bestowed upon him some other of her noblest faculties. But dramatic power is not all we desiderate in these dull dialogues. One may feel some interest in characters neither well-conceived nor executed; if they do but talk away in an easy, good-humoured, lively style, and give us an impression, that though rather every-day sort of concerns, to be sure, still, nevertheless, they are jolly companions every one-prefer Glenlivet to Green-Tea-love to count the chimes at midnight-are, in short, a batch of plain, honest, straightforward, downright, upright fellows, who know the translation of "dulce est desipere in loco," to wit, "weel-timed daffin'," put their whole heart and soul into all their amusements and pastimes, and, at the close of a sanguinary day, drink the " Angler's Delight," with the most religious enthusiasm. Halieus, Physicus, Poietes, and Ornither, are of a different stamp-a different coinage. were not They "Stamp'd in Nature's mint-with ecstasy-" are obviously attentive, above all other earthly concerns, to the state of their bowels-which they, of course, keep open-travelling for ever with boxes of pills in their portmanteaus-perhaps a medicine chest-lovers of regularity and good hours-every mother's son of them with his life insured for at least three thousand pounds -and all alike incapable of enjoying the wit of Blackwood's Magazine. These four chums, or cronies, do not meet accidentally, or by appointment, to have a few days' fishing in one or two particular rivers; but to-day they are all angling away together near London-to-morrow in the Highlands of Scotland-and the day after tomorrow, in Austria. No attempt is made to throw an air of truth and reality over the shiftings of the scene, any more than over the conversations of the dramatis persone-all are alike unnatural and unwieldy-and perhaps we cannot characterise Salmonia better in fewer words, than by saying that it must have been written with an artificial pen. We care not a straw for unities of any kind. Indeed, there can be no such thing as unity of time or place, unless a whole tragedy of five acts can be per formed in a single moment, and all the actors occupy the same particular part of that board on which raves Lear or Othello. Sir Humphry, therefore, was at perfect liberty, for us, to convey these four gentlemen back and for wards, in as short time as he chose, or in as long, all over the habitable and the uninhabitable globe. He was free to imagine Mr Vallancey's Tunnel to have been completed between London and Cape Wrath-relays of balloons to have been stationed, not only along the great north-road, but all the cross-cuts-Lieutenant Stevenson's steam-boats flying faster than any wind that ever flew-nay, if cribbed, and cabin'd, and confined in his imagination within the limits of present or future science, he was free to shoot on a sun-beam, or, swifter still, on "meditation, or the thoughts of love," with all his four creations on his back, Halieus, and Physicus, and Poietes, and Ornither, to and fro all the separate salmon-pools in the liquid element. But then, still we should have insisted on knowing-as soon as he had taken his breath, and had time to tell us-whether he and his friends travelled by tunnel, or balloon, or steam, or sunbeam, or meditation, or the thoughts of love-nor, till we knew that, could we be assured of the probability, or rather possibility, of their appearance in any given spot of any given quarter of the globe. Now, our complaint at present is of the same kind. The party are presented to our view one day at a Symposiac, near London. We are willing to believe that they were transported thither in one of the many Paddington Flies swarming in the dust of summer. Another day they are at Denholm-lodge, on the Colne, we sup. pose by means of a post-chaise. All at once they are in a remote moor of the Highlands of Scotland. They were bound, we shall continue to maintain to the last hour of our existence, to have told us, in a few words, how they got there. Did they come to Leith from London in the James Watt, with our excellent friend Captain Bain? Thence went they to Aberdeen, or Inverness, by comet or by coach? We are willing to believe, if they say so, that they dropt from the moon; but they don't say so; nor have they much the appearance of lunatics. We turn over a new leaf; and, lo! there they are all sitting under a tree, beside the Fall of the Traun, in Upper Austria ! We had almost committed the prevalent sin of that quotation from Horace; but being desirous of seeing a single number of a periodical work without it, we have abstained. This absurdity is involved in Sir Humphry's fly away Jack, fly away John come again Jack, come again John mode of managing matters, that we must suppose these four unfortunate gentlemen, Halieus, Physicus, Poietes, and Ornither, to have entered into a social compact, signed and sealed, to angle together so long as they might flourish, and on no account whatever to suffer another member to be added to the parti quarré of the Exclusive Angling Club. We cannot help considering and condemning this as most illiberal. There is the Scotch Six Feet Club, now Guard of Honour to the Lord High Constable of Scotland, which now consists of Seventy