THE ENGLISH LAKE COUNTRY 



glossary, and this exclusiveness of diction and method, 

 is geographically but a tiny fragment of the angling 

 map of Britain, its water mileage insignificant, and its 

 subjects numerically but an unappreciable fraction of 

 the great fraternity. One might feel perhaps rather 

 sorry for the rank and file, mainly Londoners, of that 

 little kingdom for the long words they must learn, 

 or at least feel they ought to learn, and for the general 

 air of solemnity which must cloud their graduating 

 years ; though, as a late famous angler who repre- 

 sented the craft on the Times once wrote, ' What 

 these things have to do with plain fishing no mortal 

 man can tell.' 



It is amusing to read occasional papers on trouting 

 in the non-sporting press by writers who are uncon- 

 sciously in the bondage of the school, and the con- 

 descending and delicious naivete of their allusions to 

 wet-fly fishing and their quaint sense of the pro- 

 portion of things. But how should they know ? 

 They are no doubt hard working and often clever 

 young men more power to them ! being for that very 

 reason kept close to the journalistic mill and have not 

 the dimmest notion how the angling world wags in 

 Northumberland or Brecon, in Yorkshire or Devon. 

 Oddly enough, the best dry-fly fisherman I ever knew 

 one of the best, it was always held in Wiltshire and 

 whose occasional inroads in quite youth upon the very 

 driest and purest portion of the Itchen astonished its 

 champions, knew nothing of the glossary. I ought 

 to know, as he is a very old friend of mine, in addition 

 to which I have frequently fished his own water with 

 him to my very great edification. My recollection is 



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