XVI 



writing all he knew of it, all he might 

 learn from my father's notes, and all that 

 I could teach him orally. Time the 

 great revealer of all things of modest 

 merit and of cunning criminality 

 brought me into contact last year, at 

 Nottingham, with the very sort of co- 

 adjutor I wanted. At a single interview, 

 at the hospitable board of a relative, 

 I came to a fixed opinion, in reference to 

 him ; and reading shortly after certain 

 sketches of fly-fishing in Derbyshire, 

 which appeared in a celebrated sporting 

 London journal,* and from certain allu- 

 sions in them knowing them to be his, I 

 resolved (forgive the vulgar flippancy of 

 the expression) to hook him. The world 

 shall never know the bait I used, but he 

 took it freely ; and I had the pleasure, 

 .towards the end of last January, of land- 

 ing him safely under my humble roof. 

 He arrived fagged from over-exertion in 

 certain literary engagements which he 

 had just completed in London, and dis- 



* Bell's Life. 



