NORTHUMBERLAND 



Coquet, then, rises also in the Cheviots, not far from 

 Rede, and pursues her way through the same class of 

 scenery and boasts the same stirring story as the 

 Tynes. But none, as before stated, have by anglers 

 been so much sung of, Robert Roxby in the first half 

 of the last century being perhaps the laureate of the 

 band, and certainly the editor of most of the Coquet 

 poets : 



I will sing of the Coquet, the dearest of themes, 

 The haunt of the fisher, the first of a' streams ; 

 There's nane like the Coquet in a' the king's land 

 From the white cliffs of Dover to North Britain's strand. 



The elder Crawhall, artist, poet, angler, and humorist, 

 is the most famous of the Coquet group, and inspirer 

 of Charles Keene, scores of whose well-known jokes 

 in Punch came from his Newcastle friend. With the 

 latter's Completest Angling Booke all fishermen of a 

 literary turn are familiar, at least by name. I fear if 

 these worthies were to return to the Coquet to-day 

 they would not sound the eulogistic note with any- 

 thing like such fervour. But I am sure till quite 

 recent times it was not undeserved. 



A fine, lusty, peat-tinged stream, after a long 

 pilgrimage through fern and heath-clad uplands, 

 amid which Scott laid the opening chapters of Rob Roy 

 and the home of Diana Vernon, the river finally leaves 

 the Cheviots at the pleasant town of Rothbury, which 

 nestles beneath their outer ramparts, just here of 

 considerable height and more than considerable shape- 

 liness. Thence for fifteen miles the river urges its 

 streams over a clean, rocky bottom, through the 



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