ARTICLE XII

DAVY'S SALMONIA.

[This article on 'SALMONIA, OR DAYS OF FLY-FISHING," a small volume by SIR HUMPHRY DAVY, BART., P.R.S., appeared in the Quarterly Review, for October, 1828.]

WHEN great men condescend to trifle, they desire that those who witness their frolics should have some kindred sympathy with the subject which these regard. The speech of Henry IV. to the Spanish ambassador, when he discovered the King riding round the room on a stick, with his son, is well known. "You are a father, Seignor Ambassador, and so we will finish our ride." No doubt, there was to be remarked something graceful in the manner with which the hero of Navarre bestrode even a cane-something so kind in his expression, while employed in the most childish of pastimes, as failed not to remind the spectator that the indulgent father of his playmate was the no less indulgent father of his people. In taking up this elegant little volume, for which we are indebted to the most illustrious and successful

investigator of inductive philosophy which this age has produced, we are led to expect to discover the sage even in his lightest amusements.

We are informed, in the preface, that many months of severe and dangerous illness have been partially occupied and amused by the present treatise, when the author was incapable of attending to more useful studies or more serious pursuits. While we regret that the current of scientific investigation, which has led to such brilliant results, should be, for a moment, interrupted, we have here an example, and a pleasing one, that the lightest pursuits of such a man as our angler—nay, the productions of those languid hours, in which lassitude succeeds to pain, are more interesting and instructive than the exertion of the talents of others whose mind and body are in the fullest vigour,— illustrating the scriptural expression, that the gleannings of the grapes of Ephraim are better than the vintage of Abiezer.

For ourselves, though we have wetted a line in our time, we are far from boasting of more than a very superficial knowledge of the art, and possess no part whatever of the scientific information which is necessary to constitute the philosophical angler. Yet we have read our Walton, as well as others; and, like the honest keeper in the New Forest, when we endeavour to form an idea of paradise, we always suppose a trout-stream going through it. The art itself is peculiarly seductive, requires much ingenuity, and yet is easily reconciled to a course of quiet reflections, as step by step we ascend a

devious brook, opening new prospects as we advance, which remind us of a good and unambitious man's journey through this world, wherein changing scenes glide past him with each its own interest, until evening falls, and life is ended. We have, indeed, often thought that angling alone offers to man the degree of half-business, half-idleness, which the fair sex find in their needle-work or knitting, which, employing the hands, leaves the mind at liberty, and occupying the attention so far as is necessary to remove the painful sense of a vacuity, yet yields room for contemplation, whether upon things heavenly or earthly, cheerful or melancholy.

Of the humanity of the pastime we have but little to say. Our author has entered into its defence against Lord Byron, who called it a "solitary vice," and condemned its advocate and apologist, Izaak Walton, as "a quaint old cruel coxcomb," who " in his gullet

Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it." We will not enquire whether the noble poet has, in the present case, been one of those, who

"Compound for sins they are inclined to,

By damning those they have no mind to.'

And we can easily conceive that scarce any thing could have been less suited to Byron's eager and active temper, and restless and rapid imagination, than a pastime in which proficiency is only to be acquired by long and solitary practice. But in this species of argument, whether used in jest or earnest, there is always something of cant. Man is much like other carnivorous creatures-to catch other

animals and to devour them is his natural occupation; and it is only upon reflection, and in the course of a refined age, that the higher classes become desirous to transfer to others the toil and the disgust attending the slaughter-house and the kitchen. Homer's heroes prostrate the victim and broil its flesh, and were, we must suppose, no more shocked with the moans of the dying bullock than the greyhound with the screams of the hare. The difference produced by a degree of refinement is only that, still arranging our bloody banquet as before, the task of destroying life is, in the case of tame animals, committed to butchers and poulterers-while in respect of game, where considerable exertion and dexterity is necessary to accomplish our purpose, and where the sense of excitement, and pride in difficulties surmounted by our own address, overbalance our sympathy with the pain inflicted, we interdict by strict laws the vulgar from interference, and reserve the exclusive power of slaughter for our own hands. The sportsman of the present day is, therefore, so far modified by the refinements of society, as to use the intervention of plebeian hands in the case of cattle, sheep, and domestic fowls; but he kills his deer, his hares, his grouse, and his partridges for himself: in respect to them, he is in a state of nature. But if his retaining this touch of the qualities with which

"Nature first made man,

When wild in woods the noble savage ran,"

shall be considered as a crime, it is surely equally

inhuman to cause to be killed, as it is to kill; the guilt, surely, of the criminal who causes a murder to be committed, must be the same as that of the actual bloodspiller. My lady, therefore, who gives the maître d'hôtel orders, which render necessary sundry executions in the piggery, poultry-yard, and elsewhere, is an accomplice before the fact, and as guilty of occasioning a certain quantity of pain to certain unoffending animals, as her good lord, who is knocking down pheasants in the preserve, or catching fish in the brook. In short, they that say much about the inhumanity of killing animals for sport, must be prepared to renounce the equally blameable practice of causing them to be killed, lest their delicacy be compared to that of the half-converted Indian squaw, whose humanized feelings could not look upon the tortures of a captive at the death-stake, but, nevertheless, whose appetite was unable to resist a tempting morsel of the broiled flesh, conveyed to her by the kindness of a comrade, as a consolation for her wanting her share of the sport. Our diet, in that case, would become rather lean and Pythagorean, much after the custom of our Brahminical friend, the late Joseph Ritson. Of the hundreds who condemn the cruelty of field sports, how many would relish being wholly deprived, in their own sensitive persons, of animal food?

Our author takes a more special defence than the above-alleging that he is not guilty, like his predecessor, Walton, of using living baits, but