1 20 The Poets and Nature. 



abounding in vigorous descriptions of water life Leyden's, 

 for instance without any references of any kind to anglers 

 and most charming vignettes straight from nature, quite 

 irrespective of rods or " worms." Such a work would be 

 welcome not merely to sententious anglers, but to all lovers 

 of nature, and that means virtually everybody. 



My own concern just now is with fishes, and not 

 fishermen ; but the attitude of the poets towards the craft 

 may find a passing notice, for it is rather a curious one, 

 inasmuch as they do not seem to recognise any cruelty in 

 the sport, but, on the contrary, to regard the catching of fish 

 as innocent and commendable. Poetical sympathies are, 

 no doubt, rather unaccountable. The deer is pitied, but 

 the fox never ; hares are condoled with, but not rabbits ; 

 they exult in the killing of otters, which kill fish for food, and 

 condone the killing of pike for sport. Indeed, the killing 

 of fish generally is amiably condoned. Sometimes there 

 is an affectation of compromise by throwing in a word of 

 pity for the worm, as Izaak Walton does himself " damned 

 neuters " (as Dryden has it), "in their double way of steering, 

 neither fish nor flesh, nor good red herring" and very 

 often they use some such phrase as this 



" With slender line 

 And yielding rod, solicit to the shore 

 The eager trout " 



to temper the actual fact ; but, as a rule, there is nothing 

 but straightforward approval of" that solitary vice ; " whether 

 only as children " catching prickly stickles in their rout, and 

 miller's-thumbs and gudgeons driving out " or the more 

 serious processes of maturer angling. No poet ever re- 

 proaches children for murdering loaches, minnows, gud- 

 geon, and similar small fry "which everywhere are found 

 in every little beck ; " although poetry is full of reproofs for 

 doing bees, butterflies, and beetles to death. 



