Father Isaac,--When I would be quiet and go angling it is my custom to carry in my wallet thy pretty book,"The Compleat Angler."Here,methinks,if I find not trout I shall find content,and good company,and sweet songs,fair milkmaids,and country mirth.For you are to know that trout be now scarce and whereas he was ever a fearful fish,he hath of late become so wary that none but the cunningest anglers may be even with him.
It is not as it was in your time,Father,when a man might leave his shop in Fleet Street,of a holiday,and,when he had stretched his legs up Tottenham Hill,come lightly to meadows chequered with waterlilies and lady-smocks,and so fall to his sport.Nay,now have the houses so much increased,like a spreading sore (through the breaking of that excellent law of the Conscientious King and blessed Martyr,whereby building beyond the walls was forbidden),that the meadows are all swallowed up in streets.And as to the River Lea,wherein you took many a good trout,I read in the news sheets that "its bed is many inches thick in horrible filth,and the air for more than half a mile on each side of it is polluted with a horrible,sickening stench,"so that we stand in dread of a new Plague,called the Cholera.And so it is all about London for many miles,and if a man,at heavy charges,betake himself to the fields,lo you,folk are grown so greedy that none will suffer a stranger to fish in his water.
So poor anglers are in sore straits.Unless a man be rich and can pay great rents,he may not fish in England,and hence spring the discontents of the times,for the angler is full of content,if he do but take trout,but if he be driven from the waterside,he falls,perchance,into evil company,and cries out to divide the property of the gentle folk.As many now do,even among Parliament-men,whom you loved not,Father Isaak,neither do I love them more than Reason and Scripture bid each of us be kindly to his neighbour.But,behold,the causes of the ill content are not yet all expressed,for even where a man hath licence to fish,he will hardly take trout in our age,unless he be all the more cunning.For the fish,harried this way and that by so many of your disciples,is exceeding shy and artful,nor will he bite at a fly unless it falleth lightly,just above his mouth,and floateth dry over him,for all the world like the natural ephemeris.And we may no longer angle with worm for him,nor with penk or minnow,nor with the natural fly,as was your manner,but only with the artificial,for the more difficulty the more diversion.For my part I may cry,like Viator in your book,"Master,I can neither catch with the first nor second Angle:Ihave no fortune."
So we fare in England,but somewhat better north of the Tweed,where trout are less wary,but for the most part small,except in the extreme rough north,among horrid hills and lakes.Thither,Master,as methinks you may remember,went Richard Franck,that called himself Philanthropus,and was,as it were,the Columbus of anglers,discovering for them a new Hyperborean world.But Franck,doubtless,is now an angler in the Lake of Darkness,with Nero and other tyrants,for he followed after Cromwell,the man of blood,in the old riding days.How wickedly doth Franck boast of that leader of the giddy multitude,"when they raged,and became restless to find out misery for themselves and others,and the rabble would herd themselves together,"as you said,"and endeavour to govern and act in spite of authority."So you wrote;and what said Franck,that recreant angler?Doth he not praise "Ireton,Vane,Nevill,and Martin,and the most renowned,valorous,and victorious conqueror,Oliver Cromwell"?Natheless,with all his sins on his head,this Franck discovered Scotland for anglers,and my heart turns to him when he praises "the glittering and resolute streams of Tweed."In those wilds of Assynt and Loch Rannoch,Father,we,thy followers,may yet take trout,and forget the evils of the times.
But,to be done with Franck,how harshly he speaks of thee and thy book."For you may dedicate your opinion to what scribbling putationer you please;the Compleat Angler if you will,who tells you of a tedious fly story,extravagantly collected from antiquated authors,such as Gesner and Dubravius."Again he speaks of "Isaac Walton,whose authority to me seems alike authentick,as is the general opinion of the vulgar prophet,"&c.
Certain I am that Franck,if a better angler than thou,was a worse man,who,writing his "Dialogues Piscatorial"or "Northern Memoirs"five years after the world welcomed thy "Compleat Angler,"was jealous of thy favour with the people,and,may be,hated thee for thy loyalty and sound faith.But,Master,like a peaceful man avoiding contention,thou didst never answer this blustering Franck,but wentest quietly about thy quiet Lea,and left him his roaring Brora and windy Assynt.How could this noisy man know thee--and know thee he did,having argued with thee in Stafford--and not love Isaak Walton?A pedant angler,I call him,a plaguy angler,so let him huff away,and turn we to thee and to thy sweet charm in fishing for men.
