72 By Stream and Sea. 



was lopped, felled, and carted to a Croydon sawpit. The 

 Queen used to love the neighbourhood of Mitcham.. Sir 

 Walter Raleigh dwelt there in some of his calmest days 

 before the shadow of adversity crept over his bright life. 



Dr. Donne lived at Mitcham too, and Dr. Donne was 

 said by Dryden, who probably was not an indifferent 

 authority upon such a point, to be " the greatest wit, though 

 not the greatest poet, of our nation." It was better, anyhow, 

 to live at Mitcham, where he could teach the trout a little 

 piscatorial theology, than to take leave of his head in the 

 Tower, as he very narrowly escaped doing for privately 

 marrying the lieutenant's daughter. This, however, it 

 should be said, was soon after he became a "Vert," and 

 while he was private secretary to Lord Chancellor Ellesmere, 

 a period of the witty man's life not to be confounded with 

 the days when, becoming suddenly famous as a preacher, he 

 had fourteen livings offered him in one fell batch. 



Sir Humphrey Davy intimates that Dr. Paley, the gentle- 

 man dear to students of theology, did something with the 

 Wandle trout, and states that the profound divine was so 

 thorough an angler that when the Bishop of Durham asked 

 him when one of his most important works would be ready 

 for an expectant public, he replied, " My lord, I shall work 

 steadily at it when the fly-fishing season is over." 



Admiral Viscount Nelson lived at Merton, and was a fly- 

 fisher in the Wandle, even after he was reduced to one 

 hand. The great hero fished in more troubled waters 

 sometimes than "the blue transparent Vandalis," as Pope 

 loftily puts it. And referring again to the author of 

 " Salmonia," it will no doubt be remembered that the four 

 gentlemen who are made to interpret Sir Humphrey's ideas 

 upon angling opened their discourse, or to use the correct 

 description, " Introductory Conversation — Symposiac," with 



