viii SALMON FISHING IN THE TWEED 



Scrope never wrote except out of devotion to his 

 subject and for the amusement of his friends ; in 

 fact, in placing Days and Nights of Salmon Fishing 

 beside the Art of Deer -Stalking, a new edition 

 of the whole published works of this author is 

 rendered complete. 



Scrope divided his ample leisure and the activity 

 of a cultivated mind between field sports, literature, 

 painting, and travel. His love of salmon fishing, 

 a pastime not nearly so general or popular 

 sixty years ago as at the present time, naturally 

 guided him to Tweedside ; his literary tastes as 

 naturally brought him into intimate friendship with 

 Sir Walter Scott, who makes frequent mention of 

 him in his journals, declaring him, in one passage, 

 to be "one of the best amateur painters I ever 

 saw — Sir George Beaumont scarcely excepted." 

 Not the least part of the charm which Tweed had 

 for Scrope, as it has had for many who have 

 followed his footsteps along that fair river, came 

 from the glamour of lay and legend thrown over it 

 by the author of Waverley, and there is a tender 

 pathos in Scrope's regretful references to his lost 

 friend — a reverent Moschus mourning for departed 

 Bion : — 



" Ye flowers, sigh forth your odours with red buds ; 

 Flush deep, ye roses and anemones ; 

 And more than ever now, O hyacinth, show 

 Your written sorrow — the sweet singer's dead. 11 



Tom Purdie, too, is brought before us, and we 

 listen to his quaint sayings in the self-same accents 

 which Scrope heard on those far-off summer days. 



