I should like to have met Izaak Walton. He is one of the few authors
whom I know I should like to have met. For he was a wise man, and he
had understanding. I should like to have gone angling with him, for I
doubt not that like myself he was more of an angler theoretically than
practically. My bookseller is a famous fisherman, as, indeed,
booksellers generally are, since the methods employed by fishermen to
deceive and to catch their finny prey are very similar to those
employed by booksellers to attract and to entrap buyers.
As for myself, I regard angling as one of the best of avocations, and
although I have pursued it but little, I concede that doubtless had I
practised it oftener I should have been a better man. How truly has
Dame Juliana Berners said that "at the least the angler hath his
wholesome walk and merry at his ease, and a sweet air of the sweet
savour of the mead flowers that maketh him hungry; he heareth the
melodious harmony of fowls; he seeth the young swans, herons, ducks,
cotes, and many other fowls with their broods, which meseemeth better
than all the noise of hounds, the blasts of horns, and the cry of fowls
that hunters, falconers, and fowlers can make. And IF the angler take
fish--surely then is there no man merrier than he is in his spirit!"
My bookseller cannot understand how it is that, being so enthusiastic a
fisherman theoretically, I should at the same time indulge so seldom in
the practice of fishing, as if, forsooth, a man should be expected to
engage continually and actively in every art and practice of which he
may happen to approve. My young friend Edward Ayer has a noble
collection of books relating to the history of American aboriginals and
to the wars waged between those Indians and the settlers in this
country; my other young friend Luther Mills has gathered together a
multitude of books treating of the Napoleonic wars; yet neither Ayer
nor Mills hath ever slain a man or fought a battle, albeit both find
delectation in recitals of warlike prowess and personal valor. I love
the night and all the poetic influences of that quiet time, but I do
not sit up all night in order to hear the nightingale or to contemplate
the astounding glories of the heavens.
For similar reasons, much as I appreciate and marvel at the beauties of
early morning, I do not make a practice of early rising, and sensible
as I am to the charms of the babbling brook and of the crystal lake, I
am not addicted to the practice of wading about in either to the danger
either to my own health or to the health of the finny denizens in those
places.
The best anglers in the world are those who do not catch fish; the mere
slaughter of fish is simply brutal, and it was with a view to keeping
her excellent treatise out of the hands of the idle and the
inappreciative that Dame Berners incorporated that treatise in a
compendious book whose cost was so large that only "gentyll and noble
men" could possess it. What mind has he who loveth fishing merely for
the killing it involves--what mind has such a one to the beauty of the
ever-changing panorama which nature unfolds to the appreciative eye, or
what communion has he with those sweet and uplifting influences in
which the meadows, the hillsides, the glades, the dells, the forests,
and the marshes abound?
Out upon these vandals, I say--out upon the barbarians who would rob
angling of its poesy, and reduce it to the level of the butcher's
trade! It becomes a base and vicious avocation, does angling, when it
ceases to be what Sir Henry Wotton loved to call it--"an employment for
his idle time, which was then not idly spent; a rest to his mind, a
cheerer of his spirits, a diverter of sadness, a calmer of unquiet
thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness, and a
begetter of habits of peace and patience in those that professed and
practised it!"
There was another man I should like to have met--Sir Henry Wotton; for
he was an ideal angler. Christopher North, too ("an excellent angler
and now with God"!)--how I should love to have explored the Yarrow with
him, for he was a man of vast soul, vast learning, and vast wit.
"Would you believe it, my dear Shepherd," said he, "that my piscatory
passions are almost dead within me, and I like now to saunter along the
banks and braes, eying the younkers angling, or to lay me down on some
sunny spot, and with my face up to heaven, watch the slow-changing
clouds!"
THERE was the angling genius with whom I would fain go angling!
"Angling," says our revered St. Izaak, "angling is somewhat like
poetry--men are to be born so."
Doubtless there are poets who are not anglers, but doubtless there
never was an angler who was not also a poet. Christopher North was a
famous fisherman; he began his career as such when he was a child of
three years. With his thread line and bent-pin hook the wee tot set
out to make his first cast in "a wee burnie" he had discovered near his
home. He caught his fish, too, and for the rest of the day he carried
the miserable little specimen about on a plate, exhibiting it
triumphantly. With that first experience began a life which I am fain
to regard as one glorious song in praise of the beauty and the
beneficence of nature.
My bookseller once took me angling with him in a Wisconsin lake which
was the property of a club of anglers to which my friend belonged. As
we were to be absent several days I carried along a box of books, for I
esteem appropriate reading to be a most important adjunct to an angling
expedition. My bookseller had with him enough machinery to stock a
whaling expedition, and I could not help wondering what my old Walton
would think, could he drop down into our company with his modest
equipment of hooks, flies, and gentles.
