Part 7

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 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 Lake Leman, the lake of Geneva, there are trouts taken of three cubits long, as is 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 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 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 salmon; 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 a salmon, but known by their different color; and in 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 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 was by which they lived, and have found out nothing by which they might satisfy their curiosity.

Concerning which you are to take notice, that it is reported by good authors, that grasshoppers, and some fish, have no mouths, but are nourished and take breath by the porousness of their gills, man knows not how: and this may be believed, if we consider that when the raven hath hatched her eggs, she takes no further care, but leaves her young ones to the care of the God of nature, who is said, in the Psalms, "to feed the young ravens that call upon Him." And they be kept alive and fed by dew, or worms that breed in their nests, or some other ways that we mortals know not; and this may be believed of the Fordidge trout, which, as it is said of the stork (Jerem. viii: 7), that "he knows his season," so he knows his times, I think almost his day of coming into the river out of the sea, where he lives, and, it is like, feeds nine months of the year, and fasts three in the river of Fordidge. And you are to note that those townsmen are very punctual in observing the time of beginning to fish for them, and boast much that their river affords a trout that exceeds all others. And just so does Sussex boast of several fish; as namely, a Shelsey cockle, a Chichester lobster, an Arundel mullet, and an Amerly trout.

And now for some confirmation of the Fordidge trout: you are to know that this trout is thought to eat nothing in the fresh water; and it may be better believed, because it is well known, that swallows and bats and wagtails, which are called half-year birds, and not seen to fly in England for six months in the year, but about Michaelmas leave us for a better climate than this; yet some of them that have been left behind their fellows, have been found many thousands at a time, in hollow trees, or clay caves; where they have been observed to live and sleep out the whole winter without meat; 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 tho it be strange to some, yet it is known to too many among us to be doubted.

And so much for these Fordidge trouts, which never afford an angler sport, but either live their time of being in the fresh water by their meat formerly got in the sea (not unlike the swallow or frog), or by the virtue of the fresh water only; or, as the birds of Paradise and the chameleon are said to live, by the sun and the air.

There is also in Northumberland a trout called a bull trout, of a much greater length and bigness than any in the southern parts. And there are, in many rivers that relate to the sea, salmon trouts, as much different from others, both in shape and in their spots, as we see sheep in some countries differ one from another in their shape and bigness, and in the fineness of their wool. And certainly, as some pastures breed larger sheep, so do some rivers, by reason of the ground over which they run, breed larger trouts.

Now the next thing that I will commend to your consideration is, that the trout is of a more sudden growth than other fish. Concerning which, you are also to take notice, that he lives not so long as the perch and divers other fishes do, as Sir Francis Bacon hath observed in his "History of Life and Death."[62]

And now you are to take notice, that he is not like the crocodile, which if he lives never so long, yet always thrives till his death. And you are to know, that he will about, especially before, the time of his spawning, get almost miraculously through weirs and flood-gates against the streams; even through such high and swift places as is almost incredible. Next, that the trout usually spawns about October or November, but in some rivers a little sooner or later; which is the more observable, because most other fish spawn in the spring or summer, when the sun hath warmed both the earth and the water, and made it fit for generation. And you are to note, that he continues many months out of season; for it may be observed of the trout, that he is like the buck or the ox, that he will not be fat in many months, tho he go in the very same pasture that horses do, which will be fat in one month; and so you may observe, that most other fishes recover strength, and grow sooner far and in season, than the trout doth.

And next you are to note, that till the sun gets to such a height as to warm the earth and the water, the trout is sick and lean, and lousy, and unwholesome; for you shall in winter find him to have a big head, and then to be lank, and thin, and lean; at which time many of them have sticking on them sugs, or trout-lice, which is a kind of worm, in shape like a clove or pin, with a big head, and sticks close to him and sucks his moisture; those I think the trout breeds himself, and never thrives till he frees himself from them, which is when warm weather comes; and then, as he grows stronger, he gets from the dead, still water, into the sharp streams, and the gravel, and there tubs off these worms or lice; and then as he grows stronger, so he gets him into swifter and swifter streams, and there lies at the watch for any fly or minnow that comes near to him; and he especially loves the May-fly, which is bred of the cod-worm or caddis; and these make the trout bold and lusty, and he is usually fatter and better meat at the end of that month (May) than at any time of the year.

