Emerson, the mathematician, was a fly-fisher.
Dr. Birch, formerly Secretary to the Royal Society, was a lover of angling; and Dr. Wollaston and Sir Humphrey Davy, are instances of men of the highest philosophic attainments, finding pleasure in the rod and line.
Chantrey, was much attached to this amusement, and prided himself on the superiority of his equipment.
A sport which is thus seen to be so universally popular, has naturally been selected as a subject upon which some of our ablest men have written many instructive and interesting pages. The first treatise in our language appeared in 1496 but the earliest allusion to the art, is by Elian, who flourished in the year 225. In the fifteenth book of his History of Animals, he says, “that a fish of various color is taken in the River Austræum, between Beræa and Thessalonica.” He also describes a fly which frequents the river, which is greatly preyed on by this fish; he states, that the skilful fisherman, dresses an imitation of it on his hook, forming the body of purple coloured wool, and adding two yellow feathers of a cock’s hackle for wings.
The work which appeared in 1496, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde, and is known by the name of the “Book of St. Albans,” from its having been first printed in the monastery there in 1486. This book is a small folio of seventy-three leaves, and contains short treatises on hawking, hunting, fishing, &c. How long the latter art had been practiced in England before this publication, is not known; but the directions for dressing the twelve different kind of flies, (which even Walton, writing a hundred and fifty years later, availed himself of) are not such, as were likely to be suggested in the infancy of the art.
The treatise commences with the following expositions:—
“Solomon in his parables saith, ‘that a good spirit maketh a flourishing age;’ that is, a fair age and a long.” “If a man lack leech and medicine, he shall make three things, his leech and medicine, and he shall need never no more. The first of them is, a merry thought,—the second is, labour not outrageous,—the third is, diet measurable.”
The writer then proceeds to a comparison of angling, with hunting, hawking, and fowling, and after enumerating the inconveniences attendant on the three last, thus recounts the pleasures and advantages of angling.
“Thus me seemeth, that hunting and hawking, and also fowling, are so laborious and grievous, that none of them may perform, nor be the means to induce a man to a merry spirit; which is the cause of his long life, according unto the said parable of Solomon.