The lake whither we went was a large and beautiful expanse, girt by a
landscape which to my fancy was the embodiment of poetic delicacy and
suggestion. I began to inquire about the chub, dace, and trouts, but
my bookseller lost no time in telling me that the lake had been rid of
all cheap fry, and had been stocked with game fish, such as bass and
pike.
I did not at all relish this covert sneer at traditions which I have
always reverenced, and the better acquainted I became with my
bookseller's modern art of angling the less I liked it. I have little
love for that kind of angling which does not admit of a simultaneous
enjoyment of the surrounding beauties of nature. My bookseller enjoined
silence upon me, but I did not heed the injunction, for I must, indeed,
have been a mere wooden effigy to hold my peace amid that picturesque
environment of hill, valley, wood, meadow, and arching sky of clear
blue.
It was fortunate for me that I had my "Noctes Ambrosianae" along, for
when I had exhausted my praise of the surrounding glories of nature, my
bookseller would not converse with me; so I opened my book and read to
him that famous passage between Kit North and the Ettrick Shepherd,
wherein the shepherd discourses boastfully of his prowess as a piscator
of sawmon.
As the sun approached midheaven and its heat became insupportable, I
raised my umbrella; to this sensible proceeding my bookseller
objected--in fact, there was hardly any reasonable suggestion I had to
make for beguiling the time that my bookseller did not protest against
it, and when finally I produced my "Newcastle Fisher's Garlands" from
my basket, and began to troll those spirited lines beginning
Away wi' carking care and gloom
That make life's pathway weedy O!
A cheerful glass makes flowers to bloom
And lightsome hours fly speedy O!
he gathered in his rod and tackle, and declared that it was no use
trying to catch fish while Bedlam ran riot.
As for me, I had a delightful time of it; I caught no fish, to be sure:
but what of that? I COULD have caught fish had I so desired, but, as I
have already intimated to you and as I have always maintained and
always shall, the mere catching of fish is the least of the many
enjoyments comprehended in the broad, gracious art of angling.
Even my bookseller was compelled to admit ultimately that I was a
worthy disciple of Walton, for when we had returned to the club house
and had partaken of our supper I regaled the company with many a
cheery tale and merry song which I had gathered from my books. Indeed,
before I returned to the city I was elected an honorary member of the
club by acclamation--not for the number of fish I had expiscated (for I
did not catch one), but for that mastery of the science of angling and
the literature and the traditions and the religion and the philosophy
thereof which, by the grace of the companionship of books, I had
achieved.
It is said that, with his feet over the fender, Macaulay could
discourse learnedly of French poetry, art, and philosophy. Yet he
never visited Paris that he did not experience the most exasperating
difficulties in making himself understood by the French customs
officers.
In like manner I am a fender-fisherman. With my shins toasting before
a roaring fire, and with Judge Methuen at my side, I love to exploit
the joys and the glories of angling. The Judge is "a brother of the
angle," as all will allow who have heard him tell Father Prout's story
of the bishop and the turbots or heard him sing--
With angle rod and lightsome heart,
Our conscience clear, we gay depart
To pebbly brooks and purling streams,
And ne'er a care to vex our dreams.
And how could the lot of the fender-fisherman be happier? No colds,
quinsies or asthmas follow his incursions into the realms of fancy
where in cool streams and peaceful lakes a legion of chubs and trouts
and sawmon await him; in fancy he can hie away to the far-off Yalrow
and once more share the benefits of the companionship of Kit North, the
Shepherd, and that noble Edinburgh band; in fancy he can trudge the
banks of the Blackwater with the sage of Watergrasshill; in fancy he
can hear the music of the Tyne and feel the wind sweep cool and fresh
o'er Coquetdale; in fancy, too, he knows the friendships which only he
can know--the friendships of the immortals whose spirits hover where
human love and sympathy attract them.
How well I love ye, O my precious books--my Prout, my Wilson, my
Phillips, my Berners, my Doubleday, my Roxby, my Chatto, my Thompson,
my Crawhall! For ye are full of joyousness and cheer, and your songs
uplift me and make me young and strong again.
And thou, homely little brown thing with worn leaves, yet more precious
to me than all jewels of the earth--come, let me take thee from thy
shelf and hold thee lovingly in my hands and press thee tenderly to
this aged and slow-pulsing heart of mine! Dost thou remember how I
found thee half a century ago all tumbled in a lot of paltry trash?
Did I not joyously possess thee for a sixpence, and have I not
cherished thee full sweetly all these years? My Walton, soon must we
part forever; when I am gone say unto him who next shall have thee to
his own that with his latest breath an old man blessed thee!