Let us now leave this frigid subject! Iced fishing is but a
chilling and unsatisfactory imitation of real sport. The angler
will soon turn from it with satiety, and seek a better consolation
for the winter of his discontent in the entertainment of fishing in
books.
Angling is the only sport that boasts the honour of having given a
classic to literature.
Izaak Walton's success with THE COMPLEAT ANGLER was a fine
illustration of fisherman's luck. He set out, with some aid from an
adept in fly-fishing and cookery, named Thomas Barker, to produce a
little "discourse of fish and fishing" which should serve as a
useful manual for quiet persons inclined to follow the contemplative
man's recreation. He came home with a book which has made his name
beloved by ten generations of gentle readers, and given him a secure
place in the Pantheon of letters,--not a haughty eminence, but a
modest niche, all his own, and ever adorned with grateful offerings
of fresh flowers.
This was great luck. But it was well-deserved, and therefore it has
not been grudged or envied.
Walton was a man so peaceful and contented, so friendly in his
disposition, and so innocent in all his goings, that only three
other writers, so far as I know, have ever spoken ill of him.
One was that sour-complexioned Cromwellian trooper, Richard Franck,
who wrote in 1658 an envious book entitled NORTHERN MEMOIRS,
CALCULATED FOR THE MERIDIAN OF SCOTLAND, ETC., TO WHICH IS ADDED THE
CONTEMPLATIVE AND PRACTICAL ANGLER. In this book the furious Franck
first pays Walton the flattery of imitation, and then further adorns
him with abuse, calling THE COMPLEAT ANGLER "an indigested octavo,
stuffed with morals from Dubravius and others," and more than
hinting that the father of anglers knew little or nothing of "his
uncultivated art." Walton was a Churchman and a Loyalist, you see,
while Franck was a Commonwealth man and an Independent.
The second detractor of Walton was Lord Byron, who wrote
"The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb in his gullet
Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it."
But Byron is certainly a poor authority on the quality of mercy.
His contempt need not cause an honest man overwhelming distress. I
should call it a complimentary dislike.
The third author who expressed unpleasant sentiments in regard to
Walton was Leigh Hunt. Here, again, I fancy that partizan prejudice
had something to do with the dislike. Hunt was a radical in
politics and religion. Moreover there was a feline strain in his
character, which made it necessary for him to scratch somebody now
and then, as a relief to his feelings.
Walton was a great quoter. His book is not "stuffed," as Franck
jealously alleged, but it is certainly well sauced with piquant
references to other writers, as early as the author of the Book of
Job, and as late as John Dennys, who betrayed to the world THE
SECRETS OF ANGLING in 1613. Walton further seasoned his book with
fragments of information about fish and fishing, more or less
apocryphal, gathered from Aelian, Pliny, Plutarch, Sir Francis
Bacon, Dubravius, Gesner, Rondeletius, the learned Aldrovandus, the
venerable Bede, the divine Du Bartas, and many others. He borrowed
freely for the adornment of his discourse, and did not scorn to make
use of what may he called LIVE QUOTATIONS,--that is to say, the
unpublished remarks of his near contemporaries, caught in friendly
conversation, or handed down by oral tradition.
But these various seasonings did not disguise, they only enhanced,
the delicate flavour of the dish which he served up to his readers.
This was all of his own taking, and of a sweetness quite
incomparable.
I like a writer who is original enough to water his garden with
quotations, without fear of being drowned out. Such men are Charles
Lamb and James Russell Lowell and John Burroughs.
Walton's book is as fresh as a handful of wild violets and sweet
lavender. It breathes the odours of the green fields and the woods.
It tastes of simple, homely, appetizing things like the "syllabub of
new verjuice in a new-made haycock" which the milkwoman promised to
give Piscator the next time he came that way. Its music plays the
tune of A CONTENTED HEART over and over again without dulness, and
charms us into harmony with
"A noise like the sound of a hidden brook
In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune."
Walton has been quoted even more than any of the writers whom he
quotes. It would be difficult, even if it were not ungrateful, to
write about angling without referring to him. Some pretty saying,
some wise reflection from his pages, suggests itself at almost every
turn of the subject.
And yet his book, though it be the best, is not the only readable
one that his favourite recreation has begotten. The literature of
angling is extensive, as any one may see who will look at the list
of the collection presented by Mr. John Bartlett to Harvard
University, or study the catalogue of the piscatorial library of Mr.
Dean Sage, of Albany, who himself has contributed an admirable book
on THE RISTIGOUCHE.
Nor is this literature altogether composed of dry and technical
treatises, interesting only to the confirmed anglimaniac, or to the
young novice ardent in pursuit of practical information. There is a
good deal of juicy reading in it.
Books about angling should be divided (according to De Quincey's
method) into two classes,--the literature of knowledge, and the
literature of power.
The first class contains the handbooks on rods and tackle, the
directions how to angle for different kinds of fish, and the guides
to various fishing-resorts. The weakness of these books is that
they soon fall out of date, as the manufacture of tackle is
improved, the art of angling refined, and the fish in once-famous
waters are educated or exterminated.
Alas, how transient is the fashion of this world, even in angling!
The old manuals with their precise instruction for trimming and
painting trout-rods eighteen feet long, and their painful
description of "oyntments" made of nettle-juice, fish-hawk oil,
camphor, cat's fat, or assafoedita, (supposed to allure the fish,)
are altogether behind the age. Many of the flies described by
Charles Cotton and Thomas Barker seem to have gone out of style
among the trout. Perhaps familiarity has bred contempt. Generation
after generation of fish have seen these same old feathered
confections floating on the water, and learned by sharp experience
that they do not taste good. The blase trout demand something new,
something modern. It is for this reason, I suppose, that an
altogether original fly, unheard of, startling, will often do great
execution in an over-fished pool.
Certain it is that the art of angling, in settled regions, is
growing more dainty and difficult. You must cast a longer, lighter
line; you must use finer leaders; you must have your flies dressed
on smaller hooks.
And another thing is certain: in many places (described in the
ancient volumes) where fish were once abundant, they are now like
the shipwrecked sailors in Vergil his Aeneid,--
"rari nantes in gurgite vasto."
The floods themselves are also disappearing. Mr. Edmund Clarence
Stedman was telling me, the other day, of the trout-brook that used
to run through the Connecticut village when he nourished a poet's
youth. He went back to visit the stream a few years since, and it
was gone, literally vanished from the face of earth, stolen to make
a watersupply for the town, and used for such base purposes as the
washing of clothes and the sprinkling of streets.
I remember an expedition with my father, some twenty years ago, to
Nova Scotia, whither we set out to realize the hopes kindled by an
ANGLER'S GUIDE written in the early sixties. It was like looking
for tall clocks in the farmhouses around Boston. The harvest had
been well gleaned before our arrival, and in the very place where
our visionary author located his most famous catch we found a summer
hotel and a sawmill.
'T is strange and sad, how many regions there are where "the fishing
was wonderful forty years ago"!
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