334 Ifttngs of tbc 1Rofc, IRifle, an& Gun 



it has appeared to bring me back to early times and 

 feelings, and to create again the hopes and happiness 

 of youthful days. . . . For my health, I may thank my 

 ancestors, after my God, and I have not squandered 

 what was so bountifully given ; and though I do not 

 expect like our arch-patriarch, Walton, to number ninety 

 years and upwards, yet I hope, as long as I can enjoy 

 in a vernal day the warmth and light of the sunbeams, 

 still to haunt the streams following the example of our 

 late venerable friend, the President of the Royal 

 Academy [Sir Benjamin West], in company with 

 whom, when he was an octogenarian, I have thrown 

 the fly, caught trout, and enjoyed a delightful day of 

 angling and social amusement, in the shady green 

 meadows by the bright clear streams of the Wandle." 

 It was, perhaps, with some presentiment that he was 

 not destined to enjoy a long life that Sir Humphry 

 penned those concluding lines ; but he could have little 

 dreamed how soon his " days of fly-fishing " were to end. 

 "Salmonia" was published in 1828. Davy passed the 

 following winter at Rome, and in the spring started on 

 a fishing tour among the lakes and streams of Italy, the 

 Tyrol, and Switzerland. Scarcely a day passed in which 

 he did not jot down in his Diary some fresh angling 

 experience. He arrived at Geneva on May 2/th. The 

 next day he went fishing, and dined heartily on the 

 spoils of his rod. His wife, who was with him, had 

 never seen him in better spirits. But about midnight 

 he was suddenly seized with apoplexy, and before day- 

 break he was dead dead in his prime, for he was only 

 fifty-two. 



