FROM COTTON TO STEWART. 85 



river, and the open sky, and the wind blowing 

 over the reeds. The eighteenth century was 

 barren of fishing writers : in the nineteenth 

 they sprang into being on all sides. The 

 classical school offered an unfruitful soil, and 

 it was the romantic revival which brought them 

 into lusty life. Scott was no fisher, yet but for 

 him Stoddart and Colquhoun might not have 

 written. Waverley influenced more than the 

 novel and Marmion more than the epic. 



In the eighteenth century, therefore, we have 

 no great prose writers. We have manuals, 

 some bad, some good, one at least excellent, and 

 we have many rather unimaginative compila- 

 tions. But more important than the writers is 

 the advance in mechanical appliances. 



The rod comes first. At the end of the 

 period under review, Stewart considered a ten 

 foot rod, if stiff, big enough for any water, and 

 adds that he generally used one from eight to 

 nine feet long. This is a big drop from Cotton's 

 fifteen or eighteen footer. The drop occurred 

 after the reel came into general use, which 

 revolutionised rod making, for it enabled men 

 to fish fine with a short rod, impossible before. 

 Still, rods remained long for years after the 

 reel appeared, and Stewart is somewhat excep- 

 tional. Indeed, Francis, writing ten years 

 after Stewart, gives the lengths of four typical 

 single-handed fly rods, and they vary from 

 eleven feet seven inches to twelve feet eight 

 inches. As late as 1886 Halford says that a 



