AUTHORS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 91 



miss hooking a fish rising at a fly, and says, with a grin, ' You 

 can't vasten 'em as my vather does.' 



" TelHng a long story after dinner, tending to show (with full 

 particulars of time and place) how that, under very difficult 

 circumstances, and notwithstanding very great skill on your part, 

 your tackle had been that morning broken and carried away by 

 a very large fish ; and then having the identical fly, lost by you 

 on that occasion, returned to you by one of your party, who 

 found it in the mouth of a trout, caught by him, about an hour 

 after your disaster, on the very spot so accurately described by 

 you — the said very large fish being, after all, a very small one." 



The Angler in Wales (1834), by Captain Medwin, the 

 friend and fellow traveller of Byron, may be mentioned as 

 an instance of an execrably bad book, which has deservedly 

 received some terrible "slatings." For instance, Chatto 

 says of the author — " he might as well have called his book 

 'The Angler in Hindostan;'" and this is how another 

 critic and angler epitomizes it — " The book is a medley, 

 and by no means a good one, made up apparently from 

 the odds and ends of some MS. collection of anecdotes. 

 Mesmerism and dog-otters, snuff-taking and second-sight, 

 affectionate terriers and literary lions, portraits of young 

 ladies, beautiful as Diana and bewitchingly familiar with 

 the slang of horse-jockeys, tales of Welsh courtship, 

 scandal, love, lunacy, and murder, 'are jumbled antitheti- 

 cally jowl by cheek.' Even where the narrator deviates 

 into his subject, we glean but a minimum of information 

 from his pages. I have, in my time, fished extensively, 

 and to some purpose, in the lakes and rivers of Wales. 

 Captain Medwin may have done the same, but, if so, he 

 kept his secret with the fidelity of Junius. His book 

 nowhere shows us how it was done. There is little or no 

 useful information about the flies, the seasons, or the 

 stations most favourable to the angler. Instead thereof, a 



