* All sports that inflict pain on any living thing, without
attaining some useful end, are wanton and cowardly. Wild
boars, wolves, foxes, &c. may be hunted to extermination,
for they are public robbers; but to hunt the noble deer, for
the cruel pleasure of hunting him, is base.
With all our love of honest Izaak Walton, we feel a
shuddering when the “sentimental old savage” gives his
minute instructions to the tyro in angling how most
skilfully to transfix the writhing worm, (as though you
“loved him!”) and torture a poor fish. Piscator is a
cowardly rogue to sit upon a fair bank, the sun shining
above, and the pure stream rippling beneath, with his
instruments of death, playing pang against pang, and life
against life, for his contemplative recreation. What would
he say to a hook through his own gullet? Would it mitigate
his dying agonies to hear his dirge (even the milkmaid's
song!) chanted in harmonious concert with a brother of the
angle, who had played the like sinister trick on his
companion in the waters?
and would make a huge parade of his rod, line, and green-painted tin-can, sallying forth on a fine morning with malice prepense against the gudgeons and perch: but Dicky was a merciful angler: he was the gudgeon, for the too cunning fishes, spying his comical figure, stole his bait, and he hooked nothing but tin pots and old shoes. Here he sat in his accustomed chair and corner, dreaming of future quarterns, and dealing out odd sayings that would make the man in the moon hold his sides, and convulse the whole planet with laughter. His hypocrene was the cream of the valley; *
* Suett had at one time a landlady who exhibited an
inordinate love for that vulgar fluid ycleped geneva; a
beverage which Dicky himself by no means held in abhorrence.
She would order her servant to procure supplies after the
following fashion:—“Betty, go and get a quartern loaf and
half a quartern of gin.” Off bolted Betty,—she was speedily
recalled: “Betty, make it half a quartern loaf and a
quartern of gin.” But Betty had never got fairly across the
threshold, ere the voice was again heard:—“Betty, on second
thoughts, you may as well make it all gin!”
he dug his grave with his bottle, and gave up the ghost amidst a troop of spirits. Peace to his manes! Cold is the cheerful hearth, where he familiarly stirred the embers and silent the walls that echoed to “Old Wigs!” chanted by Jeffery Dunstan when he danced hop-scotch on a table spread out with tumblers and tobacco-pipes! Hushed is the voice of song. At this moment, as if to give our last assertion what Touchstone calls “the lie direct,” some Corydon from Petty France, the Apollo of a select singing party in the first floor front room, thus musically apostrophised his Blouzellinda of Bloomsbury.
She's all that fancy painted her, she's rosy without rouge,
Her gingham gown a modest brown turned up with
bright gamboge;
She learns to jar the light guitar, and plays the harpsi-
chols,
Her fortune's five-and-twenty pounds in Three per Cent