VINDICATION OF FLY FISHING. 3 



lect, "A quaint old cruel coxcomb."* I 

 must say, a practice of this great fisherman, 

 where he recommends you to pass the hook 

 through the body of a frog with care, as 

 though you loved him, in order to keep him 

 alive longer, cannot but be considered as 

 cruel. 



HAL. I do not justify either the expres- 

 sion or the practice of Walton in this in- 

 stance ; but remember, / fish only with 

 inanimate baits, or imitations of them, and 

 I will not exhume or expose the ashes of the 

 dead, nor vindicate the memory of Walton, 

 at the expense of Byron, w r ho, like John- 

 son, was no fisherman : but the moral and 

 religious habits of Walton, his simplicity of 

 manners, and his well-spent life, exonerate 

 him from the charge of cruelty ; and the 

 book of a coxcomb would not have been so 

 great a favourite with most persons of re- 



* From Don Juan, Canto XII. Stanza CVI. 

 " And Angling too, that solitary vice, 



Whatever Isaac Walton sings or says : 

 The quaint old cruel coxcomb in his gullet 

 Should have a hook and a small trout to pull it." 



