6 Fly Fishing for Salmon. 



if Walton ever caught a salmon, although he often 

 went "a fishing with old Oliver Henley, a famous 

 salmon fisher of that day," yet he gives full direc- 

 tions how to do it. Frank calls him a plagiarist, 

 declares he knows nothing about it, and that all he 

 wrote was derived from the brains of others. Sir 

 Walter Scott takes Frank to task for this abuse, and 

 in his preface to the reprint of the " Northern Me- 

 moirs," in noticing Frank's pedantic and unintelligi- 

 ble writing, says, " probably no reader, while he reads 

 the disparaging passages in which the venerable 

 Izaak Walton is introduced, can forbear wishing 

 that the good old man who had so true an eye for 

 nature, so simple a taste for her most innocent 

 pleasures, and withal so sound a judgment both 

 concerning men and things, had made this Northern 

 Tour instead of Frank." And he might have added, 

 what a chapter we should have had in the " Com- 

 plete Angler " on the pleasure and excitement of 

 killing a salmon with the artificial fly. 



Henry Vaughan, TJte Silurist, knew how to 

 kill salmon with the fly, about 1646; he sends 

 to that "famous and best of men," Dr. Thomas 

 Powell, a salmon, accompanied by some Latin 

 verses, which have been translated by the Rev. 

 Alex. Grosart : 



" Accept the salmon that with this I send 

 To you, renown'd and best beloved friend, 



