The 'Blackwood' Group. Douglas George

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      'But the salmon has grown sulky, and must be made to spring to the plunging stone. There, suddenly, instinct with new passion, she shoots out of the foam like a bar of silver bullion; and, relapsing into the flood, is in another moment at the very head of the waterfall! Give her the butt – give her the butt – or she is gone for ever with the thunder into ten fathom deep! – Now comes the trial of your tackle – and when was Phin ever known to fail at the edge of cliff or cataract? Her snout is southwards – right up the middle of the main current of the hill-born river, as if she would seek its very source where she was spawned! She still swims swift, and strong, and deep – and the line goes steady, boys, steady – stiff and steady as a Tory in the roar of Opposition. There is yet an hour's play in her dorsal fin – danger in the flap of her tail – and yet may her silver shoulder shatter the gut against a rock. Why, the river was yesterday in spate, and she is fresh run from the sea. All the lesser waterfalls are now level with the flood, and she meets with no impediment or obstruction – the coast is clear – no tree-roots here – no floating branches – for during the night they have all been swept down to the salt loch. In medio tutissimus ibis– ay, now you feel she begins to fail – the butt tells now every time you deliver your right. What! another mad leap! yet another sullen plunge! She seems absolutely to have discovered, or rather to be an impersonation of, the Perpetual Motion. Stand back out of the way, you son of a sea-cook! – you in the tattered blue breeches, with the tail of your shirt hanging out. Who the devil sent you all here, ye vagabonds? – Ha! Watty Ritchie, my man, is that you? God bless your honest laughing phiz! What, Watty, would you think of a Fish like that about Peebles? Tam Grieve never gruppit sae heavy a ane since first he belanged to the Council. – Curse that collie! Ay! well done, Watty! Stone him to Stobbo. Confound these stirks – if that white one, with caving horns, kicking heels, and straight-up tail, come bellowing by between us and the river, then "Madam! all is lost, except honour!" If we lose this Fish at six o'clock, then suicide at seven. Our will is made – ten thousand to the Foundling – ditto to the Thames Tunnel – ha – ha – my Beauty! Methinks we could fain and fond kiss thy silver side, languidly lying afloat on the foam as if all further resistance now were vain, and gracefully thou wert surrendering thyself to death! No faith in female – she trusts to the last trial of her tail – sweetly workest thou, O Reel of Reels! and on thy smooth axle spinning sleep'st, even, as Milton describes her, like our own worthy planet. Scrope – Bainbridge – Maule – princes among Anglers – oh! that you were here! Where the devil is Sir Humphrey? At his retort? By mysterious sympathy – far off at his own Trows, the Kerss feels that we are killing the noblest Fish whose back ever rippled the surface of deep or shallow in the Tweed. Tom Purdy stands like a seer, entranced in glorious vision, beside turreted Abbotsford. Shade of Sandy Govan! Alas! alas! Poor Sandy – why on thy pale face that melancholy smile! – Peter! The Gaff! The Gaff! Into the eddy she sails, sick and slow, and almost with a swirl – whitening as she nears the sand – there she has it – struck right into the shoulder, fairer than that of Juno, Diana, Minerva, or Venus – and lies at last in all her glorious length and breadth of beaming beauty, fit prey for giant or demigod angling before the Flood!'

      'Now is the time for the snow-white, here and there ebon-spotted Fro – who with burning eyes has lain couched like a spaniel, his quick breath ever and anon trembling on a passionate whine, to bounce up, as if discharged by a catapulta, and first with immense and enormous high-and-far leaps, and then, fleet as any greyhound, with a breast-brushing brattle down the brae, to dash, all-fours, like a flying squirrel fearlessly from his tree, many yards into the bay with one splashing and momentarily disappearing spang, and then, head and shoulders and broad line of back and rudder tail, all elevated above or level with the wavy water-line, to mouth first that murdered mawsey of a mallard, lying as still as if she had been dead for years, with her round, fat, brown bosom towards heaven – then that old Drake, in a somewhat similar posture, but in more gorgeous apparel, his belly being of a pale grey, and his back delicately pencilled and crossed with numberless waved dusky lines – precious prize to one skilled like us in the angling art – next – nobly done, glorious Fro – that cream-colour-crowned widgeon, with bright rufus chestnut breast, separated from the neck by loveliest waved ash-brown and white lines, while our mind's eye feasteth on the indescribable and changeable green beauty-spot of his wings – and now, if we mistake not, a Golden Eye, best described by his name – finally, that exquisite little duck the Teal; yes, poetical in its delicately pencilled spots as an Indian shell, and when kept to an hour, roasted to a minute, gravied in its own wild richness, with some few other means and appliances to boot, carved finely – most finely – by razor-like knife, in a hand skilful to dissect and cunning to divide – tasted by a tongue and palate both healthily pure as the dewy petal of a morning rose – swallowed by a gullet felt gradually to be extending itself in its intense delight – and received into a stomach yawning with greed and gratitude, – Oh! surely the thrice-blessed of all web-footed birds; the apex of Apician luxury; and able, were anything on the face of this feeble earth able, to detain a soul, on the very brink of fate, a short quarter of an hour from an inferior Elysium!'