MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR 



believer in the home-made rod. As to new 

 flies and fancy flies, I imagine Mr. Beever 

 would say to any reader of his : ' I put before 

 you my principles, and give you my experience. 

 If you can improve upon either, do so by all 

 means P 



He outlived the date of his preface just ten 

 years and ten days. His last seven years were, 

 unhappily, clouded by illness, and the result of 

 an unsuccessful operation which affected the 

 brain so that, even before his time, our 

 'Arundo' was cut down, and his friends had 

 indeed to 



' Sigh for the cost and pain, 

 For the reed which grows nevermore again 

 As a reed with the reeds in the river.' 



He died on the loth of January 1859, aged 

 sixty-four. As a parishioner of Hawkshead, he 

 was buried at the picturesque church, which 

 Wordsworth's reminiscences of his own school- 

 days have made famous. The tourist who 

 makes a hurried ascent, while his coach stops 

 at the Red Lion, to this place of modern 

 pilgrimage, will find the family tomb of the 

 Beevers hard by the old sundial, on the north 

 side of the church, where all the greater moun- 

 tains are full in view, and the quaint old town 



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