Your grateful and affectionate friend,
H. Davy.
We will now, for a while, leave our philosopher to pursue his journey to Italy, while we take a review of his Salmonia; the first edition of which was published in the Spring of 1828. The second, and much improved edition,[110] from which I shall take my extracts, is dated from Laybach, Illyria, September 28, 1828, but which did not appear until 1829.
We are told in the preface, that these pages formed the occupation of the author during some months of severe and dangerous illness, when he was wholly incapable of attending to more useful studies, or of following more serious pursuits;—that they constituted his amusement in many hours, which otherwise would have been unoccupied and tedious;—and that they are published in the hope that they may possess an interest for those persons who derive pleasure from the simplest and most attainable kind of rural sports, and who practise the art, or patronise the objects of contemplation, of the philosophical angler.
He informs us that the conversational manner and discursive style were chosen as best suited to the state of health of the author, who was incapable of considerable efforts and long continued attention; and he adds, that he could not but have in mind a model, which has fully proved the utility and popularity of this method of treating this subject—"The Complete Angler," by Walton and Cotton.
The characters chosen to support these conversations, were Halieus, who is supposed to be an accomplished fly-fisher—Ornither, who is to be regarded as a gentleman generally fond of the sports of the field, though not a finished master of the art of angling—Poietes, who is to be considered as an enthusiastic lover of nature, and partially acquainted with the mysteries of fly-fishing; and Physicus, who is described uninitiated as an angler, but as a person fond of enquiries in natural history and philosophy.
Such are the personages by whose aid the machinery is to be worked; but he tells us that they are of course imaginary, though the sentiments attributed to them, the author may sometimes have gained from recollections of real conversations with friends, from whose society much of the happiness of his early life had been derived; and he admits that, in the portrait of the character of Halieus, given in the last dialogue, a likeness will not fail to be recognised to that of the character of a most estimable physician, ardently beloved by his friends, and esteemed and venerated by the public.
The work is dedicated to Dr. Babington, "in remembrance of some delightful days passed in his society, and in gratitude for an uninterrupted friendship of a quarter of a century."
I am informed by Lady Davy, that the engravings of the fish, by which the work is illustrated, are from drawings of his own execution; so that he could not, like old Isaac Walton, "take the liberty to commend the excellent pictures to him that likes not the book, because they concern not himself."
It has frequently happened that, while works of deep importance have justly conferred celebrity upon the author, his minor productions have been entirely indebted to his name for their popularity, and to his authority for their value. This, however, cannot be said of Salmonia, for it possesses the stamp of original genius, and bears internal evidence of a talent flowing down from a very high source of intelligence. In a scientific point of view, it exhibits that penetrating observation by which a gifted mind is enabled to extract out of the most ordinary facts and every-day incidents, novel views and hidden truths; while it shows that a humble art (I beg pardon of the brothers of the Angle) may, through the skill of the master, be made the means of calling forth the affections of the heart, and of reflecting all the colours of the fancy. By regarding the work in relation to the history and condition of its author, it certainly acquires much additional interest. The familiar and inviting style of the dialogue, whenever he discusses questions of natural history, must convince us that he was as well calculated to instruct in the Lyceum, as we long since knew him to be to teach in the Academy.
Composed in the hour of sickness and prostration, the work displays throughout its composition a tone of dignified morality and an expansion of feeling, which may be regarded as in unison with a mind chastened but not subdued, and looking forward to a better state of existence. "I envy," says he, "no quality of the mind or intellect in others; be it genius, power, wit, or fancy: but if I could choose what would be most delightful, and I believe most useful to me, I should prefer a firm religious belief to every other blessing; for it makes life a discipline of goodness; creates new hopes, when all earthly hopes vanish; and throws over the decay, the destruction of existence, the most gorgeous of all lights; awakens life even in death, and from corruption and decay calls up beauty and divinity; makes an instrument of torture and of shame the ladder of ascent to paradise; and, far above all combinations of earthly hopes, calls up the most delightful visions of palms and amaranths, the gardens of the blest, the security of everlasting joys, where the sensualist and the sceptic view only gloom, decay, annihilation, and despair!"