Birds. 2845 



genial, fish ever so plentiful, it makes no difference in his personal 

 appearance, he is thin and spare as ever, with scarcely an ounce of 

 flesh on his bones. He is emphatically one of Pharaoh's lean kine ; 

 seems far gone in a consumption ; almost like the frightful figure of 

 death in the old pictures. It was this lean and haggard appearance 

 that led a fanciful French naturalist to describe him as the very type 

 of misery and famine. We suspect, however, that Mons. Buffon was 

 a- little out here ; and that our hero has more pleasure in life than he 

 was aware of: his patient, persevering efforts, must procure him many 

 a savoury meal, and though they do not fatten his ribs,'they do at 

 least keep him in good working, or rather sporting, order : we trust he 

 will long remain so, and continue to enliven our valley with his 

 presence. Poacher though he be, we respect him for his love of free- 

 dom and independence ; of nature and of fishing. We are certain 

 that however fortune may frown upon him, to whatever straits he may 

 be reduced for a living, that rather than seek shelter in an union 

 workhouse, he would die of famine. 



We have said nothing of his method of fishing. How various are 

 the acts by which cunning man contrives to circumvent the finny 

 tribe ! with all deference to honest Isaak, it must be allowed that the 

 whole art of angling is based upon deceit and imposture ; on that 

 account, therefore, our sportsman rejects it, we suppose. And then 

 as to the use of nets, it has doubtless been copied from the villanous 

 spider, who weaves a web from his own bowels, and hangs it before the 

 door of his lair, in which he lurks, ready to pounce upon the unwary 

 victim entangled in its meshes : he will have none of this. Nor does 

 he adopt the more simple and straightforward scheme of the school- 

 boy and otter, by dragging his speckled prey from under the banks 

 and braes of the populous brooks. No, he has a method of his own. 

 Armed with a single spear-shaped weapon of about six inches in 

 length, woe to the unhappy trout or eel that comes within its range ! 

 It is transfixed with the speed of lightning. 



There is no history of an individual from which a moral lesson may 

 not be drawn. Then why not from the character of our hero ? In a 

 poem of Wordsworth's, a fit of despondency is said to have been re- 

 moved by the patient and cheerful bearing of an old man, whom the 

 poet met with on the lonely moors, gathering leeches. We have 

 sometimes amused ourselves in running a parallel betwixt the character 

 we have attempted to describe, and the brave old Scotsman of the 

 poet. There is no slight resemblance: both models of patience and 

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