Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 392, June, 1848. Various
at once in coming down stairs, and jumping suddenly from chairs upon the carpet, for the purpose of persuading ourselves that we were getting into deep water, afforded but a very transitory hallucination. The act of jerking at dinner a young turkey, with a gaff, from a remote dish, to our plate, did not elicit the general acknowledgment of its graceful precision which we had anticipated; while an excellent and polished steel-yard, with which, in the absence of a salmon, we had been practising in the kitchen on a casual leg of mutton, having dazzled, perhaps, the eye of the butcher's boy, and being forgotten by us for a brief hour or so, has been, "like the lost Pleiad, seen no more below." During such moments, the memory even of delectable old Isaac was losing a little of its perennial fragrance – the reminiscences of all kinds of fishes were beginning to stink in the nostrils. "Who comes here? – A grenadier;" and in walked "The Angler's Companion to the Lochs and Rivers of Scotland, by Thomas Tod Stoddart."
Ordinary mortals, to whom, as to Peter Bell, yellow primroses are simply yellow primroses, might instantly, upon getting the book, open it, read it, and be delighted with it. But we sat for six weeks gazing at the volume without daring or wishing to lay a finger upon it. There was a great deal for us to think about before spreading our sails for another voyage with an old companion. The fact is, that we were humming, after our own fashion, one of Mr Stoddart's angling songs at the moment when his new work was placed before us, Now, these songs were not published yesterday; and many a time and oft out of them had we amused ourselves by forming the liveliest picture of the angler's life, pursuits, meditations, and emotions. From his being up with the sweet thrushes to meet "the morn upon the lea," till "homeward from the stream he turns," we followed him in Stoddart's musical track. His call to "bring him osier, line, and reel" – his scrutiny of the airs and clouds of heaven – his communings with bird and bee, flower and fay – his welcome to the cuckoo – his blessing of the "spring-tide bland" – his entreaty to the winds to waken —
his repose and summer trance, "beneath a willow wide" – his pensive musings, and comments, shaped by the enchanting realities around him, or by the pleasant shadows of his own memory and fancy – his feats of guile and skill – his patience and his toil – the excitement of his suspense – the exultation of his victory, and the joyousness and harmony which round his well-spent day, – all were represented and embodied in numbers than which none more melodious, heartier, or happier ever strengthened and gladdened, by stream or board, the disciples of Cotton and Walton. We paused before unfolding a new book; and then we read it thoroughly from beginning to end, without missing any word.
But time brings with it many vicissitudes. Winter, when nobody but a Stoddart fishes; swarms of European revolutions, which keep every thing, including fishing-rods, out of joint; and again, in this present 1848, a terrible spring-tide, which, standing sentinel at our doors with the keenness of a sword and the strength of a portcullis, has forbidden any body to think of fishing this year till June; – these things have inevitably, forcibly, and wisely obliged us to be silent. We take the earliest opportunity to thank Mr Stoddart for his book.
