JULY 157 



had not made this northern tour instead of the grim 

 Croinwellian trooper ; but Scott spoke here as litterateur, 

 not as an angler. Indeed he signs the said preface as 



( No fisher, 

 But a well-wisher 

 To the game.' 



Anglers will not share Scott's regret. Izaak's ' trembling 

 quill' would have been whelmed in the billows of a 

 Sutherland loch; his primitive tackle must have been 

 snapped by the first rush of a Brora salmon. Moreover, 

 the prosperous tradesman of Chancery Lane was far too 

 nice a judge of creature comforts to have pushed far 

 beyond the Border after a first taste of Scottish lodging 

 in the seventeenth century. That overset the equanimity 

 even of a tough old campaigner like Franck. 



' Arnoldus ! ' he moaned to his fellow-traveller after a night 

 spent at Sanquhar, or Zanker, as he chose to spell it, 'I'm 

 almost worried to death with lice ; my skin is all motled and 

 dapled like an April trout. Can you blame me to relinquish 

 this lowsy lodging when my batter'd sides are pinck'd full of 

 ilet holes 1 One brigade pursues another, and flight I find the 

 best expedient, for my enemies, I perceive, are so desperately 

 resolved that they '11 rather die than quit the field.' 



Franck was Walton's junior by some thirty years. 

 They met at least upon one occasion in Staffordshire, 

 when they fell to argue about the reproduction of pike. 

 Izaak professed the simple faith that pike were bred from 

 pickerel weed, a proposition which Franck treated with 

 so little respect that, as he tells us, the other 'huffed 

 away' and declined further discussion. Mr. Dewar, in 

 his preface to the beautiful ' Winchester ' edition, is down 

 upon Franck for this, declaring that 'a fine gentleman 



