2 FISHING GOSSIP. 
perhaps be a puzzler to name; and so evidently 
thought Izaak Walton’s poet, Jo Chalkill, when he 
was driven to.find a rhyme for it in sturgeon. Poor 
Jo! “gudgeon” was evidently altogether too much 
for him. Elsewhere he tries his hand at it again 
with even worse success :— 
“ Roach or dace 
We do chase, 
Bleak or gudgeon 
Without grudging.” 
Awful! He might at least have improved upon 
this, by adopting the spelling of Davors :— 
“ And thou, sweet Boyd, that with thy watery sway 
Dost wash the cliffes of Deighton and of Week .. . 
In whose fair streams the speckled trout doth play, 
The roach, the dace, the gudging, and the bleike.” 
How much more neatly “John Williamson, gent, 
temp. 1740,” manages the matter :— 
“ Tho’ little art the gudgeon may suffice, 
His sport is good, and with the greatest vies ; 
Few lessons will the angler’s use supply 
Where he’s so ready of himself to die !” 
Well, be the difficulty great or small, there cer- 
- tainly is a peculiar fascination in catching, if not in 
poetising, gudgeon. Doesn't Salter tell us of an ang- 
ling curate who was engaged to be married to a bishop’s 
daughter, lingering so long over his twelve-dozenth 
fish as to arrive too late for the ceremony, whereupon 
