Our author, however, takes a more special defence, by observing that, unlike old Isaac, he employs an artificial fly, instead of a living bait. Our notions about the cruelty of field sports is extremely capricious. Until the time of the Reformation, the canon law prohibited the use of the sanguinary recreations of hunting, hawking, and fowling, while the clergy, on account of their leisure, were allowed to exercise the harmless and humane art of angling. In later days, the indignation against this art has been excited by the supposed sufferings of the worm or bait, rather than by those of the fish; and thus far the author of Salmonia assumed a strong posture of defence; but he did not avail himself of all the advantages it commanded. He might have pleaded, that every fish he caught by his artificial fly was destined to prey upon an insect, and that by substituting a piece of silk for the latter, he would for every fish he might destroy, save from destruction many of those fairy beings that animate the air and sparkle in the sunbeam;—but it is, after all, folly to argue upon the subject of cruelty in our field sports. That animals should live by preying upon each other is the very basis of the scheme of creation; and in these days it is not necessary to expose the absurdities of the system of Samos and Indostan. Dr. Franklin, at one period of his life, entertained a sentimental abhorrence at eating any thing that had possessed life; and the reader may, perhaps, not object to be reminded of the manner in which he was cured of his prejudice. "I considered," says he, "the capture of every fish as a sort of murder, committed without provocation, since these animals had neither done, nor were capable of doing, the smallest injury to any one that should justify the measure. This mode of reasoning I conceived to be unanswerable. Meanwhile, I had formerly been extremely fond of fish; and when one of the cod was taken out of the frying-pan, I thought its flavour delicious. I hesitated some time between principle and inclination, till at last recollecting that, when the cod had been opened, some small fish were found in its belly, I said to myself, 'If you eat each other, I see no reason why we may not eat you,'—(His "wish was father to that thought")—I accordingly dined on the cod with no small degree of pleasure, and have since continued to eat like the rest of mankind."
Halieus is made to admit the danger of analysing too closely the moral character of any of our field sports; and yet, in the concluding chapter, he very unfairly and inconsistently attempts to ridicule the pursuit of a fox-hunter, "risking his neck to see the hounds destroy an animal which he preserves to be destroyed, and which is good for nothing." He who pursues a pleasure because it is rational, reasons because he cannot feel. "When the heart," says Sterne, "flies out before the understanding, it saves the judgment a world of pains."
Having, as the author thinks satisfactorily, settled the preliminary questions, Halieus, succeeds in persuading Physicus to join him in fishing excursions; just as Piscator is represented by old Isaac, as having enlisted Venator into the brotherhood of the angle.
The dialogue now proceeds with great animation, during which the art and mystery of Piscatory tactics are unfolded with great skill; for the details of which the reader must be referred to the work itself. If, however, he be not already an angler, it may save him a world of pains to be informed, that to learn to fish by the book is little less absurd than "to make hay by the fair days in the almanack."
The manner in which he treats the various subjects of natural history necessarily connected with the pursuit is both amusing and instructive; and the whole work is studded and gemmed, as it were, with the most poetical descriptions.
In speaking of the swallow, Poietes exclaims—"I delight in this living landscape! The swallow is one of my favourite birds, and a rival of the nightingale; for he cheers my sense of seeing as much as the other does my sense of hearing. He is the glad prophet of the year, the harbinger of the best season: he lives a life of enjoyment amongst the loveliest forms of nature: winter is unknown to him; and he leaves the green meadows of England in autumn, for the myrtle and orange groves of Italy, and for the palms of Africa: he has always objects of pursuit, and his success is secure. Even the beings selected for his prey are poetical, beautiful, and transient. The ephemeræ are saved by his means from a slow and lingering death in the evening, and killed in a moment, when they have known nothing of life but pleasure. He is the constant destroyer of insects—the friend of man; and, with the stork and the ibis, may be regarded as a sacred bird. His instinct, which gives him his appointed seasons, and teaches him always when and where to move, may be regarded as flowing from a divine source; and he belongs to the oracles of Nature, which speak the awful and intelligible language of a present Deity."
Poietes considers a full and clear river as the most poetical object in Nature.—"I will not fail to obey your summons. Pliny has, as well as I recollect, compared a river to human life. I have never read the passage in his works; but I have been a hundred times struck with the analogy, particularly amidst mountain scenery. The river, small and clear in its origin, gushes forth from rocks, falls into deep glens, and wantons and meanders through a wild and picturesque country, nourishing only the uncultivated tree or flower by its dew or spray. In this, its state of infancy and youth, it may be compared to the human mind, in which fancy and strength of imagination are predominant—it is more beautiful than useful. When the different rills or torrents join, and descend into the plain, it becomes slow and stately in its motions; it is applied to move machinery, to irrigate meadows, and to bear upon its bosom the stately barge;—in this mature state it is deep, strong, and useful. As it flows on towards the sea, it loses its force and its motion, and at last, as it were, becomes lost, and mingled with the mighty abyss of waters."
Halieus adds—"One might pursue the metaphor still farther, and say, that in its origin—its thundering and foam, when it carries down clay from the bank, and becomes impure, it resembles the youthful mind, affected by dangerous passions. And the influence of a lake, in calming and clearing the turbid water, may be compared to the effect of reason in more mature life, when the tranquil, deep, cool, and unimpassioned mind is freed from its fever, its troubles, bubbles, noise, and foam. And, above all, the sources of a river—which may be considered as belonging to the atmosphere—and its termination in the ocean, may be regarded as imaging the divine origin of the human mind, and its being ultimately returned to, and lost in, the infinite and eternal Intelligence from which it originally sprang."
Halieus offers some curious observations with respect to the recollection of fish being associated with surrounding objects.
"I have known a fish that I have pricked retain his station in the river, and refuse the artificial fly, day after day, for weeks together; but his memory may have been kept awake by this practice, and the recollection seems local, and associated with surrounding objects; and if a pricked trout is chased into another pool, he will, I believe, soon again take the artificial fly. Or, if the objects around him are changed, as in autumn, by the decay of weeds, or by their being cut, the same thing happens; and a flood or a rough wind, I believe, assists the fly-fisher, not merely by obscuring the vision of the fish, but, in a river much fished, by changing the appearance of their haunts: large trouts almost always occupy particular stations, under, or close to, a large stone or tree; and probably, most of their recollected sensations are connected with this dwelling.