'The twelfth is the dark drake-fly, good in August: the body made with
black wool, lapt about with black silk, his wings are made with the
mail of the black drake, with a black head.'
This is word for word a transcript of the fifteenth century _Treatise_.
But Izaak cites, not the ancient _Treatise_, but Mr. Thomas Barker. {6}
Barker, in fact, gives many more, and more variegated flies than Izaak
offers in the jury of twelve which he rendered, from the old _Treatise_,
into modern English. Sir Harris Nicolas says that the jury is from
Leonard Mascall's _Booke of Fishing with Hooke and Line_ (London, 1609),
but Mascall merely stole from the fifteenth-century book. In Cotton's
practice, and that of _The Angler's Vade Mecum_ (1681), flies were as
numerous as among ourselves, and had, in many cases, the same names.
Walton absurdly bids us 'let no part of the line touch the water, but the
fly only.' Barker says, 'Let the fly light first into the water.' Both
men insist on fishing down stream, which is, of course, the opposite of
the true art, for fish lie with their heads up stream, and trout are best
approached from behind. Cotton admits of fishing both up and down, as
the wind and stream may serve: and, of course, in heavy water, in
Scotland, this is all very well. But none of the old anglers, to my
knowledge, was a dry-fly fisher, and Izaak was no fly-fisher at all. He
took what he said from Mascall, who took it from the old _Treatise_, in
which, it is probable, Walton read, and followed the pleasant and to him
congenial spirit of the mediaeval angler. All these writers tooled with
huge rods, fifteen or eighteen feet in length, and Izaak had apparently
never used a reel. For salmon, he says, 'some use a wheel about the
middle of their rods or near their hand, which is to be observed better
by seeing one of them, than by a large demonstration of words.'
Mr. Westwood has made a catalogue of books cited by Walton in his
_Compleat Angler_. There is AElian (who makes the first known reference
to fly-fishing); Aldrovandus, _De Piscibus_ (1638); Dubravius, _De
Piscibus_ (1559); and the English translation (1599) Gerard's _Herball_
(1633); Gesner, _De Piscibus_ (_s.a_.) and _Historia Naturalis_ (1558);
Phil. Holland's _Pliny_ (1601); Rondelet, _De Piscibus Marines_ (1554);
Silvianus _Aquatilium Historiae_ (1554): these nearly exhaust Walton's
supply of authorities in natural history. He was devoted, as we saw, to
authority, and had a childlike faith in the fantastic theories which date
from Pliny. 'Pliny hath an opinion that many flies have their birth, or
being, from a dew that in the spring falls upon the leaves of trees.' It
is a pious opinion! Izaak is hardly so superstitious as the author of
_The Angler's Vade Mecum_. I cannot imagine him taking 'Man's fat and
cat's fat, of each half an ounce, mummy finely powdered, three drains,'
and a number of other abominations, to 'make an Oyntment according to
Art, and when you Angle, anoint 8 inches of the line next the Hook
therewith.' Or, 'Take the Bones and Scull of a Dead-man, at the opening
of a Grave, and beat the same into Pouder, and put of this Pouder in the
Moss wherein you keep your Worms,--_but others like Grave Earth as
well_.' No doubt grave earth is quite as efficacious.
These remarks show how Izaak was equipped in books and in practical
information: it follows that his book is to be read, not for instruction,
but for human pleasure.
So much for what Walton owed to others. For all the rest, for what has
made him the favourite of schoolboys and sages, of poets and
philosophers, he is indebted to none but his Maker and his genius. That
he was a lover of Montaigne we know; and, had Montaigne been a fisher, he
might have written somewhat like Izaak, but without the piety, the
perfume, and the charm. There are authors whose living voices, if we
know them in the flesh, we seem to hear in our ears as we peruse their
works. Of such was Mr. Jowett, sometime Master of Balliol College, a
good man, now with God. It has ever seemed to me that friends of Walton
must thus have heard his voice as they read him, and that it reaches us
too, though faintly. Indeed, we have here 'a kind of picture of his own
disposition,' as he tells us Piscator is the Walton whom honest Nat. and
R. Roe and Sir Henry Wotton knew on fishing-days. The book is a set of
confessions, without their commonly morbid turn. 'I write not for money,
but for pleasure,' he says; methinks he drove no hard bargain with good
Richard Marriott, nor was careful and troubled about royalties on his
eighteenpenny book. He regards scoffers as 'an abomination to mankind,'
for indeed even Dr. Johnson, who, a century later, set Moses Browne on
reprinting _The Compleat Angler_, broke his jest on our suffering tribe.
'Many grave, serious men pity anglers,' says Auceps, and Venator styles
them 'patient men,' as surely they have great need to be. For our toil,
like that of the husbandman, hangs on the weather that Heaven sends, and
on the flies that have their birth or being from a kind of dew, and on
the inscrutable caprice of fish; also, in England, on the miller, who
giveth or withholdeth at his pleasure the very water that is our element.
