THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 



the weather, to discount in detail the mishaps that 

 may arise, and then to keep a copy. Seriously though, 

 who would dare to send any one after brown trout in 

 August, unless perhaps to the Highlands or the west of 

 Ireland, and knowing neither I am spared the temp- 

 tation. I know plenty of places, however, short of 

 those remoter Celtic fringes, whither I would go myself 

 quite hopefully, uniting of course with my anticipa- 

 tions a prayer for rain (a brutal procedure), answered 

 only too frequently for the poor public. But the 

 English lakes is not, to my mind, from any point of 

 view, an August country. Yet there is abundance of 

 what may be called second-class fishing, easily available 

 throughout the country, though I deplore the applica- 

 tion of such commercially suggestive methods of 

 appraisement. These things depend on the angler's 

 point of view : whether for one thing he is by tem- 

 perament incapable of looking for anything but the 

 weight of a basket ! I do not think there are many 

 trout fishermen built that way, but there are a few, 

 and upon the whole I am sorry for them. A man sees 

 just so much as he is qualified to see and no more, 

 a great writer has said, in discussing the diverse nature 

 of the appeals made to diverse individuals by a country- 

 side and all therein implied. A certain school of 

 south country fishermen used to thunder against the 

 bare notion of the call of the wild or any of the ex- 

 traneous joys that to so many of us are simply an 

 inseparable part and parcel of angling. We were 

 accounted mere irresponsible wanderers and prowlers, 

 enjoying ourselves perhaps in our strange way but 

 not fishermen at all. A true disciple, I have seen it 



261 



