the case, or house. In which this dwells, is made of small husks, and gravel, and slime, most curiously made of these, even so as to be wondered at, but not to be made by man, no more than a king-fisher’s nest can, which is made of little fishes’ bones, and have such a geometrical interweaving and connection as the like is not to be done by the art of man.

These, my honest scholar, are some observations, told to you as they now come suddenly into my memory, of which you may make some use: but for the practical part, it is that that makes an angler: it is diligence, and observation, and practice, and an ambition to be the best in the art, that must do it. I will tell you, scholar, I once heard one say, “ I envy not him that eats better meat than I do; nor him that is richer, or that wears better clothes than I do: I envy nobody but him, and him only, that catches more fish than I do “. And such a man is like to prove an angler; and this noble emulation I wish to you, and all young anglers.

Chapter XXI
Piscator: Well, Scholar, I have held you too long about these cadis, and smaller fish, and rivers, and fish-ponds; and my spirits are almost spent, and so I doubt is your patience; but being we are now almost at Tottenham where I first met you, and where we are to part, I will lose no time, but give you a little direction how to make and order your lines, and to colour the hair of which you make your lines, for that is very needful to be known of an angler; and also how to paint your rod, especially your top; for a right-grown top is a choice commodity, and should be preserved from the water soaking into it, which makes it in wet weather to be heavy and fish ill-favouredly, and not true; and also it rots quickly for want of painting: and I think a good top is worth preserving, or I had not taken care to keep a top above twenty years.

And for making your line, observe this rule: first, let your hair be clean washed ere you go about to twist it; and then choose not only the clearest hair for it, but hairs that be of an equal bigness, for such do usually stretch all together, and break all together, which hairs of an unequal bigness never do, but break singly, and so deceive the angler that trusts to them.

Well, Scholar, having now taught you to paint your rod, and we having still a mile to Tottenham High-Cross, I will, as we walk towards it in the cool shade of this sweet honeysuckle hedge, mention to you some of the thoughts and joys that have possessed my soul since we two met together. And these thoughts shall be told you, that you also may join with me in thankfulness to the Giver of every good and perfect gift, for our happiness. And that our present happiness may appear to be the greater, and we the more thankful for it, I will beg you to consider with me how many do, even at this very time, lie under the torment of the stone, the gout, and tooth-ache; and this we are free from. And every misery that I miss is a new mercy; and therefore let us be thankful.

Let me tell you, Scholar, that Diogenes walked on a day, with his friend, to see a country fair; where he saw ribbons, and looking-glasses, and nutcrackers, and fiddles, and hobby-horses, and many other gimcracks; and, having observed them, and all the other finnimbruns [trinkets] that make a complete country-fair, he said to his friend, “Lord, how many things are there in this world of which Diogenes hath no need!”