arrionated.
Barker instructs my Lord Montague to fish with salmon roe, a thing
prohibited and very popular in Scotland. 'If I had known it but twenty
years agoe, I would have gained a hundred pounds onely with that bait. I
am bound in duty to divulge it to your Honour, and not to carry it to my
grave with me. I do desire that men of quality should have it that
delight in that pleasure: the greedy angler will murmur at me, but for
that I care not.' Barker calls salmon roe 'an experience I have found of
late: the best bait for a trout that I have seen in all my time,' and it
is the most deadly, in the eddy of a turbid water. Perhaps trout would
take caviare, which is not forbidden by the law of the land. Any
unscrupulous person may make the experiment, and argue the matter out
with the water-bailie. But, in my country, it is more usual to duck that
official, and go on netting, sniggling, salmon-roeing, and destroying
sport in the sacred name of Liberty.

Scots wha fish wi' salmon roe,
Scots wha sniggle as ye go,
Wull ye stand the Bailie? No!
Let the limmer die!

Now's the day and now's the time,
Poison a' the burns wi' lime,
Fishing fair's a dastard crime,
We're for fishing _free_!

'Ydle persones sholde have but lyttyl mesure in the sayd disporte of
fysshyng,' says our old _Treatise_, but in southern Scotland they have
left few fish to dysporte with, and the trout is like to become an
extinct animal. Izaak would especially have disliked Fishing
Competitions, which, by dint of the multitude of anglers, turn the
contemplative man's recreation into a crowded skirmish; and we would
repeat his remark, 'the rabble herd themselves together' (a dozen in one
pool, often), 'and endeavour to govern and act in spite of authority.'

For my part, had I a river, I would gladly let all honest anglers that
use the fly cast line in it, but, where there is no protection, then
nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of fingerlings, and unholy baits
devastate the fish, so that 'Free Fishing' spells no fishing at all. This
presses most hardly on the artisan who fishes fair, a member of a large
class with whose pastime only a churl would wish to interfere. We are
now compelled, if we would catch fish, to seek Tarpon in Florida, Mahseer
in India: it does not suffice to 'stretch our legs up Tottenham Hill.'

FOOTNOTES

{1} The MS. was noticed in _The Freebooter_, Oct. 18, 1823, but Sir
Harris Nicol