JOHN YOUNGER, SHOEMAKER, FLY-FISHER, AND POET.
In 1860 a charming little book on “River Angling for Salmon and Trout”[155] was added to our extensive angling literature by a devout follower of Isaac Walton. The preface showed that it was the work of a Lowland Scotchman, who was accustomed to divide his time between the two “gentle” occupations of shoemaking and fishing, and that this man, John Younger, had an enthusiasm for other things besides making fishing-boots and fishing-rods and lines, and the sport of the river-side. He was a zealous and, we had almost said, a desperate politician. He made corn-law rhymes, which came into the hands and drew forth praise from the pen of Ebenezer Elliott, who sent the best copy of his works as a present to the poetical shoemaker. In 1834 Younger tried the public with a volume of verse under the quaint title, “Thoughts as they Rise.”[156] But the public, like the shy fish of some of his own Scottish rivers, would not “rise” to his bait, for the work fell uncommonly flat. He was much more successful with his “River Angling,” which appeared first in 1840, and again, with a sketch of his life, in 1860. In 1847 John Younger won the second prize for an essay on “The Temporal Advantages of the Sabbath to the Working-Classes,” and it was a proud day for him and his neighbors at St. Boswell’s when he set off to go up to London to receive his reward of £15 at the hands of Lord Shaftesbury in the big meeting at Exeter Hall. Younger, who was all his life a brother of the craft, was born at Longnewton, in the parish of Ancrum, 5th July, 1785. He died and was buried at St. Boswell’s in June, 1860. As we are writing we observe that his autobiography[157] has just been published, concerning which a writer in the Athenæum remarks,[158] “John Younger, shoemaker, fly-fisher, and poet, has left a Life which is certainly worth reading;“ and adds, ”There is something more in him than a vein of talent sufficient to earn a local celebrity.” With this opinion agree the remarks of the Scotsman and the Sunderland Times, which said of him at the time of his death, “One of the most remarkable men of the population of the South of Scotland, whether as a genial writer of prose or verse or a man of high conversational powers and clear common-sense, the shoemaker of St. Boswell’s had few or no rivals in the South;“ and ”Nature made him a poet, a philosopher, and a nobleman; society made him a cobbler of shoes.” He was certainly a most original character, and his originality and genius appear in every chapter of his Autobiography.