VIAT. No, I would I had, we would not have parted so. Look you, there is another: this is an excellent fly.

PISC. That fly I am sure would kill fish, if the day were right: but they only chew at it, I see, and will not take it. Come, sir, let us return back to the fishing-house: this still water, I see, will not do our business to-day: you shall now, if you please, make a fly yourself,* and try what you can do in the streams with that: and I know a trout taken with a fly of your own making, will please you better than twenty with one of mine. Give me that bag again, sirrah: look you, sir, there is a hook, towght, silk, and a feather for the wings: be doing with those, and I will look you out a dubbing that I think will do.

VIAT. This is a very little hook.

PISC. That may serve to inform you, that it is for a very little fly, and you must make your wings accordingly; for as the case stands, it must be a little fly, and a very little one too, that must do Well said! believe me, business. your you shift your fingers very handsomely; I doubt I have taken upon me to teach my master. So here's your dubbing

now.

VIAT. This dubbing is very black.

PISC. It appears so in hand; but step to the door and hold it up betwixt your eye and the sun, and it will appear a shining red; let me tell you, never a man in England can discern the true colour of a dubbing any way but that, and therefore chuse always to make your flies on such a bright sunshine day as this, which also you may the better do,

*To make a fly is so essential, that he hardly deserves the name of an angler who cannot do it. There are many who will go to a tackle-shop, and tell the master of it, as Dapper does Subtle, in the " Alchemist," that they want a fly; for which they have a thing put into their hands that would pose a naturalist to find a resemblance for: though, when particular directions have been given, I have known them excellently made by the persons employed by the fishing-tackle makers in London. But do thou, my honest friend, learn to make thy own flies; and be assured, that in collecting and arranging the materials, and imitating the various shapes and colours of these admirable creatures, there is little less pleasure than even in catching fish.-H.

[NOTE.-All this is changed now. The flies sold in the London tackle-shops are generally good, and in some very good. Those made by Blacker, of 54, Dean-street, Soho, cannot be equalled; and the flies of Messrs. Bowness, Bellyard, Mr. Bernard, Church-place, Piccadilly, of Mr. C. Farlow, 191, Strand, and Mr. Little, Fetter-lane, are killing ones.-ED.]

+ Excellent advice. The colour of feathers, fur, etc., cannot be accurately ascertained, except by looking through them at the light. In mixing dif

because it is worth nothing to fish in: here, put it on, and be sure to make the body of your fly as tender as you can. Very good! upon my word you have made a marvellous handsome fly.

VIAT. I am very glad to hear it; it is the first that ever I made of this kind in my life.

PISC. Away, away! you are a doctor at it; but I will not commend you too much, lest I make you proud. Come, put

it on, and you shall now go

downward to some streams betwixt the rocks below the little foot-bridge you see there, and try your fortune. Take heed of slipping into the water as follow me under this rock: so, now you are over, and now throw in.

you

VIAT. This is a fine stream indeed:-there's one! I have him.

Pisc. And a precious catch you have of him; pull him out! I see you have a tender hand: this is a diminutive gentleman, e'en throw him in again, and let him grow till he be more worthy your anger.

VIAT. Pardon me, sir, all's fish that comes to the hook with me now. .-Another!

PISC. And of the same standing.

VIAT. I see I shall have good sport now: another! and a grayling. Why, you have fish here at will.

Pisc. Come, come, cross the bridge, and go down the other side lower, where you will find finer streams and better sport, I hope, than this. Look you, sir, here is a fine stream now, you have length enough, stand a little further off, let me entreat you, and do but fish this stream like an artist, and peradventure a good fish may fall to your share. How now! what! is all gone?

VIAT. No, I but touched him; but that was a fish worth taking.

PISC. Why now, let me tell you, you lost that fish by your own fault, and through your own eagerness and haste; for

ferently coloured bits of dubbing a good light, natural or artificial, is necessary.-ED.

* This passage proves Cotton to have been a real sportsman, He contemns catching small fish, and says, "throw them in again." Viator being a novice, sees no discredit in capturing "diminutive gentlemen," and it is quite in keeping with the sentiments of a young angler to exclaim, "All's fish that comes to the hook now."-ED.

you are never to offer to strike a good fish, if he do not strike himself, till you first see him turn his head after he has taken your fly, and then you can never strain your tackle in the striking, if you strike with any manner of moderation.* Come, throw in once again, and fish me this stream by inches; for I assure you here are very good fish; both trout and grayling lie here; and at that great stone on the other side, it is ten to one a good trout gives you the meeting..

VIAT. I have him now, but he is gone down towards the bottom: I cannot see what he is, yet he should be a good fish by his weight; but he makes no great stir.

