302 Fish Stories 



Raquette, but here you strike the game not a stone's throw 

 from camp." 



The big trout duly weighed and stowed away, Jim rowed 

 away along shore and we celebrated with a cigar, and Jim 

 being a famous Shakespearean student as well as a boatman 

 fell to quoting. 



" D'ye ye know," he said to me, " nine out of ten people get 

 their Shakespeare and Bible mixed. Last summer two col- 

 lege men fell to arguing in my camp and they finally left it 

 to me whether the line ' I go a-fishin' ' was from Shakes- 

 peare or Butler's ' Hudibras,' and both turned on me when I 

 said the Bible. The line, ' neither fish nor flesh, nor good 

 red herring,' which you may find in Sheer's ' Satyr on the 

 Sea Officers,' in ^neas Sylvius's ' Letter,' and Dryden's 

 * Epilogue to the Duke of Guise,' is always laid to Shakes- 

 peare or Bacon," and Jim stopped rowing a moment to 

 swear gently at the Baconians. 



" Shakespeare is the most apt in his reference to fishes," 

 he continued, dropping from classical language to illiteracy, 

 seemingly at will ; '' they cling to the memory. You remem- 

 ber in Pericles the first fisherman says, * Master, I marvel 

 how the fishes live in the sea ' ; and the second fisherman 

 comes back at him, ' Why, as men do on land ; the great ones 

 eat up the little ones.' There's philosophy for you. See — " 

 that instant quotations fled to the winds as my rod bent 

 and the reel snarled viciously as a fine fish seized it and 

 got off. 



" Then in the Tempest," continued Jim, as he put on a 

 fresh bait, " what more fetching line is there than a ' very 

 ancient and fish-like smell,' as stale fish is ancient. Shakes- 

 peare perhaps played on the ancients for his wisdom, but 

 he had the gift of arranging his words so that they stick in 

 the memory. * As he tossed over the minnow,' Hamlet says, 

 ' A man may fish with a worm that hath eat of a king, and 

 eat of the fish that hath fed of that worm ' ; and of the 

 pictures he draws, there never was so vivid a picture of the 



