Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

172 PLUTARCH—CLEOPATRA—OPPIAN—ATHEN^EUSand slimmer, for fear lest if it catch a broad shadow, it mightmove the doubt and suspicion that is naturally in fishes." Moreover, the line they make not with many water knots "(happy anglers !)," but desire to have it as plain and evenas possibly may be, without any roughness, for that this givethas it were some denuntiation unto them of fraud and deceit.They take order likewise that the hairs which reach to the hookshould seem as white as possibly they can devise, for the whiterthey be the less are they seen in the water for their conformityand likeness in colour to it." iWe anglers seem of a verity " nae gleg at the uptak."After some 1650 years we find John Whitney, in the preface toThe Genteel Recreation : or the Pleasure of Angling, ascribingwith modesty as to personal prowess, but quiet pride as todiscovery, his success very largely to the use of " fine Tackling "which in the poem (!) he further, if in barbarous verse, enforces," Fineness in Angling's th' Anglers nearest Rule :For Prudence must still regulate in all."The sentence in his Preface is apposite to many a Preface,whether in prose or verse. " As to the verse there is fault andfolly enough, but grant Poetical License, if in pleasing nobodyI have pleased myself, and that's all the reward I desire," foralas ! to many of us writers self-pleasing must be the solereward of our desert, if not of our desire.Misrepresentation as a despiser of fishing and fishermenhas clutched another victim. Dr. Johnson, of all people ! AsPlutarch has been branded for an opinion — not his own, so Johnsonhas been held guilty of the famous libel " A worm at one endand a fool at the other." The popular belief is all false.According to Boswell, he was very appreciative—an attitudenot always Johnsonian—of Walton's work.Again, it was no other than he ^ who urged Moses Browneto bring out in 1750 a new edition—the fifth and last was^ De Sol. Anim., 24. (Holland's Translation.)2 London, 1700. Dr. Turrell, op. cit., p. 157, believes Whitney to havebeen the first to recommend the use of the floating fly —not for the purpose ofcircumventing the wily trout, but to prevent the fly being gobbled by theminnows.3 Cf. R. B. Marston, Walton and some Earlier Writers on Angling, 1894, aninformative and yet delightful volume.^