Anniversary for Anglers

New Zealand Listener, Volume 25, Issue 631, 3 August 1951, Page 20

Anniversary for Anglers

ico Trout is a fish highly valued both in this and foreign nations: he may be justly said (as the old poet said of wine, and we English say of venison) to be a generous fish: a fish that is so like the buck that he also has his seasons; for it is observed, that he comes in and goes out of season with the stag and buck; Gesner says, his name is of a German offspring, and says he is a fish that feeds clean and purely, in the swiftest streams, and on the hardest gravel; and that he may justly contend with all fresh water fish, as the Mullet may with all sea fish, for precedency and daintiness of taste, and that being in right season the most dainty palates have allowed precedency to. bin, -The Compleat Angler "HE fishing season doesn’t begin for a few months yet, but in the meantime anglers will be interested in the programme on Izaak Walton, which will be broadcast from 2YC at 8.30 p.m. on Wednesday, August 8, to commemorate the anniversary of his birth, which falls on the next day. The Compleat Angler or "The Contemplative Man’s Recrea- tion," first appeared on London’s bookstalls about 300 years ago. It was modestly described as "A discourse of Fish and Fishing not unworthy of the perusal of most Anglers," but it is likely that it rapidly became in those days, just as it is now, a book which few cultivated persons, whether they fish, think, or just

read, would care to be without. The book is written with a fresh and courtly grace in a limpid style, and though by no means the first treatise on angling, it marks the beginning of true angling literature. Although The Compleat Angler was intended as a practical guide to fishing, it contains masterly incidental descriptions of the countryside and the "lilied lowland waters" where Walton loved to fish. He delights to describe such things as riverside inns, gipsy singing and milkmaids’ choruses, Along with these descriptive idylls and the discourses on the philosophy of fishing, the main part of the book is an account of the various kinds of fish and the way to catch them, including beside the trout the chavender or chub, grayling, pike, carp, and so on right down to the lowly eel. As such it is still a useful guide, despite the quaint lore from Gesner or the "divine Du Bartas." The second part, by Walton’s swashbuckling young friend the poet Charles Cotton, contains some delightful accounts of cooking and eating the fish, and more advice than his mentor gives on such technical matters as tying flies. But it lacks the philosophic calm and graceful style which makes Walton’s part of the book as it now stands such a hard-wearing work of literature. Its true value, according to one of its. most notable recent editors, the late John Buchan, is as "a transcript of old English country life, a study of the folkheart." And it also, to quote Buchan again, "unfolds the heart and soul of the angler-a man who loves books as well as his art, who sees nature through the glass of culture, the townsman and the gentleman." The programme, entitled Izaak | Walton, will ¢onsist in the main of extracts from the book read in’ such a way as to form a consistent narrative.