Grayling Fishing. 16? 



delightful, but I must say that I think the addition of Cotton is to the 

 full as enjoyable. I am fond of all kinds of fishing, and to me all that 

 gossip about the dressing of the flies and the landing of graylings "of 

 sixteen inches" is quite as amusing as that about Maudlyn and the red 

 cow's milk, and the historical chab with the spot on his tail — which was 

 caught in the month of May, by the way*— and I think that that day's 

 fishing by The Peak "took me" more (when I read it) than any other 

 part of the entire book. It is a delightful bit of description. How one 

 seems to see that fly dressed too ! How one selects that dubbing which 

 you can only appreciate by holding up to the light ; and how " thus I 

 put on my wings, and thus twine and nip my dubbing," &c., &c., and then 

 they walk out and try it; and one seems to be looking on while they 

 converse, and to see the fish rising ! Listen to this : 

 " How, now ! what is all gone ? " 



" No, I but touched him ; but that was a fish worth taking." 

 And then the discussion about striking, all as natural and apt as possible, 

 and then — 



" I have him, now ; but he is gone down towards the bottom." 

 Whereupon the boy with the landing net naturally intrudes, and the 

 grayling of sixteen inches (a pound and three-quarter fish that should be 

 about) is landed, and they discuss him (every one who illustrates "Walton 

 makes a picture of that scene), and next the chat in the fish house. It is all 

 admirably told, and thoroughly natural. 



I have seen plenty of fish houses like it, and chatted like chats ; and how 

 delightful they were, and how one looks back reflectively while they start 

 up like jewels in a dingy setting of everyday affairs, which seem to 

 me to get more and more dingy year by year as I and the world get older. 



* It will be remembered that Piscator, when he overtakes Venator and Anceps, fixes it 

 as a " fresh May morning;" He fishes next day with Venator, and they catch that chub, 

 May being the month when chub spawn ; and yet Piscator exalts his horn against this 

 sort of thing in that very chapter thus: "But above all, the taking of fish in spawning 

 time may be said to be against nature. It is like the taking the dam on the nest when 

 she hatches her young ; a sin so against nature, that Almighty God hath in the Leviticus 

 law made a law against it," &c. This is rather unaccountable, unless Walton in writing his 

 book by oversight forgot that he had fixed his first chapter in May: and yet if this were 

 so he should have noted and corrected it in subsequent editions. 



