DR. JOHNSON ON ANGLING 115 



scratch them; of your line, or it will tangle at 

 every step; of your far distant hook, or you will 

 lose the end of all your fishing. At first it is a 

 puzzling business, but a little practice sets all 

 things right. 



With a fresh supply of grasshoppers he lands, 

 after many adventures, several trout, and finishes 

 up by letting his line run on before him, wading 

 along, holding on by this branch, fumbling with 

 his feet along the jagged channel, changing hands 

 to a bough on the left side, leaning on that rock, 

 stepping over that stranded block of timber. 

 Ripping a generous hole in his skirt, he comes 

 to the edge of a petty fall. He steps down, 

 thinking only of how to keep his balance, and 

 not at all of the depth of water; he splashes and 

 plunges down into a basin waist deep. The first 

 sensation, he says, of a man up to his vest 

 pockets in water is peculiarly foolish, and his 

 first laugh rather faint, and he is afterwards a 

 little ashamed of the alacrity with which he 

 scrambles for the bank. While he is in this 

 scrape at one end of his line, a trout has got into 

 a worse one at the other. In his surprise he 

 comes near losing him in the injudicious haste 

 with which he overhauled him. All this reminds 

 me of the river Barle, where I have gone through 

 similar troubles. 



Dr. Johnson on Angling. Mr. Robert Blakey 

 thus commences Chapter IX of his book: " Dr. 



