OCR Text |
Show FISHERMAN'S LUCK it with the proper page of Langhorne's translation ; I think it is in the second volume, near the end. Sir Walter Scott, who once described himself as "No fisher, B•d a well-wisher To the game," has an amusing passage of angling in the third chapter of Redgauntlet. Darsie Latimer is relating his adventures in Dumfriesshire. "By the way," says he, "old Cotton's instructions, by which I hoped to qualify myself for the gentle society of anglers, are not worth a farthing for this meridian. I learned this by mere accident, after I had waited four mortal hours. I shall never forget an impudent urchin, a cowherd, about twelve years old, without either brogue or bonnet, barelegged, with a very indifferent pair of breeches,-how the villain grinned in scorn at my landing-net, my plummet, and the gorgeous jury of flies which I had assembled to destroy all the fish in the river. I was induced at last to lend the rod to the sneering scoundrel, to see what he would make of it; 166 FISHING IN BOOKS and he not only half-filled my basket in an hour, but literally taught me to kill two trouts with my own hand." Thus ancient and well-authenticated is the superstition of the angling powers of the barefooted country-boy,-in fiction. Sir Edward Bu!wer Lytton, in that valuable but over-capitalized book, My Novel, makes use of Fishing for Allegorical Purposes. The episode of John Burley and the One-eyed Perch not only points a Moral but adorns the Tale. In the works of R. D. Blackmore, angling plays a less instructive but a pleasanter part. It is closely interwoven with love. There is a magical description of trout-fishing on a meadow-brook in Alice Lorraine. And who that has read Lorna Doone, (pity for the man or woman that knows not the delight of that book!) can ever for get how young John Ridd dared his way up the gliddery water-slide, after loaches, and found Lorna in a fair green meadow adorned with flowers, at the top of the brook? I made a little journey into the Doone Country 167 |