And if any careful critic wishes to verify my quotation from memory,
he may compare 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,
But 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; 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.
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