Billeder på siden
PDF
ePub
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

RECREATIONS

OF

CHRISTOPHER NORTH.

CHRISTOPHER IN HIS SPORTING JACKET.

FYTTE FIRST.

THERE is a fine and beautiful alliance between all pastimes pursued on flood, field, and fell. The principles in human nature on which they depend, are in all the same; but those principles are subject to infinite modifications and varieties, according to the difference of individual and national character. All such pastimes, whether followed merely as pastimes, or as professions, or as the immediate means of sustaining life, require sense, sagacity, and knowledge of nature and nature's laws; nor less, patience, perseverance, courage even, and bodily strength or activity, while the spirit which animates and supports them is a spirit of anxiety, doubt, fear, hope, joy, exultation, and triumph-in the heart of the young a fierce passion-in the heart of the old a passion still, but subdued and tamed down, without, however, being much dulled or deadened, by various experience of all the mysteries of the calling, and by the gradual subsiding of all impetuous impulses in the frames of all mortal men beyond perhaps threescore, when the blackest head will be becoming gray, the most nervous knee less firmly knit, the most steely-springed instep less elastic, the keenest eye less of a far-keeker, and, above all, the most boiling heart less like a caldron or a crater-yea, the whole man subject to some dimness or decay, and, consequently, the whole duty of man like the new edition of a book, from which many passages that formed the chief glory of the editio princeps have been expunged-the whole character of the style corrected without being thereby improved-just like the later editions of the Pleasures of Imagination, which were written by Akenside when he was about twenty-one, and altered by him at forty-tc the exclusion or destruction of many most splendida vitia, by which process the poem, in our humble opinion, was shorn of its brightest beams, and suffered disastrous twilight and eclipse-perplexing critics.

Now, seeing that such pastimes are in number almost infinite, and infinite the varieties of

human character, pray what is there at all sur prising in your being madly fond of shootingand your brother Tom just as foolish about fishing-and cousin Jack perfectly insane cn fox-hunting-while the old gentleman your fa ther, in spite of wind and weather, perennial gout, and annual apoplexy, goes a-coursing of the white-hipped hare on the bleak Yorkshire wolds-and uncle Ben, as if just escaped from Bedlam or St. Luke's, with Dr. Haslam at his heels, or with a few hundred yards' start of Dr. Warburton, is seen galloping, in a Welsh wig and strange apparel, in the rear of a pack of Lilliputian beagles, all barking as if they were as mad as their master, supposed to be in chase of an invisible animal that keeps eternally doubling in field and forest-"still hoped for, never seen," and well christened by the name of Escape?

Phrenology sets the question for ever at rest. All people have thirty-three faculties. Now there are but twenty-four letters in the alphabet; yet how many languages-some six-thou sand we believe, each of which is susceptible of many dialects! No wonder, then, that you might as well try to count all the sands on the sea-shore as all the species of sportsmen.

There is, therefore, nothing to prevent any man with a large and sound development from excelling, at once, in rat-catching and deer-stalking—from being, in short, a universal genius in sports and pastimes. Heaven has made us such a man.

Yet there seems to be a natural course or progress in pastimes. We do not now speak of marbles or knuckling down at taw-or trundling a hoop-or pall-lall-or pitch and toss-or any other of the games of the school playground. We restrict ourselves to what, somewhat inaccurately perhaps, are called field-sports. Thus angling seems the earliest of them all in the order of nature. There the new-breeched urchin stands on the low bridge of the little bit burnie! and with cooked pin, baited with one unwrithing ring of a dead worm, and attached to a yarn-thread-for he has not yet got into hair, and is years off gut-his rod of the mere willow or hazel wand, there will

6

was possible, and dashing upon him like an osprey, soars up with him in his talons to the bank, breaking his line as he hurries off to a spot of safety twenty yards from the pool, and then flinging him down on a heath-surrounded plat of sheep-nibbled verdure, lets him bounce about till he is tired, and lies gasping with unfrequent and feeble motions, bright and beautiful, and glorious with all his yellow light and crimson lustre, spotted, speckled, and starred in his scaly splendour, beneath a sun that never shone before so dazzingly: but now the ra diance of the captive creature is dimmer and obscured, for the eye of day winks and seems almost shut behind that slow-sailing mass of clouds, composed in equal parts of air, rain, and sunshine.