PISC. Why then, by what you say, I dare venture to assure you it is a grayling, who is one of the deadest-hearted fishes in the world, and the bigger he is, the more easily taken. Look you, now you see him plain; I told you what he was: bring hither that landing-net, boy: and now, sir, he is your own; and believe me a good one, sixteen inches long, I warrant him I have taken none such this year.

VIAT. I never saw a grayling before look so black.

Pisc. Did you not? Why then, let me tell you, that you never saw one before in right season; for then a grayling is very black about his head, gills, and down his back; and has his belly of a dark gray, dappled with black spots, as you see this is; and I am apt to conclude that from thence he derives his name of umber. Though I must tell you this fish is past his prime, and begins to decline, and was in better season at Christmas than he is now. But move on: for it grows towards dinner time; and there is a very great and fine stream below, under that rock, that fills the deepest pool in all the river, where you are almost sure of a good fish.

VIAT. Let him come, I'll try a fall with him. But I had thought that the grayling had been always in season with the trout, and had come in and gone out with him.

PISC. Oh, no! assure yourself a grayling is a winter fish; but such a one as would deceive any but such as know him very well indeed; for his flesh, even in his worst season, is so firm, and will so easily calver, that in plain truth he is very good meat at all times: but in his perfect season (which, by the way, none but an overgrown grayling will ever be), I think

* Pray, reader, attend to this valuable counsel.

T

him so good a fish, as to be little inferior to the best trout that ever I tasted in my life.

VIAT. Here's another skipjack; and I have raised five or six more at least while you were speaking. Well, go thy way, little Dove! thou art the finest river that ever I saw, and the fullest of fish. Indeed, sir, I like it so well, that I am afraid will be troubled with me once a year, so long you as we two live.

PISC. I am afraid I shall not, sir: but were you once here a May or a June, if good sport would tempt you, I should then expect you would sometimes see me; for you would then say it was a fine river indeed, if you had once seen the sport at the height.

VIAT. Which I will do, if I live, and that you please to give me leave. There was one, and there another.

PISC. And all this in a strange river, and with a fly of your own making! why, what a dangerous man are you!

VIAT. I, sir: but who taught me? and as Damætas says by his man Dorus, so you may say by me,

"If any man such praises have,

What then have I, that taught the knave?"*

But what have we got here? a rock springing up in the middle of the river! this is one of the oddest sights that ever I saw.

PIKE POOL.

PISC. Why, sir, from that pike* that you see standing up there distant from the rock, this is called Pike Pool. And young Mr. Izaak Walton was so pleased with it, as to draw it in landscape, in black and white, in a blank book I have at home, as he has done several prospects of my house also, which I keep for a memorial of his favour, and will show you when we come up to dinner.

VIAT. Has young master Izaak Walton been here, too?

PISC. Yes, marry has he, sir, and that again and again, too, and in France since, and at Rome, and at Venice, and I can't tell where: but I intend to ask him a great many hard questions so soon as I can see him, which will be, God willing, next month. In the meantime, sir, to come to this fine stream at the head of this great pool, you must venture over these slippery, cobbling stones; believe me, sir, there you were nimble, or else you had been down; but now you are got over, look to yourself: for, on my word, if a fish rise here, he is like to be such a one as will endanger your tackle: how now!

VIAT. I think you have such command here over the fishes, that you can raise them by your word, as they say conjurers can do spirits, and afterward make them do what you bid them, for here's a trout has taken my fly, I had rather have lost a crown. What luck's this! he was a lovely fish, and turned up a side like a salmon.

Pisc. O, sir, this is a war where you sometimes win, and must sometimes expect to lose. Never concern yourself for

* It is a rock, in the fashion of a spire-steeple, and almost as big. It stands in the midst of the river Dove; and not far from Mr. Cotton's house; below which place this delicate river takes a swift career betwixt many mighty rocks, much higher and bigger than St. Paul's church before it was burnt. And this Dove, being opposed by one of the highest of them, has, at last, forced itself a way through it; and after a mile's concealment, appears again with more glory and beauty than before that opposition, running through the most pleasant valleys and most fruitful meadows that this nation can justly boast of.-(WALTON, junior.)

[NOTE.-The Dove, or a branch of it, runs for a short distance under ground, and debouches into daylight, a little northward of Islam Hall, the beautiful castellated mansion of Mr. Watts Russell, whose father, once a large and opulent soap-boiler of London, built it within the present century. Its picturegallery is one of the finest in the kingdom, and in the chapel there is a monument to the memory of the late Mrs. Watts Russell and children, by Chantrey, and considered equal to any of his other statues.-ED.]

+ Not taken it in the ordinary angling acceptation, but taken it off the line -broken away with it, so that both fish and fly are lost.-ED.