SWIMMING AND FISHING.
The spirited description of Ferdinand swimming (The Tempest, ii. 1. 113–121) could have been written only by one well skilled in the art:—
"I saw him beat the surges under him,
And ride upon their backs; he trod the water,
Whose enmity he flung aside, and breasted
The surge most swoln that met him; his bold head
'Bove the contentious waves he kept, and oar'd
Himself with his good arms in lusty stroke
To the shore, that o'er his wave-worn basis bow'd,
As stooping to relieve him. I not doubt
He came alive to land."
There are many other allusions to swimming in the plays which indicate the writer's personal acquaintance with the exercise; as in Macbeth, i. 2. 8:—
"As two spent swimmers that do cling together
And choke their art."
The swimming match between Cæsar and Cassius (Julius Cæsar, i. 2. 100) is described with sympathetic vigor. Cassius says to Brutus:—
"We can both
Endure the winter's cold as well as he.
For once, upon a raw and gusty day,
The troubled Tiber chafing with her shores,
Cæsar said to me, 'Dar'st thou, Cassius, now
Leap in with me into this angry flood,
And swim to yonder point?' Upon the word,
Accoutred as I was, I plunged in,
And bade him follow; so, indeed, he did.
The torrent roar'd, and we did buffet it
With lusty sinews, throwing it aside
And stemming it with hearts of controversy.
But ere we could arrive the point propos'd,
Cæsar cried, 'Help me, Cassius, or I sink!'
I, as Æneas, our great ancestor,
Did from the flames of Troy upon his shoulder
The old Anchises bear, so from the waves of Tiber
Did I the tired Cæsar."
Of course William often went a-fishing in the Avon, and understood, as Ursula says in Much Ado About Nothing (iii. 1. 26), that
"The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish
Cut with her golden oars the silver stream,
And greedily devour the treacherous bait."