III

THE DEATH OF GEORGE HERBERT[63]

At the time of Mr. Duncon's leaving Mr. Herbert--which was about three weeks before his death--his old and dear friend Mr. Woodnot came from London to Bemerton, and never left him till he had seen him draw his last breath, and closed his eyes on his death-bed. In this time of his decay, he was often visited and prayed for by all the clergy that lived near to him, especially by his friends the Bishop and Prebends of the Cathedral Church in Salisbury; but by none more devoutly than his wife, his three nieces--then a part of his family--and Mr. Woodnot, who were the sad witnesses of his daily decay; to whom he would often speak to this purpose:

"I now look back upon the pleasures of my life past, and see the content I have taken in beauty, in wit, in music, and pleasant conversation, are now all past by me like a dream, or as a shadow that returns not, and are now all become dead to me, or I to them; and I see, that as my father and generation hath done before me, so I also shall now suddenly (with Job) make my bed also in the dark; and I praise God I am prepared for it; and I praise Him that I am not to learn patience now I stand in such need of it; and that I have practised mortification, and endeavored to die daily, that I might not die eternally; and my hope is, that I shall shortly leave this valley of tears, and be free from all fevers and pain; and, which will be a more happy condition, I shall be free from sin, and all the temptations and anxieties that attend it: and this being past, I shall dwell in the New Jerusalem; dwell there with men made perfect; dwell where these eyes shall see my Master and Savior Jesus; and with Him see my dear mother, and all my relations and friends. But I must die, or not come to that happy place. And this is my content, that I am going daily towards it: and that every day which I have lived, hath taken a part of my appointed time from me; and that I shall live the less time, for having lived this and the day past."

These, and the like expressions, which he uttered often, may be said to be his enjoyment of Heaven before he enjoyed it. The Sunday before his death, he rose suddenly from his bed or couch, called for one of his instruments, took it into his hand and said,

My God, my God, My music shall find Thee, And every string Shall have His attribute to sing.

and having tuned it, he played and sung:

The Sundays of man's life, Threaded together on time's string, Make bracelets to adorn the wife Of the eternal glorious King: On Sundays Heaven's door stands ope; Blessings are plentiful and rife, More plentiful than hope.

Thus he sung on earth such hymns and anthems, as the angels, and he, and Mr. Farrer, now sing in heaven. Thus he continued meditating, and praying, and rejoicing, till the day of his death; and on that day said to Mr. Woodnot, "My dear friend, I am sorry I have nothing to present to my merciful God but sin and misery; but the first is pardoned, and a few hours will now put a period to the latter; for I shall suddenly go hence, and be no more seen." Upon which expression Mr. Woodnot took occasion to remember him of the reedifying Layton Church, and his many acts of mercy. To which he made answer, saying, "They be good works, if they be sprinkled with the blood of Christ, and not otherwise."

After this discourse he became more restless, and his soul seemed to be weary of her earthly tabernacle; and this uneasiness became so visible, that his wife, his three nieces, and Mr. Woodnot, stood constantly about his bed, beholding him with sorrow, and an unwillingness to lose the sight of him, whom they could not hope to see much longer. As they stood thus beholding him, his wife observed him breathe faintly, and with much trouble, and observed him to fall into a sudden agony; which so surprized her, that she fell into a sudden passion, and required of him to know how he did. To which his answer was, "that he had passed a conflict with his last enemy, and had overcome him by the merits of his Master Jesus." After which answer, he looked up, and saw his wife and nieces weeping to an extremity, and charged them, if they loved him to withdraw into the next room, and there pray every one alone for him; for nothing but their lamentations could make his death uncomfortable. To which request their sighs and tears would not suffer them to make any reply; but they yielded him a sad obedience, leaving only with him Mr. Woodnot and Mr. Bostock.

Immediately after they had left him, he said to Mr. Bostock, "Pray, Sir, open that door, then look into that cabinet, in which you may easily find my last will, and give it into my hand"; which being done, Mr. Herbert delivered it into the hand of Mr. Woodnot, and said, "My old friend, I here deliver you my last will, in which you will find that I have made you my sole executor for the good of my wife and nieces; and I desire you to show kindness to them, as they shall need it; I do not desire you to be just; for I know you will be so for your own sake: but I charge you, by the religion of our friendship, to be careful of them." And having obtained Mr. Woodnot's promise to be so, he said, "I am now ready to die." After which words, he said, "Lord, forsake me not now my strength faileth me: but grant me mercy for the merits of my Jesus. And now, Lord--Lord, now receive my soul." And with those words he breathed forth his divine soul, without any apparent disturbance, Mr. Woodnot and Mr. Bostock attending his last breath, and closing his eyes.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 58: From Part I, Chap. I of "The Compleat Angler."]

