out! I see you have a tender hand: this is a diminutive gentleman; e'en throw him in again, and let him grow till he be more worthy your anger.

VIAT. Pardon me, Sir; all's fish that comes to the hook with me now. Another!

PISC. And of the same standing.

VIAT. I see I shall have good sport now; another! and a grayling. Why you have fish here at will.

PISC. Come, come, cross the bridge, and go down the other side lower, where you will find finer streams, and better sport, I hope, than this. Look you, Sir, here's a fine stream now; you have length enough, stand a little further off, let me entreat you, and do but fish this stream like an artist, and peradventure a good fish may fall to your share. How now! what! is all gone?

VIAT. No, I but touched him; but that was a fish worth taking.

PISC. Why now, let me tell you, you lost that fish by your own fault, and through your own eagerness and haste; for you are never to offer to strike a good fish, if he do not strike himself, till first you see him turn his head after he has taken your fly, and then you can never strain your tackle in the striking, if you strike with any manner of moderation.* Come, throw in once again, and fish me this stream

Every candid fly-fisher will confess, that in nine cases out of ten, the trout hooks himself; and in rough, sometimes in smooth though dark water, the first notice you have of his spring is his weight on the line. Many a fish is lost by vain attempts at striking, which compel you to bring the line home for another cast, when a few inches more play would have done the business. Cotton's directions are, therefore, excellent. Better not strike at all, unless you are sure, and then strike easily by a turn of the wrist alone. In fishing far and fine, which is the surest way, especially in clear, still waters, it is not easy to see the fish, and you must be guided by the disturbance he makes of the surface. After

PART II.-F

by inches; for I assure you here are very good fish; both trout and grayling lie here; and at that great stone on the other side, it is ten to one a good trout gives you the meeting.

VIAT. I have him now, but he is gone down towards the bottom: I cannot see what he is, yet he should be a good fish by his weight; but he makes no great stir.

PISC. Why then, by what you say, I dare venture to assure you it is a grayling, who is one of the deadest-hearted fishes in the world, and the bigger he is, the more easily taken. Look you, now you see him plain; I told you what he was bring hither that landing-net, boy: and now, Sir, he is your own; and believe me a good one, sixteen inches long, I warrant him: I have taken none such this year.

VIAT. I never saw a grayling before look so black.

PISC. Did you not? why then let me tell you, that you never saw one before in right season: for then a grayling is very black about his head, gills, and down his back, and has his belly of a dark grey, dappled with black spots, as you see this is; and I am apt to conclude, that from thence he derives his name of umber. Though I must tell you, this fish

he has risen, cast your fly a little above the place where he showed himself, as a trout almost always heads up stream, and his spring will send him in that direction; then cast in different directions around him. If he be large enough to give you trouble (pleasant trouble !), get your rod in a perpendicular position as soon as possible; for then you have more power in playing him with it. Be sure, however, never to slack your line, or he may snap it and be off; neither grasp your line to draw him by it, nor attempt to basket him while you are standing in the water; but as soon as he is sufficiently exhausted, lead him to a shallow, and nab him so, that if he falls, it may not be into the water. If the fish be too small, such pains are unnecessary; or if you have a landing net, and do not use it until he is sufficiently subdued, you may secure him more easily. A trout may also be more readily killed by leading him down stream, or, if there be no current, hither and yonder, as so the water will rush into his open mouth and drown him.-Am. Ed.

is past his prime, and begins to decline, and was in better season at Christmas than he is now. But move on, for it grows towards dinner-time; and there is a very great and fine stream below, under that rock, that fills the deepest pond in all the river, where you are almost sure of a good fish.

VIAT. Let him come, I'll try a fall with him: but I had thought, that the grayling had been always in season with the trout, and had come in and gone out without him.*

PISC. Oh no! assure yourself a grayling is a winter fish; but such a one as would deceive any but such as know him very well indeed; for his flesh, even in his worst season, is so firm, and will so easily calver, that in plain truth he is very good meat at all times; but in his perfect season, which by the way, none but an over-grown grayling will ever be, I think him so good a fish, as to be little inferior to the best trout that ever I tasted in my life.

