BUT TO RETURN TO our library. The first fact that strikes one on reading the catalogue is the vast increase during the last decade in the percentage of works wholly or in great part dealing with fly-fishing. As supply implies demand, this of course shows the growing importance of the fly-fisher in the book market. But the slightest examination of the books themselves shows more than this. It shows how varied are his tastes. Save that fly-fishing is, in some measure, a common factor throughout, it would be difficult to imagine works differing more widely one from another in treatment and design. Here we find a pastoral, instinct with love of Nature in her country gown. First, in the writer’s mind, is the harmony of willow-herb or loosestrife, contrasted with the many-tinted greens of grass, rush, and sedge; the soft, modest melody of the reed-warbler; the scent of the meadow sweet. Next, the metallic lustre of the dragon-fly, poised on its rustling wings of gauze as it hovers over its prey, the defenceless lepidoptera; and, last of all, not without obvious effort, comes the memory of that three-pound trout he lost in the weeds, under the dark green tassels of the water-crowfoot.
Our hand then falls perchance on a volume of historical and antiquarian research, full of booklore, studded with quotation, translation, paraphrase, and adaptation from the classics and from the learned monks of the middle ages—who loved fishes no less the loaves. It starts from pre-historic China and ancient Egypt; plods through Greece and Rome, halting in the second century of the Christian era to tell us of Oppian’s five books on fishing, and to quote the translation of the passage from Ælian describing the mode of dressing an artificial imitation of the “Hippurus” —whatever fly that may have been—as tied by the Macedonian fishermen, and used by them to catch certain river fish with “spotted skins”—doubtless trout.
This, by the way, is said by most writers on angling literature to be the first mention in any Latin or Greek author of an artificial fly. It may be so. But Martial (who was, of course, before Ælian), in his Epigram to Quintianus (lib. V., xviii.), says:—
Imitantur hamos dona: namque quis nescit
Avidum vorata decipi scarum musca?
“In greedy haste the scarus plies his fin,
Takes in the fly—and finds it a ‘take in’!”
And this fly that was eagerly gobbled by the greedy scarus may equally well have been an artificial as a natural insect. Moreover, Martial likens gifts to hooks, not to baits impaled on hooks. Surely this looks as if hook and bait were one and inseparable, as in the case of an artificial fly!
But I have dwelt too long on this book. It contains, inter alia, all that is known and much that is still matter of conjecture about the fresh- and salt-water stews of the Roman patricians—notably of Lucullus the luxurious, and his boon companions—but little of special interest to the fly-fisher; so we will seek further.
We must not pass over this little book, bound in green cloth with a gem engraved thereon, representing a man fishing with a rod no longer than his arm. The rod, in its length, may fairly represent the scant measure of practical hints on fishing to be gleaned within; but the work is overflowing with pleasant personal anecdote, happy descriptive word-painting, quaint northern legends, and local romance. In spite of its title, Angling Sketches, it may be read and relished by all, whether of the craft or no. It is written by Andrew Lang.
