ZTbomas ZTofc Stofcfcart 485 



to linger over when he takes up his pen, as though they 

 had been part and parcel of his sport. I do not say that the 

 angler is wholly unconscious of the beauty that surrounds 

 him. He takes his sensations in, as Joey Ladle did the 

 alcoholic vapours of the cellars, " through the pores of his 

 skin," but with as little consciousness of them at the 

 moment as the ploughman who monotonously turns the 

 furrows all through a lovely day in opening spring. It is 

 after the day's sport is over that he calls up the scenes 

 to the charm of which he was insensible whilst casting 

 his fly. I have never known a genuine sportsman who, 

 with rod or gun in his hand, was not so absolutely 

 absorbed in his sport as to have no thoughts for anything 

 else. Men of the Grant Allen and John Bright type are 

 not real, whole-hearted sportsmen. Now, this is just 

 what Thomas Tod Stoddart, the poet-angler of Kelso, 

 was. Angling was not to him a mere pastime it was 

 the serious business of his life. Of all the <{ Kings of the 

 Rod " of whom I have discoursed in these pages he was 

 the most enthusiastic and the most devoted. His 

 daughter, Miss Anna M. Stoddart, in the opening 

 sentences of her delightful Memoir of her father a 

 biographical gem of the first water thus reveals the 

 mainspring of his character : 



" My father called one day on Henry Glassford Bell, 

 and the genial sheriff hailed him with the very natural 

 question, ' Well, Tom, and what are you doing now ? ' 

 With a moment's resentment, my father brought his 

 friend to his bearings. ' Doing ? Man, I'm an angler.' 



That answer sounded the keynote of his life, and 

 suggested at once its ambitions and their realisation. 



