Part 26

Although the art of fly-fishing was not known to the ancients, the poetry of angling has been enriched by the bards of ye-olden-time to a remarkable degree. In Pope’s translation of the Iliad, the following passage occurs:

“As from some rock that overhangs the flood,

The silent fisher casts the insidious food;

With fraudful care he waits the finny prize,

Then sudden lifts it quivering to the skies.”

One of the most familiar of Æsop’s fables, in rhyme, is that of the Fisherman and the Little Fish, while Theocritus, who flourished about the year 270 B. c., gives us a spirited idyl representing the life of a Greek fisherman. Oppian and Aristotle each prepared a classical volume on fish and fishing. Pliny in his “Historia Naturalis” treats at length of the finny tribes, and Ansonius in his poem, “Mostella,” describes the tench, salmon and other varieties of fish.

Among the early contributions to English literature on angling, the “Poeticæ,” generally attributed to a Scottish balladist known as Blind Harry, is conspicuous. Then the “Boke of St. Albans,” by Dame Juliana Berners, and quaint old Izaak Walton’s “Compleat Angler”—a brace of classic volumes dear to the heart of all who love the rod and reel.

In modern times the literature of angling has had scores of staunch and able supporters among the writers of Britain and our own land. Sir Humphry Davy’s “Salmonia”; Christopher North’s essays on angling, in “Noctes Ambrosianæ”; Stoddart’s Angling Songs; all these and a score of others are familiar to rodsters on both sides of the Atlantic. The clever poet and satirist, Tom Hood, discourses thus in praise of the gentle art:

“Of all sports ever sported, commend me to angling. It is the wisest, virtuousest, discreetest, best; the safest, cheapest, and in all likelihood the oldest of pastimes. It is a one-handed game that would have suited Adam himself; and it was the only one by which Noah could have amused himself in the ark. Hunting and shooting come in second and third. The common phrase, ‘fish, flesh and fowl,’ clearly hints at this order of precedence. * * * To refer to my own experience, I certainly became acquainted with the angling rod soon after the birchen one, and long before I had any practical knowledge of ‘Nimrod’ or ‘Ramroch’ The truth is, angling comes by nature. It is in the system, as the doctors say.”

It is no exaggeration to state that the real poetry of fly-fishing, as given in the grand old book of Nature, is appreciated to the fullest by American anglers. The breezy air of the forest leaves is found in the charming works of Bethune, of Herbert, Hawes, Norris, Dawson, Hallock and many other worthies, past and present. The modern Horace—he of the traditional white hat—never wrote a better essay than that descriptive of his early fishing days. The same is true of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and Charles Dudley Warner’s most graphic pen picture is his inimitable sketch, “A Fight with a Trout.” The number of really good books on American field sports is principally made up of angling works, a fact which goes far to establish the truth of Wm. T. Porter’s assertion, namely: “No man ever truly polished a book unless he were something of an angler, or at least loved the occupation. He who steals from the haunts of men into the green solitudes of Nature, by the banks of gliding, silvery streams, under the checkering lights of sun, leaf and cloud, may always hope to cast his lines, whether of the rod or the ‘record book,’ in pleasant places.”

This may be appropriately supplemented by the opinion, poetically expressed by the same author, with reference to the art of fishing with the artificial fly, thus: “Fly-fishing has been designated the royal and aristocratic branch of the angler’s craft, and unquestionably it is the most difficult, the most elegant, and to men of taste, by myriads of degrees the most pleasant and exciting mode of angling. To land a trout of three, four or five pounds weight, and sometimes heavier, with a hook almost invisible, with a gut line almost as delicate and beautiful as a single hair from the raven tresses of a mountain sylph, and with a rod not heavier than a tandem whip, is an achievement requiring no little presence of mind, united to consummate skill. If it be not so, and if it do not give you some very pretty palpitations of the heart in the performance, may we never, wet a line in Lake George, or raise a trout in the Susquehanna.”

Thomson, the much admired author of “The Seasons,” was in his youth a zealous angler, frequently casting his fly in the rippling waters of the Tweed, a trout-stream justly famous along the Scottish border. The poet has eulogized his favorite pastime of fly-fishing in the following elegant lines:

“Now, when the first foul torrent of the brooks,

Swell’d with the vernal rains, is ebb’d away;

And, whitening, down their mossy tinctur’d stream

Descends the billowy foam, now is the time,

While yet the dark brown water aids the guile

To tempt the trout. The well-dissembled fly—

The rod, fine tapering with elastic spring,

Snatch’d from the hoary stud the floating line.

And all thy slender wat’ry stores prepare;

But let not on thy hook the tortur’d worm

Convulsive twist in agonizing folds,

Which, by rapacious hunger swallow’d deep,

Gives, as you tear it from the bleeding breast

Of the weak, helpless, uncomplaining wretch,

Harsh pain and horror to the tender hand.”

When, with his lively ray, the potent sun