In the Peak Country. 137 



" His form and garb will familiar seem 

 As the guardian deity of the stream, 

 With his oval face and his grizzly locks, 

 And his smile like that of a sly old fox. 



" His vocation is, to instruct the young 

 Novitiates how the fly is flung : 

 To rig their tackle and range their flies, 

 And show them where to obtain a rise. 



" Long may he live to pursue his art, 



For few are there left to succeed his part : 

 And when he is gone let his epitaph be — 

 ' Here lies George Butcher, rare fisherman he ! ' " 



Mr. Charles Cotton knew these Peak streams intimately, 

 and was no doubt an accomplished fly-fisherman. His 

 essay " Being instructions how to Angle for Trout or Gray- 

 ling in a Clear Stream," is not such a smoothly-flowing 

 dialogue as that of his " most affectionate father and friend," 

 Walton, perhaps because he was — 



"Surprised with the sudden news of a sudden new 

 edition of your ' Complete Angler,' so that having little 

 more than ten days to turn me in and rub up my memory 

 ... I was forced upon the instant to scribble what I here 

 present to you." 



The styles, however, are different : there could not be 

 two Piscators. Between the two dialogues there is as much 

 difference as between a brick building of the Dutchman's 

 era and a weather-stained farmhouse thatched, gabled, and 

 slashed athwart with black oaken beams. Nevertheless, 

 Cotton is an excellent authority on Derbyshire fishing, and 

 requires very little editing from the modern expert. The 

 streams which he lauds as the finest in Europe for angling 

 have deteriorated, though they are still amongst the best 



