134 LITERATURE OF SEA AND RIVER FISHING. 



May still thy hospitable swains be blessed 



In rural innocence, thy mountains still 



Teem with the fleecy race, thy tuneful woods 



For ever flourish, and thy vales look gay 



With painted meadows and the golden grain ; 



Oft with thy blooming sons, when life was new, 



Sportive and petulant, and charmed with toys, 



In thy transparent eddies have I laved ; 



Oft traced with patient steps thy fairy banks, 



With the well-imitated fly to hook 



The eager trout, and with the slender line 



And yielding rod solicit to the shore 



The struggling panting prey, while vernal clouds 



And tepid gales obscured the ruffled pool. 



And from the deeps called forth the wanton swarms, 



Formed on the Sauiian school, or those of Ind. 



There are who think these pastimes scarce humane ; 



Yet in my mind (and not relentless I) 



His life is pure that wears no fouler stains." 



Here we have the question of the " cruelty of fishing " 

 raised, in reference to which it has been said that the chief 

 pain which captured fish feel is that arising from the 

 thought of the terrible lies which anglers will tell of their 

 weights. 



Following the example of clergymen of the Establish- 

 ment, Dr. Thomas Scott, a dissenting minister of Ipswich, 

 comes before us in 1775 as an angling author with his 

 Anglers — "eight dialogues in verse" — very tolerable 

 reading. A feature of angling literature is the large 

 number of clergymen who have entered the lists both with 

 prose and verse productions. As " fishers of men " it 

 might be expected that they would occasionally handle 

 the angling pen, and the rod too. To their ranks belong 

 some of the best fishermen of past and present times. 

 The fox-hunting parson is almost an extinct being, though 

 a few of the persuasion still linger in the far west, and 