Members, measuring upwards of 425 feet in the tottle of the whole-Sir Walter Scott being umpire and referee in all their gymnastics-and We, alas! excluded by Nature who forbids a ballot, by having deprived our fair proportions of half an inch! Suppose the Club, instead of including, as it now does, some threescore and ten of the finest fellows in all Scotland, had consisted but of Four Members-President, Vice-President, Treasurer, and Secretary, all glittering with medals, and, preceded by the band of the Dragoon Regiment from Jock's Lodge, had celebrated monthly and annual games at the Hunter's Tryst, Inchkeith, Sir George Warrender's Park, and Innerleithen, attended by an immense crowd to, on, and from the ground, who, at each whirling and arched career of the eighteen-pound sledge-hammer, with acclamations rent the sky-their triumphs afterwards recorded in the Observer, Mercury, Journal, and Scotsman, and haply, even inlaid in letters of brass on the adamantine pages of Blackwood's everlasting Magazine. Just as absurd as this, every whit, is the Exclusive Angling Club, whose exploits are celebrated in Salmonia. Poor fellows! we pity them most seriously; for many a thousand miles must they have yawned over in their piscatory expeditions through Europe. What a relief would it be to the three survivors were Poietes but only dead! These introductory remarks to articles will one day be the death of us -but now for it. Salmonia consists of Nine Dialogues or Days. The First Day introduces us to The Four Friends, Halieus, Poietes, Physicus, and Ornither, at a Symposiac. Heavens and earth-how unlike one of the Noctes Ambrosianæ! They have been feeding on Trout from the Wandle, and have, we hope, had a glass or two. Yet-O dear us! O dear us!but they are a dull set! Old Physicus has started the still older question respecting the cruelty of angling. He ought to have made up his mind, one way or other, before joining the Symposiac. Halieus, after clumsily combating the charge of cruelty, breaks forth into the following light, easy, airy, graceful play, of half-serious, half-sportive argumentation, so delightful after dinner when the bottle is beginning to circulate, and every one is expected to say something short and pithy, pat to the purpose, and as unlike as possible to a bit out of a printed book. Hear Halieus! "HAL. The search after food is an in stinct belonging to our nature; and from tive state, who destroys a piece of game, the savage in his rudest and most primior a fish, with a club or spear, to man in the most cultivated state of society, who employs artifice, machinery, and the resources of various other animals, to secure his object, the origin of the pleasure is similar, and its objects the same: but that kind of it requiring most art may be said to characterise man in his highest or intel and trout with the fly employs not only lectual state; and the fisher for salmon machinery to assist his physical powers, but applies sagacity to conquer difficulties; and the pleasure derived from ingenious resources and devices, as well as from active pursuit, belongs to this amusement. Then as to its philosophical tendency, it is a pursuit of moral discipline, requiring patience, forbearance, and command of temper. As connected with natural science, it may be vaunted as demanding a knowledge of the habits of a considerable tribe of that they prey upon, and an acquaintance created beings-fishes, and the animals with the signs and tokens of the weather and its changes, the nature of waters, and of the atmosphere. As to its poetical re lations, it carries us into the most wild and beautiful scenery of nature; amongst the mountain lakes, and the clear and lovely 4 streams that gush from the higher ranges of elevated hills, or that make their way through the cavities of calcareous strata. How de lightful, in the early spring, after the dull and tedious time of winter, when the frosts disappear and the sunshine warms the earth and waters, to wander forth by some clear stream, to see the leaf bursting from the purple bud, to scent the odours of the bank perfumed by the violet, and enamelled, as it were, with the primrose and the daisy; to wander upon the fresh turf below the shade of trees, whose bright blos soms are filled with the music of the bee; and on the surface of the waters to view the gaudy flies sparkling like animated gems in the sunbeams, whilst the bright and beautiful trout is watching them from below; to hear the twittering of the waterbirds, who, alarmed at your approach, rapidly hide themselves beneath the flowers and leaves of the water-lily; and as the season advances, to find all these objects changed for others of the same kind, but better and brighter, till the swallow and the trout contend as it were for the gaudy May-fly, and till, in pursuing your amusement in the calm and balmy evening, you are serenaded by the songs of the cheerful thrush and melodious nightingale, performing the offices of paternal love, in thickets ornamented with the rose and woodbine!" Sir Humphry may think this fine writing and so may many young la dies-poetry and philosophy, and all that, combined. We think it sad common-place stuff-very, very trashy, indeed. Many are the thousands of times the same thing has been said, almost in the same words; yet, towards the close, it becomes almost pretty-which indeed any allusion whatever to thrushes and nightingales is apt to be and we daresay Poietes, with the usual envy and jealousy of poets, listened most impatiently to the flowery harangue; but he soon takes his revenge. "POIET.