FEBRUARY 29 



seem to argue a love of loafing rather 

 than a love of life ? Far from being an 

 irksome trouble, the search for the right 

 fly should surely be a pastime as interest- 

 ing as the search for the right word in a 

 difficult sentence ; and the delight of 

 finding it is great. Often, in reading 

 books on sport in the South of England, 

 one is almost obliged to wonder whether 

 the right fly is ever found by the authors. 

 One cannot reconcile the thought of their 

 finding it with their habitual indifference 

 to the weight of a basket. It is hardly 

 possible to believe that any man who had 

 even once found trout coming at the flies 

 as they do now and then come, would 

 consider too irksome any trouble taken 

 to bring the great rise about. The great 

 rise is a revelation that once for all puts 

 the mood of prose-poetry in the mind of 

 the ordinary angler into strict subjection 

 to the hope of sport. In relation to the 

 angler's interests, prose-poetry, either as 

 a mood or as a product, is not a thing 

 to be encouraged. It blurs the intellect. 