[Footnote 59: Deucalion was a legendary king of Phythia in Thessaly. According to the legend, a deluge having been sent by Zeus, Deucalion, by advice of his father, built a wooden chest in which he and his wife were saved, landing after nine days on Mt. Parnassus. By them the human race, destroyed in the deluge, was renewed.]

[Footnote 60: A mythological person, son of Poseidon.]

[Footnote 61: From Chapter IV of "The Compleat Angler."]

[Footnote 62: The "Historia Vitæ et Mortis," published in 1623.]

[Footnote 63: Author of "The Temple; Sacred Poems and Private Ejaculations," published in 1633, the year of Herbert's death.]

JAMES HOWELL

Born in 1595, died in 1666; best known as author of the "Letters" (1645-1655); edited a French and English dictionary; and compiled a polyglot dictionary.

I

THE BUCENTAUR CEREMONY IN VENICE[64]

These wishes come to you from Venice, a place where there is nothing wanting that heart can wish; renowned Venice, the admired'st city in the world, a city that all Europe is bound unto, for she is her greatest rampart against that huge eastern tyrant, the Turk, by sea; else, I believe, he had overrun all Christendom by this time. Against him this city hath performed notable exploits, and not only against him, but divers others: she hath restored emperors to their thrones, and popes to their chairs, and with her galleys often preserved St. Peter's bark from sinking: for which, by way of reward, one of his successors espoused her to the sea, which marriage is solemnly renewed every year in solemn procession by the Doge and all the Clarissimos, and a gold ring cast into the sea out of the great galeasse, called the Bucentoro,[65] wherein the first ceremony was performed by the pope himself, above three hundred years since, and they say it is the self-same vessel still, tho often put upon the careen and trimmed. This made me think of that famous ship at Athens; nay, I fell upon an abstracted notion in philosophy, and a speculation touching the body of men, which being in perpetual flux, and a kind of succession of decays, and consequently requiring, ever and anon, a restoration of what it loseth of the virtue of the former aliment, and what was converted after the third concoction into a blood and fleshy substance, which, as in all other sublunary bodies that have internal principles of heat, useth to transpire, breathe out, and waste away through invisible pores, by exercise, motion, and sleep, to make room still for a supply of new nurriture: I fell, I say, to consider whether our bodies may be said to be of like condition with this Bucentoro, which, tho it be reputed still the same vessel, yet I believe there's not a foot of that timber remaining which it had upon the first dock, having been, as they tell me, so often planked and ribbed, caulked and pieced.

In like manner, our bodies may be said to be daily repaired by new sustenance, which begets new blood, and consequently new spirits, new humors, and, I may say, new flesh; the old, by continual deperdition and insensible perspirations, evaporating still out of us, and giving way to fresh; so that I make a question whether, by reason of these perpetual reparations and accretions, the body of man may be said to be the same numerical body in his old age that he had in his manhood, or the same in his manhood that he had in his youth, the same in his youth that he carried about with him in his childhood, or the same in his childhood which he wore first in the womb. I make a doubt whether I had the same identical, individually numerical body, when I carried a calf-leather satchel to school in Hereford, as when I wore a lambskin hood in Oxford; or whether I have the same mass of blood in my veins, and the same flesh, now in Venice, which I carried about me three years since, up and down London streets, having, in lieu of beer and ale, drunk wine all this while, and fed upon different viands. Now, the stomach is like a crucible, for it hath a chemical kind of virtue to transmute one body into another, to transsubstantiate fish and fruits into flesh within and about us; but tho it be questionable whether I wear the same flesh which is fluxible, I am sure my hair is not the same, for you may remember I went flaxen-haired out of England, but you shall find me returned with a very dark brown, which I impute not only to the heat and air of those hot countries I have eat my bread in, but to the quality and difference of food: you will say that hair is but an excrementitious thing, and makes not to this purpose; moreover, methinks I hear thee say that this may be true only in the blood and spirits, or such fluid parts, not in the solid and heterogeneal parts.

