SOME WRITERS ON THE GENTLE CRAFT 181 



after a doubtful fight, under difficulties, sees his line 

 about to be " cut." In the background of all the 

 views is scenery characteristic of the river a beetling 

 crag, crowned by the ruins of its shattered keep ; a 

 snug fishing-box, showing its smoking chimney-stacks 

 over a bank of wood ; or an amphitheatre of bare, 

 bluff hills, broken with patches of furze, and backed 

 up by some well-known group like the trinity of the 

 Eildons. And the people whose acquaintance we make 

 are just as characteristic as the scenes they figure in. 

 Not to speak of the nobles and lairds, who doubtless 

 deserved the praises they receive from the best of good 

 fellows and even better sportsmen, there are the peasant 

 worthies, who might have led happy but inglorious 

 lives had they not been immortalised in the memoirs 

 of the author of " Waverley." There are Tom Purdie 

 and Rob Kerse, who often kept the author company, 

 and of the former of them he tells sundry capital 

 stories. It is one great charm of the angler's life, the 

 forming fast friendships with men of this kind, when 

 differences of station and education have been forgotten 

 in the indulgence of common tastes and the inter- 

 change of common sympathies. Among the many 

 friends Scrope made on the border river was the 

 immortal patron of the Purdies himself. The fifth 

 chapter begins with an eloquent tribute of affectionate 

 admiration to the Tweed, as he knew it before Scott 

 had made it famous, though it was endeared already to 

 the salmon-fisher and the artist. And then he goes on, 

 in a passage that has a melancholy interest still, though 