ne stand during all his play-hours, as forgetful of his primer as if the weary art of printing had never been invented, day after day, week after week, month after month, in mute, deep, earnest, passionate, heart-mind-and-soulengrossing hope of some time or other catching a minnow or a beardie! A tug-a tug! With face ten times flushed and pale by turns ere you could count ten, he at last has strength, in the agitation of his fear and joy, to pull away at the monster-and there he lies in his beauty among the gowans and the greensward, for he has whapped him right over his head and far away, a fish a quarter of an ounce in weight, and, at the very least, two inches long! Off he flies, on wings of wind, to his father, mother, and sisters and brothers, and cousins, and all Springs, summers, autumns, winters-each the neighbourhood, holding the fish aloft in both hands, still fearful of its escape, and, like within itself longer, by many times longer than a genuine child of corruption, his eyes brighten the whole year of grown-up life, that slips at at the first blush of cold blood on his small last through one's fingers like a knotless thread fumy fingers. He carries about with him, up--pass over the curled darling's brow; and stairs and down-stairs, his prey upon a plate; he will not wash his hands before dinner, for he exults in the silver scales adhering to the thumb-nail that scooped the pin out of the baggy's maw-and at night, " cabin'd, cribb'd, confined," he is overheard murmuring in his sleep-a thief, a robber, and a murderer, in his yet infant dreams!

look at him now, a straight and strengthy stripling, in the savage spirit of sport, springing over rock-ledge after rock-ledge, nor heeding aught as he plashes knee-deep, or waistbandhigh, through river-feeding torrents, to the glorious music of his running and ringing reel, after a tongue-hooked salmon, insanely seeking with the ebb of tide, but all in vain, the white No hazel or willow wand, breakers of the sea.

the very left is dexterous; but a twenty-feet rod of Phin's, all ring-rustling, and a-glitter with the preserving varnish, limber as the attenuating line itself, and lithe to its topmost tenuity as the elephant's proboscis-the hiccory and the horn without twist, knot, or flaw-from butt to fly a faultless taper, "fine by degrees and beautifully less," the beau-ideal of a rod by the skill of cunning craftsman to the senses materialized! A fish-fat, fair, and forty! "She is a salmon, therefore to be woo'd-she is a salmon, therefore to be won"-but shy, timid, capricious, headstrong, now wrathful and now full of fear, like any other female whom the cruel artist has hooked by lip or heart, and, in spite of all her struggling, will bring to the gasp at last; and then with calm eyes behold her lying in the shade dead or worse than dead,

From that hour Angling is no more a mere delightful day-dream, haunted by the dim hopes no half-crown rod of ash framed by village of imaginary minnows, but a reality-an art-wright, is now in his practised hands, of which a science of which the flaxen-headed schoolboy feels himself to be master-a mystery in which he has been initiated; and off he goes now all alone, in the power of successful passion to the distant brook-brook a mile offwith fields, and hedges, and single trees, and little groves, and a huge forest of six acres, between it and the house in which he is boarded or was born! There flows on the slender music of the shadowy shallows-there pours the deeper din of the birch-tree'd waterfall. The scared water-pyet flits away from stone to stone, and dipping, disappears among the airy bubbles, to him a new sight of joy and wonder. And oh! how sweet the scent of the broom or furze, yellowing along the braes, where leap the lambs, less happy than he, on the knolls of sunshine! His grandfather has given him a half-crown rod in two pieces-yes, his line is of hair twisted-fast-fading, and to be re-illumined no more the plaited by his own soon-instructed little fingers. By Heavens, he is fishing with the fly! And the Fates, who, grim and grisly as they are painted to be by full-grown, ungrateful, lying poets, smile like angels upon the paidler in the brook, winnowing the air with their wings into western breezes, while at the very first throw the yellow trout forsakes his fastness beneath the bog-wood, and with a lazy wallop, and then a sudden plunge, and then a race like lightning, changes at once the child into the boy, and shoots through his thrilling and aching heart the ecstasy of a new life expanding in that glorious pastime, even as a rainbow on a sudden brightens up the sky. Fortuna favet fortibus-and with one long pull, and strong pull, and pull altogether, Johnny lands a twelveincher on the soft, smooth, silvery sand of the only bay in all the burn where such an exploit

lustre of her beauty, insensible to sun or
shower, even the most perishable of all perish-
able things in a world of perishing!-But the
salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to
spring to the plunging-stone. There, suddenly,
instinct with new passion, she shoots out of
the foam like a bar of silver bullion; and, re-
lasping into the flood, is in another moment at
the very head of the water fall! Give her the
butt-give her the butt-or she is gone for ever
with the thunder into ten fathom deep!-Now
comes the trial of your tackle-and when was
Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or
Her snout is southwards-right up
cataract?
the middle of the main current of the hill-born
river, as if she would seek its very course
where she was spawned! She still swims
swift, and strong, and deep-and the line goes
steady, boys, steady-stiff and steady as a Tory

in stem and round in head, visible and audible too from afar the bee-resounding umbrage, alike on stormy sea-coast and in sheltered in land vale, still loving the roof of the fisher man's or peasant's cottage.