But I will press no further at this time this philosophical notion, which the sight of Bucentoro infused into me, for it hath already made me exceed the bounds of a letter, and, I fear me, to trespass too much upon your patience; I leave the further disquisition of this point to your own contemplations, who are a far riper philosopher than I, and have waded deeper into and drunk more of Aristotle's well. But to conclude, tho it be doubtful whether I carry about me the same body or no in all points that I had in England, I am well assured I bear still the same mind, and therein I verify the old verse:

"Coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt." "The air, but not the mind, they change, Who in outlandish countries range."

For, what alterations soever happen in this microcosm, in this little world, this small bulk and body of mine, you may be confident that nothing shall alter my affections, specially towards you, but that I will persevere still the same--the very same.

II

THE CITY OF ROME IN 1621[66]

I am now come to Rome, and Rome, they say, is every man's country; she is called _Communis Patria_, for every one that is within the compass of the Latin Church finds himself here, as it were, at home, and in his mother's house, in regard of interest in religion, which is the cause that for one native there be five strangers that sojourn in this city; and without any distinction or mark of strangeness, they come to preferments and offices, both in church and state, according to merit, which is more valued and sought after here than anywhere.

But whereas I expected to have found Rome elevated upon seven hills, I meet her rather spreading upon a flat, having humbled herself, since she was made a Christian, and descended from those hills to Campus Martius; with Trastevere and the suburbs of Saint Peter, she hath yet in compass about fourteen miles, which is far short of that vast circuit she had in Claudius his time; for Vopiscus[67] writes she was then of fifty miles' circumference, and she had five hundred thousand free citizens in a famous cense that was made, which, allowing but six to every family in women, children, and servants, came to three millions of souls; but she is now a wilderness in comparison of that number.

The pope is grown to be a great temporal prince of late years, for the state of the church extends above three hundred miles in length, and two hundred miles in breadth; it contains Ferrara, Bologna, Romagnia, the Marquisate of Ancona, Umbria, Sabina, Perugia, with a part of Tuscany, the patrimony, Rome herself, and Latium. In these there are above fifty bishoprics; the pope hath also the duchy of Spoleto, and the exarchate of Ravenna; he hath the town of Benevento in the kingdom of Naples, and the country of Venissa, called Avignon, in France. He hath title also good enough to Naples itself; but, rather than offend his champion, the king of Spain, he is contented with a white mule, and purse of pistoles about the neck, which he receives every year for a heriot or homage, or what you will call it; he pretends also to be Lord-paramount of Sicily, Urbia, Parma, and Masseran; of Norway, Ireland, and England, since King John did prostrate our crown at Pandulfo his legate's feet.[68]

The state of the apostolic see here in Italy lieth 'twixt two seas, the Adriatic and the Tyrrhene, and it runs through the midst of Italy, which makes the pope powerful to do good or harm, and more capable than any other to be an umpire or an enemy. His authority being mixed 'twixt temporal and spiritual, disperseth itself into so many members, that a young man may grow old here before he can well understand the form of government.

The consistory of cardinals meet but once a week, and once a week they solemnly wait all upon the pope. I am told there are now in Christendom but sixty-eight cardinals, whereof there are six cardinal bishops, fifty-one cardinal priests, and eleven cardinal deacons. The cardinal bishops attend and sit near the pope, when he celebrates any festival; the cardinal priests assist him at mass; and the cardinal deacons attire him. A cardinal is bade by a short breve or writ from the pope in these words: "_Creamus te socium regibus, superiorem ducibus, et fratrem nostrum._"[69] If a cardinal bishop should be questioned for any offense, there must be twenty-four witnesses produced against him. The Bishop of Ostia hath most privilege of any other, for he consecrates and installs the pope, and goes always next to him. All these cardinals have the repute of princes, and besides other incomes, they have the annats of benefices to support their greatness.

For point of power, the pope is able to put 50,000 men in the field, in case of necessity, besides his naval strength in galleys. We read how Paul III sent Charles III twelve thousand foot and five hundred horse. Pius V sent a greater aid to Charles IX; and for riches, besides the temporal dominions he hath in all the countries before named, the datany or dispatching of bulls, the triennial subsidies, annats, and other ecclesiastical rights, mount to an unknown sum; and it is a common saying here, that as long as the pope can finger a pen, he can want no pence. Pius V, notwithstanding his expenses in buildings, left four millions in the Castle of Saint Angelo in less than five years; more, I believe, than this Gregory XV will, for he hath many nephews; and better is it to be the pope's nephew, than to be a favorite to any prince in Christendom.