An Angler's Hours. By H. T. Sheringham. (Macmillan and Co.
6s. net.)—Many people write, and many more wish to write, about angling, as no one, it is probable, knows better than Mr. Sheringham. (The editor of a sporting magazine once told the writer of this notice that two-thirds of the contributions offered him were from fishermen.) But the public is not surfeited. There is something in angling reminiscences that makes them perennially attractive,—it cannot be, surely, the quality of imagination, though that is a great factor in literary excellence. Mr. Sheringham's book is delightful, not the less so because the salmon, an intolerably exclusive fish, does not appear in it from beginning to end. Trout we have, of course, and ought to have ; but our author is not above condescending to tench—did he not catch a brace weighing 5 lb. between them and lose one that nearly equalled the two ?—to pike, landing one of 23 lb. and a few ounces, and even to bream, perch, and dace? We have said that salmon are not mentioned. They are, however, in a very amusing paper, "The Mystery of the Thames Salmon," a mystery which we will not profane by revealing. It must suffice to say that another name is added to the list of " coarse " fish, as they are arrogantly called, given above. We may tell Mr. Sheringham that his dim memory of having " read somewhere that Matthew Arnold was a fisherman" is exact. But he should not have added "in his lighter moments." Matthew Arnold could throw a very good line, and took at least as much pride in it as in having written " Thyrsis."
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