VIAT. Here's another skip-jack, and I have raised five or six more at least whilst you were speaking. Well, go thy way, little Dove: thou art the finest river that ever I saw, and the fullest of fish. Indeed, Sir, I like it so well, that I am afraid you will be troubled with me once a year, so long as we two live.

PISC. I am afraid I shall not, Sir: but were you once here a May or a June, if good sport would tempt you, I should then expect you would sometimes see me; for you would then say it were a fine river indeed, if you had once seen the sport at the height.

* For a description of the grayling, see the notes to Chap. VI. of the first part, in the text of which Walton, less informed than Cotton, differs from him as to the season of the fish. -Am. Ed.

VIAT. Which I will do, if I live, and that you please to give me leave. There was one,—and there another.

PISC. And all this in a strange river, and with a fly of your own making! why, what a dangerous man are you! VIAT. Aye, Sir, but who taught me? and as Damotas says by his man Dorus, so you may say by me,

....

If my man such praises have,

What then have I, that taught the knave? *

But what have we got here, a rock springing up in the middle of the river? this is one of the oddest sights that ever I saw.

* 'Tis a rock,

and almost as

PISC. Why, Sir, from that pike, that you see standing up there distant from the rock, this is called Pikein the fashion of Pool,* and young Mr. Izaak Walton was so aspire-steeple, pleased with it, as to draw it in landscape in black and white, in a blank book I have at home, as he has done several prospects of my house also, which I keep for a memorial of his Mr. Cotton's favor, and will show you, when we come up to

big. It stands in

the midst of the

river Dove; and

not far from

house, below

which place this

dinner.

delicate river takes a swift career betwixt many mighty rocks, much higher and bigger than St. Paul's Church before 'twas burnt. And this Dove being opposed by one of the highest of them, has at last forced itself a way through it; and, after a mile's concealment, appears again with more glory and beauty than before that opposition, running through the most pleasant valleys and most fruitful meadows that this nation can justly boast of.

VIAT. Has young master Izaak Walton been here too?

PISC. Yes, marry has he, Sir, and that again and again too, and in France since, and at Rome, and at Venice, and I

* From Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia, Book i., which reads,

"For if my man must praises have,

What then must I, that keep the knave?"

can't tell where; * but I intend to ask him a great many hard questions so soon as I can see him, which will be, God willing, next month. In the meantime, Sir, to come to this fine stream at the head of this great pool, you must venture over these slippery, cobbling stones; believe me, Sir, there you were nimble, or else you had been down; but now you are got over, look to yourself; for on my word, if a fish rise here he is like to be such a one as will endanger your tackle. How now?

VIAT. I think you have such command here over the fishes, that you can raise them by your word, as they say conjurers can do spirits, and afterward make them do what you bid them; for here's a trout has taken my fly: I had rather have lost a crown. What luck's this! he was a lovely

fish, and turned up a side like a salmon.

PISC. O, Sir, this is a war where you sometimes win, and must sometimes expect to lose. Never concern yourself for the loss of your fly; for ten to one I teach you to make a better. Who's that calls?

SERV. Sir, will it please you to come to dinner?

PISC. We come. You hear, Sir, we are called; and now take your choice whether we will climb this steep hill before you, from the top of which you will go directly into

Some account of this amiable man, who inherited his father's piety, and a measure of his talents, has been given in the Bib. Preface. He accompanied his uncle, Bishop Ken, to Rome, in the year of the great Papal Jubilee, 1675, from which journey, according to the text, he must have returned the next year. His skill as an artist was considerable, and Bowles (Life of Ken) says that an interesting specimen of it is preserved by his relation Dr. Hawes, which is nothing less than a portrait in crayons of his venerable father. His face, as we see it in a portrait among the additional plates to Pickering's great edition of Walton, is of singular beauty, giving evidence of refinement and goodness.--Am, Ed.