240 SALMONIA. [ninth day. 



of the spectators, who shouted to him, that he would 

 be drowned. His whole attention was absorbed by 

 his boats. He had formed an idea, that one should 

 outsail the rest, and when this boat was foremost he 

 was in delight; but if any one of the others got 

 beyond it he howled with grief; and once I saw him 

 throw his crutch at one of the unfavoured boats. 

 The tide came in rapidly — he lost his crutches, and 

 would have been drowned, but for the care of some of 

 the spectators : he was however wholly inattentive to 

 any thing save his boats. He is said to be quite 

 insane and perfectly ungovernable, and will not live 

 in a house, or wear any clothes, and his whole life is 

 spent in this one business — making and managing a 

 fleet of wooden boats, of which he is sole admiral. 

 How near this mad youth is to a genius, a hero, or 

 to an angler, who injures his health and risks his life 

 by going into the water as high as his middle, in the 

 hope of catching a fish which he sees rise, though he 

 already has a pannier full. 



HAL. — Or a statesman, working by all means, fair 

 and foul, to obtain a blue riband. Or a fox-hunter, 

 risking his neck to see the hounds destroy an animal, 

 which he preserves to be destroyed, and which is 

 good for nothing. Or an aged, licentious voluptuary, 

 using all the powers of a high and cultivated intellect 

 to destroy the innocence of a beautiful virgin, for a 



