100 FISHING GOSSIP. 
So far as the last dozen words have any meaning 
at all, they mean that the angler is to commence a 
series of piscatory calisthenics in emulation of those 
of the fish spinning at the end of his line. 
But the soul of a Bagnall soars far above such 
commonplace trivialities as sense and grammar. 
How can we expect the vulgar restrictions of Lindley 
Murray to fetter a genius which can evoke from the 
depths of its inner consciousness such a peroration as 
the following, suggested by a sight of Pope’s house at 
Richmond :— 
“ Awaking from the reverie induced by the thought that 
fickle Nature had given so frail and disfigured a tenement to 
contain so glorious and sublime a mind, I drop down the 
gentle stream and view the fairest of England’s daughters en- 
gaged in the healthy occupation of urging their fairy boats o’er 
the bosom of the water, the graceful and voluptuous attitudes 
called into play by the exercise promoting the most passionate 
and ardent admiration, each elegant movement stamping them 
as more lithe than the sculls grasped by their tiny hands, and 
forming in their many-tinted garbs, aided by the drooping 
branches of the overhanging trees, a scene of beauty rarely 
surpassed.” 
Rarely surpassed, indeed, we should suppose ; and 
rarely equalled, we will venture to assert, the classical 
and appropriate lines in which it is commemorated. 
But then, as our author observes elsewhere, “it re- 
quires a delicacy of manipulation, ‘a touch how ex- 
quisitely fine,’ to do justice to these sort of themes.” 