The inquiring rustic who shambles up erect when we are lying low among
the reeds, even he disposes of our fortunes, with whom, as with all men,
we must be patient, dwelling ever--
'With close-lipped Patience for our only friend,
Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair.'
O the tangles, more than Gordian, of gut on a windy day! O bitter east
wind that bloweth down stream! O the young ducks that, swimming between
us and the trout, contend with him for the blue duns in their season! O
the hay grass behind us that entangles the hook! O the rocky wall that
breaks it, the boughs that catch it; the drought that leaves the salmon-
stream dry, the floods that fill it with turbid, impossible waters! Alas
for the knot that breaks, and for the iron that bends; for the lost
landing-net, and the gillie with the gaff that scrapes the fish! Izaak
believed that fish could hear; if they can, their vocabulary must be full
of strange oaths, for all anglers are not patient men. A malison on the
trout that 'bulge' and 'tail,' on the salmon that 'jiggers,' or sulks, or
lightly gambols over and under the line. These things, and many more, we
anglers endure meekly, being patient men, and a light world fleers at us
for our very virtue.
Izaak, of course, justifies us by the example of the primitive
Christians, and, in the manner of the age, drowns opposition in a flood
of erudition, out of place, but never pedantic; futile, yet diverting;
erroneous, but not dull.
'God is said to have spoken to a fish, but never to a beast.' There is a
modern Greek phrase, 'By the first word of God, and the second of the
fish.' As for angling, 'it is somewhat like poetry: men are to be born
so'; and many are born to be both rhymers and anglers. But, unlike many
poets, the angler resembles 'the Adonis, or Darling of the Sea, so called
because it is a loving and innocent fish,' and a peaceful; 'and truly, I
think most anglers are so disposed to most of mankind.'
Our Saviour's peculiar affection for fishermen is, of course, a powerful
argument. And it is certain that Peter, James, and John made converts
among the twelve, for 'the greater number of them were found together,
fishing, by Jesus after His Resurrection.' That Amos was 'a
good-natured, plain fisherman,' only Walton had faith enough to believe.
He fixes gladly on mentions of hooks in the Bible, omitting Homer, and
that excellent Theocritean dialogue of the two old anglers and the fish
of gold, which would have delighted Izaak, had he known it; but he was no
great scholar. 'And let me tell you that in the Scripture, angling is
always taken in the best sense,' though Izaak does not dwell on Tobias's
enormous capture. So he ends with commendations of angling by Wotton,
and Davors (Dennys, more probably) author of _The Secrets of Angling_
(1613). To these we may add Wordsworth, Thomson, Scott, Hogg, Stoddart,
and many minor poets who loved the music of the reel.
Izaak next illustrates his idea of becoming mirth, which excludes
'Scripture jests and lascivious jests,' both of them highly distasteful
to anglers. Then he comes to practice, beginning with chub, for which I
have never angled, but have taken them by misadventure, with a salmon
fly. Thence we proceed to trout, and to the charming scene of the
milkmaid and her songs by Raleigh and Marlowe, 'I think much better than
the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age,' for
Walton, we have said, was the last of the Elizabethans and the new times
were all for Waller and Dryden. 'Chevy Chace' and 'Johnny Armstrong'
were dear to Walton as to Scott, but through a century these old
favourites were to be neglected, save by Mr. Pepys and Addison. Indeed,
there is no more curious proof of the great unhappy change then coming to
make poetry a mechanic art, than the circumstance that Walton is much
nearer to us, in his likings, than to the men between 1670 and 1770. Gay
was to sing of angling, but in 'the strong lines that are now in
fashion.' All this while Piscator has been angling with worm and minnow
to no purpose, though he picks up 'a trout will fill six reasonable
bellies' in the evening. So we leave them, after their ale, in fresh
sheets that smell of lavender.' Izaak's practical advice is not of much
worth; we read him rather for sentences like this: '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 upon, but only on
holy-days."' He did not say, like Fox, when Burke spoke of 'a seat under
a tree, with a friend, a bottle, and a book,' 'Why a book?' Izaak took
his book with him--a practice in which, at least, I am fain to imitate
this excellent old man.
As to salmon, Walton scarcely speaks a true word about their habits,
except by accident. Concerning pike, he quotes the theory that they are
bred by pickerel weed, only as what 'some think.' In describing the use
of frogs as bait, he makes the famous, or infamous, remark, 'Use him as
though you loved him . . . that he may live the longer.' A bait-fisher
_may_ be a good man, as Izaak was, but it is easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of a needle. As coarse fish are usually caught only with
bait, I shall not follow Izaak on to this unholy and unfamiliar ground,
wherein, none the less, grow flowers of Walton's fancy, and the songs of
the old poets are heard. _The Practical Angler_, indeed, is a book to be
marked with flowers, marsh marigolds and fritillaries, and petals of the
yellow iris, for the whole provokes us to content, and whispers that word
of the apostle, 'Study to be quiet.'