Then comes, perhaps, the city pop-gun, in shape like a very musket, such as soldiers bear-a Christmas present from parent, once a colonel of volunteers-nor feeble to discharge the pea-bullet or barley-shot, formidable to face and eyes; nor yet unfelt, at six paces, by hin der-end of playmate, scornfully yet fearfully exposed. But the shooter soon tires of such ineffectual trigger-and his soul, as well as his hair, is set on fire by that extraordinary compound-Gunpowder. He begins with burning off his eyebrows on the King's birthday squibs and crackers follow, and all the plea sures of the pluff. But he soon longs to let off a gun-" and follow to the field some warlike lord"-in hopes of being allowed to discharge one of the double-barrels, after Ponto has made his last point, and the half-hidden chimneys of home are again seen smoking among the trees. This is his first practice in fire arms, and from that hour he is a Shooter.

in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal fin-danger in the flap of her tail-and yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. Why the river was yesterday in spate, and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or obstruction, -the course is clear-no tree-roots here-no floating branches-for during the night they have all been swept down to the salt loch. In medio tutissimas ibis-ay, now you feel she begins to fail-the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What! another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a seacook!-you in the tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds?-Ha! Watty Ritchie, my man, is that you? God bless your honest laughing phiz! What Watty, would you think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tam Grieve never gruppit sae heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council.Curse that colley! Ay! well done, Watty! Then there is in most rural parishes-and Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks- of rural parishes alone do we condescend to if that white one, with caving horns, kicking speak-a pistol, a horse one, with a bit of silver beels, and straight-up tail, come bellowing by on the butt-perhaps one that originally served between us and the river, then, "Madam! all in the Scots Greys. It is bought, or borrowed, is lost, except honour!" If we lose this Fish by the young shooter, who begins firing first at six o'clock, then suicide at seven. Our will at barn-doors, then at trees, and then at living is made-ten thousand to the Foundling-ditto things-a strange cur, who, from his lolling to the Thames Tunnel-ha-ha-my Beauty! tongue may be supposed to have the hydrophobia Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver-a cat that has purred herself asleep on the side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if sunny churchyard wall, or is watching mice at all further resistance now were vain, and grace- their hole-mouths among the graves—a waterfully thou wert surrendering thyself to death! rat in the mill-lead-or weasel that, running to No faith in female-she trusts to the last trial his retreat in the wall, always turns round to look of her tail-sweetly workest thou, O Reel of at you-a goose wandered from his common Reels! and on thy smooth axle spinning in disappointed love-or brown duck, easily sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our mistaken by the unscrupulous for a wild one, own worthy planet. Scrope-Bainbridge- in pond remote from human dwelling, or on Maule-princes among Anglers-oh! that you meadow by the river side, away from the clack were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphry? of the muter-mill. The corby-crow, too, shoutAt his retort? By mysterious sympathy-far ed out of his nest on some tree lower than off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we usual, is a good flying mark to the more adare killing the noblest fish whose back ever vanced class: or morning magpie, a-chatter rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the at skreigh of day close to the cottage door Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, en- among the chickens; or a flock of pigeons tranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Ab- wheeling overhead on the stubble field, or sitbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! ting so thick together, that every stock is blue l'oor Sandy-why on thy pale face that melan- with tempting plumage. choly smile!-Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with a swirl-whitening as she nears the sand-there she has it-struck right into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or Venus-and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before

he Flood!

"The child is father of the man,

And I would wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety!" So much for the Angler. The Shooter, again, he begins with his pipe-gun, formed of he last year's growth of a branch of the planetree-the beautiful dark-green-leaved and fragrant-flowered plane-tree-that stands straight

[ocr errors]

But the pistol is discharged for a fowling piece-brown and rusty, with a slight crack probably in the muzzle, and a lock out of all proportion to the barrel. Then the young shooter aspires at halfpennies thrown up into the air-and generally hit, for there is never wanting an apparent dent in copper metal; and thence he mounts to the glancing and skimming swallow, a household bird, and therefore to be held sacred, but shot at on the excuse of its being next to impossible to hit him-an opinion strengthened into belief by several summers' practice. But the small brown and white marten wheeling through below the bridge, or along the many-holed red sand-bank, is admitted by all boys to be fair game-and still more, the longed-winged legless black

« ForrigeFortsæt »