-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 pic turesque 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 its 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. "HAL. One might pursue the metaphor still further, and say, that in its ori gin-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 calm, 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 sprung.' This is, we think, an example of unsuccessful ambition. The passage opens absurdly. Sir Humphry says, that, as well as he recollects, Pliny has compared a river to human life, in a passage which he has never read! He then says, that although he has never read that passage which is in Pliny, as well as he recollects, he has been a hundred times struck with the analogy! Lord preserve us! is there a book in verse or prose, in any language, in which human life is not likened to a river, or a river to human life? If there be, it must be a great oddity. The simile occurs upwards of ten times in Monsieur Ude's Cookery, and twenty times at least in the Complete Confectioner of Signor Jarrin. Sir Humphry will find it frequently in the Belfast and Aberdeen Almanacksoften in Hoyle on Whist-one hundred and twenty-three times in Boston's Fourfold State-and once at least in every page of every volume of sermons entered at Stationer's Hall since the origin of that establishment or institution. The first point of resemblance, according to Sir Humphry, between a river and life, is, that they are both "small and clear in their origin." What! is life clear in its origin? No-Wordsworth says, finely and truly, of a stream, that it issues, "like life, from darkness!" Secondly, the river in its infancy, (vide supra,) may be compared to the human mind in youth," in which fancy and strength of imagination are predominant-it is more beautiful than useful." It is not true, that fancy and strength of imagination are predominant, in that period of life, which might answer to the earliest course of a mountain river. The fancy and the imagination, like the reason, are in greatest strength in the prime of life. The fact thus stated by us in plain words, Sir Humphry will not attempt to deny. Thirdly, it is not true that the mountain river, in its earlier course among rocks and glens, is more beautiful than useful. It is useful, just in the way and to the degree in tended by the wisdom of all-providing nature. What Sir Humphry means here by "an uncultivated tree," we know no better than himself; but the dew and spray of which he speaks, and the running waters, do minister to the wild-and to many-all the creatures of the wild-as useful then Sixthly, Halieus, in our humble opinion, makes matters worse by "purBut the truth is, the old gentleman suing the metaphor still farther." he takes it up without any pursuit does not pursue the metaphor at all; whatever, and altogether changes its the ministerial benches-Halieus with character. Poietes sits on one of the opposition. According to Poietes, the river" is small and clear in its origin;" like life and youth. Accord in its "thundering and foam;" "when ing to Halieus, "in its origin," and it carries down clay, and becomes impure," it is also like life and youth. as it is when flowing in the plain This, we repeat-is not to pursue a below, gladdening the yellow Ceres metaphor, but to transmogrify or murFourthly, his comparison of the river, about the lake, the moment you look der it. Seventhly, the whole sentence when it has descended to the plain, with the human mind in maturity, is at it, is seen to be imperfect and connot at all made out-nay, look at it, fused, both in conception and expresgentle reader, and you will see, that, sion-to say nothing of its far-fetched though he has described the river, he and pedantic inapplicability. Rivers, has not described the mind, and that after they flow through or issue from there is, in fact, no comparison ! That lakes, are, as Sir Humphry must well is rather an oversight. What operations know, generally fuller than before of or faculties of the mind answer to the troubles, bubbles, noise, and foam. "application of the river to move maLet him try to wade the Awe, at any chinery, to irrigate meadows, and to part of its course, and he will soon bear upon its bosom the stately barge?" find himself in the sea. Besides, what Absolute and very clumsy nonsense. does Sir Humphry mean by the Fifthly, Sir Humphry asserts, that as "bubbles, noise, and foam of the a river flows on towards the sea, "it mind?" He forgets that they belong loses its force and its motion." No-not to the river; and that he should have in the sense in which the mind in old told us what corresponded to them in age loses its force and motion. Quite the mind; otherwise his metaphor is the reverse. We hold, then, that for imperfect and incomplete. We rethe reasons given, the passage is an peat, then, that the whole sentence is example of