204 AN ANGLER AT LARGE 



found. It can only be thus, by a long- continued 

 and indefatigable process of consideration and 

 reflection, that so perfect a harmony between 

 picture and verse is to be established. For it is 

 impossible to suppose that all these titles can 

 be flukes. Such a thing might happen once 

 or twice. It might chance that, of the twenty 

 or thirty pieces of poetry which I know, one 

 absolutely fitted this picture of mine, this compo- 

 sition of trees and sky and distance. But it does 

 not so chance. I am quite sure that such a subject 

 as I have chosen has inspired several poets, and 

 that their utterances are somewhere to be found. 

 But where? Johnson Williams could tell me. 

 But 1 do not know Johnson Williams. Not 

 knowing him, and not having his peculiar famili- 

 arity with English verse, I am reluctantly com- 

 pelled to abandon the idea of a poetic title. 



But (while I am on this subject) if Johnson 

 Williams causes me to form a low estimate of my 

 own education, what kind of a figure do 1 cut 

 beside certain lady and other novelists, who find 

 an apt quotation not merely to head each book 

 that they write, but to serve as keynote to each 

 chapter of each book that they write, and not 

 merely from the limited source of English verse, 

 but from the boundless ocean of a World's Litera- 

 ture. Such a range of knowledge is unbearable 



