2 FISHING GOSSIP. 



perhaps be a puzzler to name ; and so evidently 

 thought Izaak Walton's poet, Jo Chalkill, when he 

 was driven to find a rhyme for it in sturgeon. Poor 

 Jo ! " gudgeon " was evidently altogether too much 

 for him. Elsewhere he tries his hand at it again 

 with even worse success : 



" Roach or dace 

 We do chase, 

 Bleak or gudgeon 

 Without grudging" 



Awful ! He might at least have improved upon 

 this, by adopting the spelling of Davors : 



" And thou, sweet Boyd, that with thy watery sway 



Dost wash the cliffes of Deighton and of Week . . . 

 In whose fair streams the speckled trout doth play, 

 The roach, the dace, the gudging, and the bleike." 



How much more neatly " John Williamson, gent, 

 temp. 1740," manages the matter : 



" Tho' little art the gudgeon may suffice, 

 His sport is good, and with the greatest vies ; 

 Few lessons will the angler's use supply 

 Where he's so ready of himself to die ! " 



Well, be the difficulty great or small, there cer- 

 tainly is a peculiar fascination in catching, if not in 

 poetising, gudgeon. Doesn't Salter tell us of an ang- 

 ling curate who was engaged to be married to a bishop's 

 daughter, lingering so long over his twelve-dozenth 

 fish as to arrive too late for the ceremony, whereupon 