"Who is the happy warrior?" appears to us to be an interrogatory as nearly as possible destitute of all meaning. But upon the double hypothesis that it may have some meaning, and that we can paint in fresco, such a question might suggest an idea that the felicitous gentleman for whom the poet asks would be best pictured as Julius Caesar in the act of correcting the proof-sheets of his Commentaries. To do good and great actions is agreeable, but dangerous; to write well and nobly of the great and good things we have done is also agreeable, but troublesome; but when the danger and the trouble are both past and gone, to read what we have well written of what we have well done, with the conviction that an endless posterity will read it after us with pleasure and approbation, must be, we shall venture to imagine, most prodigiously agreeable to any respectable individual, whether he is actually a soldier, having purchased his commission at a heavy regulation price, or whether he is only provisionally obnoxious to be balloted for militia service, or accidentally liable to be called out, with a curse and a cutlet in his month, for the guerilla warfare of a special constable. We avow for ourselves, without a blush, that we are only one of those who may become warriors hereafter by statutory or municipal contingency. As yet we have not served in any campaign. On one occasion, indeed, the housemaid discovered, at early dawn, sprouting from the key-hole of the door, a notice, by which we were hastily summoned to quell a dreadful tumult at nine o'clock the night before. Late as the summons came, on reading it a thrill of posthumous glory permeated our frame; nor, when perusing in the newspapers at breakfast the eloquent recognition by the public authorities of the services of other special constables, could we repress the riotous throbbings of martial spirit and martial sympathy within us, as being one who, though de facto inert in dressing-gown and slippers, was entitled de jure, as the notice testified, to be active with badge and baton. We severely reprimanded, of course, the housemaid for bringing into the house stray bits of paper, which might have wrapped up most deleterious combustibles. She promised to be more cautious in future; and it has so happened that the magistrates have never taken practical advantage of our vigilant anxiety to protect the tranquillity of the city. But we are well aware that it has ever been exactly with a corresponding spirit that we have studied the Gallic battles and campaigns of the great Roman, where we have been free alike from the risk of fighting, and the botheration of writing. Our impression is, therefore, on the whole, exceedingly strong that the happy warrior may be more faithfully portrayed by ourselves than by Cæsar.
According to these principles of interpretation, let us inquire, who is the happy angler? To such a question any body who, in the former case, prefers Cæsar's claim to ours, will not fail to reply by bawling out the name of Stoddart. The parallel is a very good one. There is nothing in the science of angling theoretically of which Mr Stoddart is ignorant; there is nothing in the art of angling practically which Mr Stoddart has not tried with his own hand. He has been writing the annals of a laborious, persevering, incessant, and successful experience. He tells others what they may do, by showing them vividly and precisely what he has himself done. It is the record of a conqueror whose career exhibits occurrences so numerous, various, and striking, that the simple narrative of events teaches general principles; the mere accumulation of facts causes theory to vegetate – the movements which lead to victory on a particular occasion are adopted as laws to regulate subsequent operations in similar circumstances; the strategy of the emergency is accepted as universally normal. In a history so instructive, there must necessarily be a remarkable amount of patience and zeal, assiduity and skill, quick apprehension, and sagacious reflection. And where, as in the present instance, it happens that all this information is communicated with healthy racy vigour, and picturesque effect of language, while a dewy freshness of enthusiasm exhilarates the whole composition, it is not surely very surprising that, comfortably pendulous in our rocking-chair, conscious of never having encountered a billionth part of the fatigues undergone by Mr Stoddart, and possessing, in the manageable volume in our hand, a complete repertory of the fruits of the toil, experience, and judgment of that "admirable Triton," we should thus complacently believe that we are the happy angler – leaving it of course to Mr Stoddart, if he likes, to be a Julius Cæsar.
From the frontispiece we start, and after perambulating the book, to the frontispiece we return. "A day's fishing" will then be wondrously intelligible, and ought to be regarded with an angler's love, and an angler's pride. The picture from which the engraving is taken has been long familiar to us. Who painted it? At the left-hand corner of the plate the artist's name is legible enough; but there is much more, besides the name, printed in sympathetic ink which is visible only to the eye of the initiated. A word in thine ear, gentlest of piscatorial readers! The skill of the pencil is the animated reflection of the skill of the fishing rod. Nothing finny has the painter drawn which the angler has not killed. On the canvass his faithful brush has placed nothing which his success as an angler has not enabled him to observe for himself, to mark, and to daguerreotype in his inmost soul. No graceful outline has he traced; no gorgeous bulk has he stretched out in massive breadth or wavy length; no small head has he delicately curved; no, flood of light has he poured on gleaming panoply of interwoven scales of gold and silver; no shifting ray of exquisite colour has he caught in the very instant of brilliant evanescence; no purple spot or crimson star has he made to shine with distinctive brightness on the flank; no aureate or orange tint has he permitted to fade away along the body into pearly