30 SIR HUMPHRY DAVY. 



since the days of Walton. Of the uninitiated it will make 

 fishermen, where Colonel Hawker s directions enable a man to 

 shoot, who has never been five miles from Holborn-bars. I 

 doubt not but Sir Humphry was an ardent and scientific 

 fisherman, but in many practical points I differ with him. 

 He angled well, but he fished like a philosopher. If he 

 haunted this river for a season, unless he altered his system 

 materially, he would not kill a dozen- salmon. Flies, such as 

 he describes, would never, in any seasons or weathers, be 

 successful here. He fairly says, that ' different rivers require 

 different flies / but nothing like those he recommends would 

 answer this one ; and, although many of the theories and 

 speculative opinions are very ingenious, I question much their 

 validity. 



" Admiring Sir Humphry as I do, I w r ould pardon his 

 philosophy and fine flies, his ' golden pheasant, silken-bodied, 

 orange, red, and pale-blue, silver-twisted, and king's-fisher 

 mixtures/ even to his 'small bright humming-bird' itself; 

 but, with all my Christian charity and personal affection, there 

 is one fatal passage, for which, like Lady Macbeth's soiled 

 hand, there is no remedy. Would that I could ' pluck from 

 the memory* that luckless page ! But, alas ! whenever I see 

 Salmonia, it rushes to my recollection. Think, Frank, of a 

 man who limited a party of sporting tourists to half a pint of 

 claret! and threatened an honest gentleman, who called for 

 another bottle, with ' an overflow of blood/ ' a suffusion of the 

 haemorrhoidal veins/ and, worse than all, ' a determined 

 palsy/* if he persevered ! I could have forgiven the philo- 

 sopher any thing every thing even to the comparison of 

 that rascally fish, the perch, with the rich and luxurious 

 mullet ; but to fob off four stout gentlemen with a solitary 



* Doctors will disagree vide Daniel's Account of Joe Man, game- 

 keeper to Lord Torrington. " He was in constant strong morning exercise ; 

 he went to bed always betimes, but never till his skin was filled with ale. 

 This," he said, " would do no harm to an early riser, and to a man who 

 pursued field-sports. At seventy-eight years of age he began to decline, 

 and then lingered for three years ; his gun was ever upon his arm, 

 and he still crept about, not destitute of the hope of fresh diversion." 

 Vol. ii. p. 172. 



" Inhabitants (especially new comers) aie subject to distillations, 

 xhumes, and fluxes ; for remedy whereof they use an ordinary drink 

 of aqua-vitae, so qualified in the making, that it dryeth more, and in- 

 fiameth lesse, than other hote confections." Campion's Historic, 1571. 



