A LAY OF THE LEA. 201 
Out come reel and tackle— 
Out come midge and hackle— 
‘Length of gut like gossamer, on the south wind 
streaming— . 
And brace of palmers fine, 
As ever decked a line, 
Dubbed with herl, and ribbed with gold, in the sun- 
light gleaming. 
Bobbing ‘neath the bushes, 
Crouched among the rushes, 
On the rights of crown and state, I’m, alas! encroach- 
ing— 
What of that? I know 
My creel will soon o’erflow, 
If a certain Cerberus* do not spoil my poaching. 
* Does any one of my readers happen to remember the Cerberus 
in question, Tim Bates, the guardian of the Crown waters, at 
Waltham Abbey, some five-and-twenty years ago—the omni- 
present, the incorruptible Tim Bates, whom no expostulation could 
move, no entreaty melt, and who was even impervious to half- 
crowns? This unwinking worthy, one of the bétes noires of my 
angling boyhood, spoiled me many a day’s sport by his untimely 
apparition ; and I confess to a feeling of heathenish satisfaction, on 
hearing of the Lea’s ingratitude, and how, unlike Tiber in the case 
of Horatius, it did not ‘bear up” Tim Bates’s ‘‘chin,” when he 
slipped into its depth, with mortal result, one foggy ‘night or 
morning. 
Chatto mentions him in his Angler's Sowvenir, and celebrates 
his ‘lynx eyes,” 
