THE LITERATURE OF FLY FISHING. 209 



If you take the trouble to break through the 

 classical crust with which that is covered, it is 

 surely a first-rate description of fishing a fast 

 stream. In fact I hardly know a better. 



About a hundred years later another poet, 

 a less famous name certainly, but a true poet, 

 produced a fine fishing sonnet. Thomas 

 Doubleday was chiefly known as an active 

 political reformer : but he was a voluminous 

 writer of angling songs which appeared year 

 by year in the Newcastle Fishers Garlands and 

 were collected by Crawhall in 1864. Good as 

 they are, they never approach the level of his 

 early sonnet, published in 1818 when he was 

 eight and twenty; it is quite one of the best 

 things written on fishing : 



Go, take thine angle, and with practised line, 



Light as the gossamer, the current sweep ; 



And if thou failest in the calm still deep, 

 In the rough eddy may a prize be thine. 

 Say thou'rt unlucky where the sunbeams shine ; 



Beneath the shadow, where the waters creep, 



Perchance the monarch of the brook shall 



leap 



For fate is ever better than design. 

 Still persevere ; the giddiest breeze that blows, 



For thee may blow with fame and fortune 



rife ; 

 Be prosperous and what reck if it arose 



Out of some pebble with the stream at strife, 

 Or that the light wind dallied with the boughs? 



Thou art successful ; such is human life. 



These Newcastle Fishers Garlands appeared 



