192 ANGLING REMINISCENCES. 



part of great prowess as an angler, although I take 

 upon me to doubt that he displayed any degree of 

 the science and system esteemed so highly by the 

 Cockney school. 



These sagacious rodsmen, armed with their cun- 

 ning contrivances, equipped and tricked out in all 

 manner of novelties, may, from sheer and intolerant 

 conceit, turn up the fuming nostril at the plain and 

 rustic enginery of the northern angler, with solemn 

 eulogy exalting their unpractised theories, and 

 making boastful exposure of their gleamy baubles ; 

 yet, advance them to the proof, cause them to 

 contest it with the artless craftsmen of Tweedside, 

 and they will confess the utter impotence of their 

 system, renouncing for unadorned simplicity the 

 unnatural similitudes and grotesque inventions of 

 the city artizan. The lure fascinates none the bet- 

 ter because it is of brilliant texture or curious and 

 expensive fabric, set off with orient plumage, and 

 bedizened with ribs of tinsel ; more bewitching is 

 the coarse and homely device, fashioned after 

 nature by the hands of the untaught peasant. 



These remarks are perhaps over-strained, and 

 entirely out of place. I make them out of a strong 

 abhorrence to the practice of foppery, in an art 

 which, by the good old rules of its patriarchs, 

 ought to disclaim everything of the sort. An ape 

 angling with humming-birds is too severe a carica- 

 ture upon our craft, and we wish it to be rendered 

 totally inapplicable. 



