INTRODUCTION. 1 3 



be acquired ; and, when once thoroughly understood, it 

 abides with its votary through life. To those whose 

 ardour and enthusiasm are apt to evaporate, when unex- 

 pected difficulties present themselves and success seems 

 uncertain or remote, to all such we shall submit some re- 

 marks made in our own hearing to persons of this very 

 class, by one of the most accomplished literary anglers in 

 Europe, Professor Wilson, of Edinburgh. To a gentleman 

 who was lamenting that his success in the art was not 

 equal to his anticipations, the professor addressed himself 

 in nearly the following words, words so highly charac- 

 teristic of the man, and which made so deep an impres- 

 sion upon our mind when we heard them, that we 

 committed them to writing on the spot, and have reli- 

 giously preserved them ever since. 



" The want," said the professor, " of success in fishing, 

 sir, most commonly arises from want of prosecuting the 

 object with indomitable perseverance. For it may be 

 observed of a certain class of men, that they owe their 

 success in life, and fame after it, to their having seized, 

 and acted on one leading idea. Of the men whom the 

 world allows to be really great, a large portion may be 

 fairly assigned to this class. The very greatest men have 

 perhaps been versatile ; and have possessed minds capable 

 of grasping and carrying into active practice, ideas and 

 conceptions of a cast and nature the most opposite and 

 apparently irreconcilable. These, it must be confessed, 

 are of the very first class of greatness. Caesar was not 

 only a commander of the first order, but an orator, second 

 only to Cicero, and an author second to none amongst 

 the writers of prose. Homer not only astonished man- 

 kind by the sublime conceptions of the Iliad, but also 

 captivated them with the descriptive beauty and romantic 



