THE GUDGEON. 317 



finding various aquatic insects in the troubled water. 

 Indeed, this raking is an absolute necessity for success, 

 as any gudgeon-fisher well knows by experience ; and 

 therefore Mr. Blakey's remark that " in streams it is, of 

 course, useless," is perhaps one of the strangest observa- 

 tions ever made in a book which professes to give definite 

 instructions for angling. The Thames fishermen call the 

 process " scratching their backs," i. e. of the gudgeon. 



But let it not be supposed that even in July, August, 

 and September gudgeon are always in the humour for 

 feeding. They are capricious, like most other fish, and 

 subject more or less to mysterious atmospheric influences 

 which affect their disposition to bite. When, however, 

 they are thoroughly in the humour the fun is " fast and 

 furious," and three or four rods will often take as many 

 as forty to sixty dozen in a day, and even more. So 

 greedy are they, and so easily captured on propitious oc- 

 casions, that they have enriched our language with the 

 verb to " gudgeon," Sir Walter Scott speaking of a per- 

 son as " gudgeoned out of the opportunities given him." 

 Swift defines a human gudgeon as " a person easily cheated 

 and ensnared," and Gay sings, — 



" What gudgeons are we men, 

 Every woman's easy prey ! 

 Though we've felt the hook, again 

 "We bite, and they betray." 



Thus the suggestion in Hood's " Angler's Lament," is a 

 pur§ poetic fiction, when he says, — 



" At a brandling once gudgeons would gape, 



But they seem to have alter'd their iprms, now. 

 Have they've taken advice of the Council of Nice, 

 And rejected the Diet of Worms, now?" 



