Musa Piscatrix. By John Buchan. (J. Lane.)—Mr. Buchan puts together
here some three-score pieces concerned, more or less, with fishing and fishermen. John Dennys heads the list; after him come Wotton, C. Cotton, Gay, and others, and conspicuous among the moderns, Thomas Tod Stoddart, Charles Kingsley, and Andrew Lang. We must honestly confess that to our mind the moderns have far the best of it, though there is too often the amari aliquid in them ; they are not so simple ; and the angling craft is only the occasion for some expression of the iacrymae serum. This is not true, indeed, of Stoddart, but it is of Mr. Andrew Lang, who, to our taste, throws the literary fly in the deftest fashion. The editor himself follows close behind. His "Epilogue to Master Isaac Walton" is very modern, but it is very good. Here is the last stanza :-
" Why weary thee with idle praise.
Thou wanderer in Elysian ways?
Where skies are fresh and fields are green, And neither dust nor smoke is seen, Nor news-sheets, nor subscription-bats, Nor merchants, not philanthropists.
For there the waters fall and flow
By fragrant banks and still below
The great three-pounders rise and take, The ' palmer,' 'alder," dun,' or ' drake,' Now by that stream, if there von be, I prithee keep a place for me."
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