"He praises a meditative life, and with evident sincerity: but we
feel that he liked nothing so well as good talk."--JAMES RUSSELL
LOWELL: Walton.


I

PRELUDE--ON AN OLD, FOOLISH MAXIM


The inventor of the familiar maxim that "fishermen must not talk" is
lost in the mists of antiquity, and well deserves his fate. For a
more foolish rule, a conventionality more obscure and aimless in its
tyranny, was never imposed upon an innocent and honourable
occupation, to diminish its pleasure and discount its profits. Why,
in the name of all that is genial, should anglers go about their
harmless sport in stealthy silence like conspirators, or sit
together in a boat, dumb, glum, and penitential, like naughty
schoolboys on the bench of disgrace? 'Tis an Omorcan superstition;
a rule without a reason; a venerable, idiotic fashion invented to
repress lively spirits and put a premium on stupidity.

For my part, I incline rather to the opinion of the Neapolitan
fishermen who maintain that a certain amount of noise, of certain
kinds, is likely to improve the fishing, and who have a particular
song, very sweet and charming, which they sing to draw the fishes
around them. It is narrated, likewise, of the good St. Brandan,
that on his notable voyage from Ireland in search of Paradise, he