XIV 



on the banks of the Dove during the last 

 fifty years. I do not say this so much of 

 my own judgment, as of that of all who 

 knew him. Even the irritable, and, I 

 fear, enviable race of anglers by trade 

 a race remarkably constipated when they 

 are asked their opinion of the merits of a 

 rival, or when they are asked for any 

 useful information relative to their craft, 

 lest, by freely giving it, they may injure 

 their own reputation universally ac- 

 knowledged, I do not say to strangers, 

 but to those that knew both themselves 

 and my father, that, as a fly-fisher, they 

 never saw his equal. The gentlemen 

 resident in the neighbourhood, and those 

 who came from afar to fly-fish in the 

 Dove and the other streams adjacent to 

 it, and who must have had abundant op- 

 portunity of judging by comparison of my 

 father's merits, invariably said, and, like 

 true and disinterested brothers of the 

 angle, took a pleasure in making the 

 avowal, that he was the most successful 

 fly-fisher they had ever fished with in any 



