THE LITEJRATUKE OF PISHING. 63 



a friend of mine is engaged on a discourse in which he 

 will endeavour to show from his writings that " the im- 

 mortal bard " was an angler, just as others have elaborated 

 Shakspeare " as a divine/' "as a lawyer/' "as a phy- 

 sician," and as everything else. But Pope, Thomson, 

 and Gay may certainly be claimed as having well sung 

 the praises of " Fish and Fishing," or at least of having 

 thrown a poetic halo round the Art of Angling. 



Here. I shall venture to insert, as a curiosity of the 

 Poetical Literature of Angling, a " piscatorial puff " 

 issued some years ago in the form of a handbill by a fish- 

 ing-tackle-maker in Hungerford Market. It was headed 

 The Skeleton Angler, and in the last edition revised by 

 himself it thus runs :— » 



" When the old clock in yon grey tower 

 Proclaims the deep, still midnight hour, 

 And ominous birds are on the wing, 

 I rise from the realms of the bony king. 

 My bonny elm coffin I shoulder and take 

 To fish in the blood-red phantom lake, 

 Where many a brace of spectral trout 

 Tor ever frisk, dart, and frolic about ; 

 Then the hyaena's ravening voice 

 Gladdens and makes my heart rejoice. 

 The glow-worm and the death's-head moth 

 Are killing baits On the crimson froth. 

 For work-bench I've the sculptured tomb, 

 Where tackle I form by the silent moon ; 

 Of churchyard yew my rods I make ; 

 Worms from the putrid corpse I take ; 

 Lines I plait from the golden hair 

 Pluck'd from the head of a damsel fair ; 

 Floats of the mournful cypress tree 

 I carve while night-winds whistle free ; 

 My plummets are moulded of coffin-lead ; 

 For paste I seize the parish bread ; 



