The breeze blows up stream, and the trout are rising incessantly, taking something small. They will not look at any artificial fly, even in the rippling breeze; there is nothing small enough in any fly-book to catch them this afternoon. But when the sun gets low, and the great brown moths come out and flutter over the water, the red palmer will catch a dish of fish. Willow trees--"withies" they call them hereabouts--grow along the brook-side. So white are the backs of their oval leaves that when the breeze turns them back, the woods by the river look bright and silvery. To-morrow, when the breeze has almost died away, only the tops of the willows will be silvered; the next day, if all be calm and still, all will be green as emerald. Such infinite variety is there in the woods! Not only do the tints change month by month, but day by day the colour varies; so that there is always something new, some fresh effect of light and shade to delight the eye of man in the quiet English country. Dotted about in the midst of the stream are little islands of forget-me-nots. The lovely light blue is reflected everywhere in the water. Very beautiful are the scorpion-grasses both on the banks among the rushes and scattered about in mid stream.
The meadows are full of life. There are sounds sweet to the ear and sights pleasing to the eye. In the new-mown water-meadow grasshoppers--such hosts of them that they could never be numbered for multitude--are chirping and dancing merrily. "They make the field ring with their importunate chink, whilst the great cattle chew the cud and are silent. How like the great and little of mankind!" as Edmund Burke said years ago. By catching one of these "meagre, hopping insects of the hour," you will see that their backs are green as emerald and their bellies gold: some have a touch of purple over the eyes; their thighs, which are enormously developed for jumping purposes, have likewise a delicate tinge of purple.
Contrary to the saying of Izaak Walton, the trout do not seem to care much for grasshoppers nowadays, although perhaps they may relish them in streams where food is less plentiful. Our trout even prefer the tiny yellow frogs that are to be found in scores by the brook-side in early August. We have often offered them both in the deep "pill" below the garden; and though they would come with a dart and take the little frog, they merely looked at the grasshopper in astonishment, and seldom took one.
As we stand on the rustic bridge above the "pill" gazing down into the smooth flowing water, dark trout glide out of sight into their homes in the stonework under the hatch. These are the fish that rise not to the fly, but prey on their grandchildren, growing darker and lankier and bigger-headed every year. Wherever you find a deep hole and an ancient hatchway there you will also find these great black trout, always lying in a spot more or less inaccessible to the angler, and living for years until they die a natural death.
Was ever a place so full of fish as this "pill"? Looking down into the deeper water, where the great iron hooks are set to catch the poachers' nets, I could see dozens of trout of all sizes, but mostly small. At the tail of the pool are lots of small ones, rising with a gentle dimple. As the days became hotter and the stream ran down lower and lower, the trout left the long shallow reaches, and assembled here, where there is plenty of water and plenty of food.
Standing on the bridge by the ancient spiked gate bristling with sharp barbs of iron, like rusty spear and arrow-heads (our ancestors loved to protect their privacy with these terrible barriers), I listened to the waterfall three hundred yards higher up, with its ceaseless music; the afternoon sun was sparkling on the dimpling water, which runs swiftly here over a shallow reach of gravel--the favourite spawning-ground of the trout. There is no peep of river scenery I like so much as this. Thirty yards up stream a shapely ash tree hangs its branches, clothed with narrow sprays, right across the brook, the fantastic foliage almost touching the water. A little higher up some willows and an elm overhang from the other side.
There is something unspeakably striking about a country lane or a shallow, rippling brook overarched with a tracery of fretted foliage like the roof of an old Gothic building.
Who that has ever visited the village of Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire will forget the lane by which he approached the home and last resting-place of the poet Gray? Perhaps you came from Eton, and after passing along a lane that is completely overhung with an avenue of splendid trees, where the thrushes sing among the branches as they sing nowhere else in that neighbourhood, you turned in at a little rustic gate. Straight in front of your eyes were very legibly written on grey stone three of the finest verses of the "Elegy." The monument itself is plain, not to say hideous, but the simple words inscribed thereon are unspeakably grand when read amongst the surroundings of "wood" and "rugged elm" and "yew-tree's shade," unchanged as they are after the lapse of a century and a half. The place, and more especially the lane, is a fitting abode for the spirit of the poet. One could almost hear the song of him who, "being dead, yet speaketh":
"And the birds in the sunshine above
Mingled their notes therewith, like voices of spirits departed."
LONGFELLOW.
Gray is a poet for whom, in common with most Englishmen, the present writer has a sincere respect. It has been said, however, of the "Elegy" by one critic that the subject of the poem gives it an unmerited popularity, and by another--and that quite recently--that it is the "high-water mark of mediocrity." Although Gray's own modest dictum was the foundation of the first of these harsh criticisms, we are unable to allow the truth of the one and must strongly protest against the other. It has been reported that Wolfe, the celebrated general, after reciting the "Elegy" on the eve of the assault on Quebec, declared that he would sooner have written such a poem than win a victory over the French. This was nearly a century and a half ago. Yet after so long a lapse of time the verses still retain their hold on the minds of all classes. In spite of the fact that Matthew Arnold and other admirers have declared that the "Elegy" was not Gray's masterpiece, yet it was this poem that brought a man who accomplished but a small amount of work into such lasting fame. From beginning to end, as Professor Raleigh says of Milton's work, the "Elegy" "is crowded with examples of felicitous and exquisite meaning given to the infallible word." Was ever a poem more frequently quoted or so universally plagiarised? In writing or speaking about the country and its inhabitants, if we would express ourselves as concisely as we possibly can, we are bound to quote the "Elegy"; it is invariably the shortest road to a terse expression of our meaning. Who can improve on "Far from the madding crowd's ignoble strife," or "The short and simple annals of the poor"? If Gray's "Elegy" is but "a mosaic of the felicities" of those who went before, let it be remembered that had he not laboriously pieced together that mosaic, these "felicities" would have been a sealed book to the majority of Englishmen. Not one man in a hundred now reads some of the authors from which they were culled. And as Landor said of Shakespeare, "He is more original than his originals." Even that strange individual, Samuel Johnson, who was accustomed whenever Gray's poetry was mentioned either to "crab" it directly or "damn it with faint praise," towards the end of his career admitted in his "Lives of the Poets" that "the churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo." But the chief value of the work seems really to lie in this: it has dignified the rural scenes and the honest rustics of England. It has invested every hoary-headed swain, every busy housewife, and every little churchyard in the country with a special dignity and a lasting charm. The traveller cannot look upon these scenes and faces without unconsciously connecting them with the lines he knows so well. Gray's "Elegy" will never be forgotten; for it has struck its roots deep in the national language and far down into the national heart.