unsuccessful ambition. absolute nonsense. Eighthly, the last We think the following picture of a attempt at originality of old Halieus hill-born stream joining the sea bet--in which he speaks of the sources ter-because more true to nature. You may compare it to human life or not -just as you choose-but we think you had better not-nor yet any other description of any other stream, all such comparisons being odious. "Down falls the drawbridge with a thundering shock, And in an instant, ere the eye can know, of a river, the atmosphere, and its termination, the ocean, as imaging the divine origin of the human mind, and its return to the infinite and eternal intelligence, is a murder committed at noon-day, on a passage in Wordsworth. "Poo-mere verbal criticism!" methinks we hear some dolt exclaim. But Sir Humphry himself knows better; and on reconsidering the passage he : will feel that had he been as careless of his intellect in his chemical solutions and analyses as in these his poetical comparisons and analogies, and as lax in his logic in recording their results, the name of Davy would have been known but as that of a poor village apothecary, instead of sounding over lands and seas as that of one of the greatest discoverers in science of any age or country. Men so dull over their wine must not be expected to prove very lively over their water. Second Day-they try trout-fishing on the Colne, which, by the way, Poietes describes very well, and very truly. "POIET. This is really a very charm ing villa scene, I may almost say, a pastoral scene. The meadows have the verdure which even the Londoners enjoy as a peculiar feature of the English landscape. The river is clear, and has all the beauties of a trout stream of the larger size, there rapid, and here still, and there tumbling in foam and fury over abrupt dams upon clean gravel, as if pursuing a natural course. And that island, with its poplars and willows, and the flies making it their summer paradise, and its little fishing house, are all in character; and if not extremely picturesque, it is at least a very pleasant scene, from its verdure and pure waters, for the lovers of our innocent amusement." There is a good deal of angling information of a common kind in the Dialogue on Day Second; but it is intolerably tedious. Poor Poietes is much to be pitied in the following passage: "POIET. I have him! Alas! he has broken me, and carried away half my bottom line. He must have been a fish of 7 or 8lbs. What a dash he made! He carried off my fly by main force. "HAL. You should have allowed your reel to play and your line to run; you held him too tight. "POIET. He was too powerful a fish for my tackle; and even if I had done so, would probably have broken me by running amongst the weeds. HAL. Let me tell you, my friend, you should never allow a fish to run to the weeds, or to strike across the stream; you should carry him always down the stream, keeping his head high, and in the current. If in a weedy river you allow a large fish to run up stream, you are almost sure to lose him. There, I have hooked the companion of your lost fish, on the other side of the stream,a powerful creature; he tries, you see, to make way to the weeds, but I hold him tight. "POIET.-He springs again and again. "HAL.He is off; in one of these somersets he detached the steel, and he now leaps to celebrate his escape." Halieus then very gravely informs Poietes that a trout when his mouth has been pricked by an artificial fly, has learned from experience to distinguish it from a natural one-so that there is no chance of catching the trout that carried away his tackle→→ but with the natural fly. He therefore puts live flies on his hook, “with some regret and some disgust," soon hooks a whapper-and brings him ashore. Physicus perceiving the tackle of Poietes hanging to the trout's lower jaw, exclaims as well he might “I had discovered that the artificial fly am surprised! That fish evidently was a dangerous bait; yet he took the natural fly which was on a hook, and when the silk-worm gut must have been visible." Now, in the course of a long angling life, one may meet with such an occurrence two or three times. For our own parts we never met with it, and we have angled these forty years therefore Sir Humphry ought not, in a work not dealing in marvels, to have introduced this some. what unsportsmanlike anecdote. should have occurred, if at all, farther on; not on the very first day Physicus ever saw a fly thrown; and Ha lieus should not have been represented guilty of the monstrous absurdity of expecting to take with a natural fly off the artificial one. Such expectation the same trout that had just carried was contrary to all experience; and the doctrine of chances is here set at nought. Had he caught the trout without expecting it-we should have swallowed the marvel-but, by his way of telling it, it appears to be with him an every-hour occurrence and we wonder it does not happen every other page. This trifle shews much poverty and awkwardness of invention-and must excite the derision of all outand-out anglers. It Throughout all the dialogues, there is a great deal too much of missing and hooking, and playing and losing, and landing of fish. Fifty pages at |
