CHAPTER XIII 



Some Writers on the Gentle Craft 



TVUT we must leave those recollections which tempt 

 U us into lingering, and turn to the experiences of 

 more eminent fishing authorities. And writing on 

 fishing in " Blackwood," one goes back almost involun- 

 tarily to old Christopher North. The Professor was 

 an expert and an enthusiast a philosopher, a practical 

 naturalist, and a poet to boot. Some of the brightest 

 passages in his " Recreations " are those connected with 

 his fishing achievements ; and never in the well-timed 

 " daffing " of the " Noctes " does the old man show 

 to much greater advantage than when bending the 

 long-bow in his merrier moods, provoked thereto by 

 the lively imagination of the Shepherd. Take the 

 " Recreations " ; and there we have an admirable bit 

 from " Our Parish/' in which old Christopher becomes 

 little Kit again, and goes back, in poetic descriptions of 

 the moorland landscapes, to his early initiation in the 

 mysteries of a craft to which he took like a Newfound- 

 land puppy to the " Brother Loch." 



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