Essay（s） by William Ernest Henley
Walton
William Ernest Henley
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The Compleat Angler.
I am told that it is generally though silently admitted that, while Charles Cotton came of a school of fishermen renowned for accomplishment even now, his master and friend was not in the modern or Cottonian sense a fisherman at all. There was in him, indeed, a vast deal of the philosopher and the observer of nature and still more, perhaps, of the artist in English; but there was also not a little of the cockney sportsman. He never rose above the low-lived worm and quill; his prey was commonly those fish that are the scorn of the true angler, for he knew naught of trout and grayling, yet was deeply interested in such base creatures (and such poor eating) as chub and roach and dace; and that part of his treatise which has still a certain authority--which may be said, indeed, to have placed the mystery of fly-fishing upon something of a scientific basis--was not his work but that of 'my most honoured friend, Charles Cotton, Esq.' Again, it is a characteristic of your true as opposed to your cockney sportsman that, unless constrained thereto by hunger, he does not eat what he has killed; and it is a characteristic of Walton--who in this particular at least may stand for the authentic type of the cockney sportsman as opposed to the true one--that he delighted not much less in dining or supping on his catch than he did in the act of making it: as witness some of the most charming parts in a book that from one end to the other is charm and little besides. Indeed the truth--(with reverence be it spoken)--appears to be that the
Compleat Angler is an expression in the terms of art of the cit's enjoyment of the country.
Master Piscator.
What Walton saw in angling was not that delight in the consciousness of accomplishment and intelligence which sends the true fisherman to the river and keeps him there, rejoicing in his strength, whether he kill or go empty away. It was rather the pretext--with a worm and perhaps a good supper at one end and a contemplative man at the other--of a day in the fields: where the skylark soared, and the earth smelled sweet, and the water flashed and tinkled as it ran, while hard by some milk-maid, courteous yet innocent, sang as she plied her nimble fingers, and not very far away the casement of the inn-parlour gleamed comfortable promises of talk and food and rest. That was the Master Piscator who, being an excellent man of letters, went out to 'stretch his legs up Tottenham Hill' in search of fish, and came home with immortal copy; and that was the Izaak Walton who 'ventured to fill a part' of Cotton's 'margin' with remarks not upon his theory of how to angle for trout or grayling in a clear stream but 'by way of paraphrase for your reader's clearer understanding both of the situation of your fishing house, and the pleasantness of that you dwell in.' He had the purest and the most innocent of minds, he was the master of a style as bright, as sweet, as refreshing and delightful, as fine clean home-spun some time in lavender; he called himself an angler, and he believed in the description with a cordial simplicity whose appeal is more persuasive now than ever. But he was nothing if not the citizen afield--the cockney aweary of Bow Bells and rejoicing in 'the sights and sounds of the open landscape.' After all it is only your town-bred poet who knows anything of the country, or is moved to concern himself in anywise for the sensations and experiences it yields. Milton was born in Bread Street, and Herrick in Cheapside. Yet Milton gave us the
Allegro and the
Penseroso and the scenery in
Comus and the epic; while as for Herrick--the
Night-Piece, the lovely and immortal verses
To Meadows, the fresh yet sumptuous and noble
To Corinna Going a-Maying, these and a hundred more are there to answer for
him. Here Walton is with Herrick and Milton and many 'dear sons of Memory' besides; and that is why he not only loved the country but was moved to make art of it as well.
[The end]
William Ernest Henley's essay: Walton