I would recommend any person in a dry and melancholy state
of mind to read his paper on "Streams," in the first volume of
ESSAYS CRITICAL AND IMAGINATIVE. But it must be said, by way of
warning to those with whom dryness is a matter of principle, that
all Scotch fishing-books are likely to be sprinkled with Highland
Dew.
Among English anglers, Sir Humphry Davy is one of whom Christopher
North speaks rather slightingly. Nevertheless his SALMONIA is well
worth reading, not only because it was written by a learned man, but
because it exhales the spirit of cheerful piety and vital wisdom.
Charles Kingsley was another great man who wrote well about angling.
His CHALK-STREAM STUDIES are clear and sparkling. They cleanse the
mind and refresh the heart and put us more in love with living. Of
quite a different style are the MAXIMS AND HINTS FOR AN ANGLER, AND
MISERIES OF FISHING, which were written by Richard Penn, a grandson
of the founder of Pennsylvania. This is a curious and rare little
volume, professing to be a compilation from the "Common Place Book
of the Houghton Fishing Club," and dealing with the subject from a
Pickwickian point of view. I suppose that William Penn would have
thought his grandson a frivolous writer.
But he could not have entertained such an opinion of the Honourable
Robert Boyle, of whose OCCASIONAL REFLECTIONS no less than twelve
discourses treat "of Angling Improved to Spiritual Uses.
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