'Many grave, serious men pity anglers,' says Auceps, and Venator styles
them 'patient men,' as surely they have great need to be. For our toil,
like that of the husbandman, hangs on the weather that Heaven sends, and
on the flies that have their birth or being from a kind of dew, and on
the inscrutable caprice of fish; also, in England, on the miller, who
giveth or withholdeth at his pleasure the very water that is our element.
The inquiring rustic who shambles up erect when we are lying low among
the reeds, even he disposes of our fortunes, with whom, as with all men,
we must be patient, dwelling ever--

'With close-lipped Patience for our only friend,
Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair.'

O the tangles, more than Gordian, of gut on a windy day! O bitter east
wind that bloweth down stream! O the young ducks that, swimming between
us and the trout, contend with him for the blue duns in their season! O
the hay grass behind us that entangles the hook! O the rocky wall that
breaks it, the boughs that catch it; the drought that leaves the salmon-
stream dry, the floods that fill it with turbid, impossible waters! Alas
for the knot that breaks, and for the iron that bends; for the lost
landing-net, and the gillie with the gaff that scrapes the fish! Izaak
believed that fish could hear; if they can, their vocabulary must be full
of strange oaths, for all anglers are not patient men. A malison on the
trout that 'bulge' and 'tail,' on the salmon that 'jiggers,' or sulks, or
lightly gambols over and under the line. These things, and many more, we
anglers endure meekly, being patient men, and a light world fleers at us
for our very virtue.

Izaak, of course, justifies us by the example of the primitive
Christians, and, in the manner of the age, drowns opposition in a flood