It is said that, with his feet over the fender, Macaulay could discourse learnedly of French poetry, art, and philosophy.  Yet he never visited Paris that he did not experience the most exasperating difficulties in making himself understood by the French customs officers.

In like manner I am a fender-fisherman.  With my shins toasting before a roaring fire, and with Judge Methuen at my side, I love to exploit the joys and the glories of angling.  The Judge is ``a brother of the angle,’’ as all will allow who have heard him tell Father Prout’s story of the bishop and the turbots or heard him sing—­

  With angle rod and lightsome heart,
  Our conscience clear, we gay depart
  To pebbly brooks and purling streams,
  And ne’er a care to vex our dreams.

And how could the lot of the fender-fisherman be happier?  No colds, quinsies or asthmas follow his incursions into the realms of fancy where in cool streams and peaceful lakes a legion of chubs and trouts and sawmon await him; in fancy he can hie away to the far-off Yalrow and once more share the benefits of the companionship of Kit North, the Shepherd, and that noble Edinburgh band; in fancy he can trudge the banks of the Blackwater with the sage of Watergrasshill; in fancy he can hear the music of the Tyne and feel the wind sweep cool and fresh o’er Coquetdale; in fancy, too, he knows the friendships which only he can know—­the friendships of the immortals whose spirits hover where human love and sympathy attract them.

How well I love ye, O my precious books—­my Prout, my Wilson, my Phillips, my Berners, my Doubleday, my Roxby, my Chatto, my Thompson, my Crawhall!  For ye are full of joyousness and cheer, and your songs uplift me and make me young and strong again.

And thou, homely little brown thing with worn leaves, yet more precious to me than all jewels of the earth—­come, let me take thee from thy shelf and hold thee lovingly in my hands and press thee tenderly to this aged and slow-pulsing heart of mine!  Dost thou remember how I found thee half a century ago all tumbled in a lot of paltry trash?  Did I not joyously possess thee for a sixpence, and have I not cherished thee full sweetly all these years?  My Walton, soon must we part forever; when I am gone say unto him who next shall have thee to his own that with his latest breath an old man blessed thee!

VIII

BALLADS AND THEIR MAKERS

One of the most interesting spots in all London to me is Bunhill Fields cemetery, for herein are the graves of many whose memory I revere.  I had heard that Joseph Ritson was buried here, and while my sister, Miss Susan, lingered at the grave of her favorite poet, I took occasion to spy around among the tombstones in the hope of discovering the last resting-place of the curious old antiquary whose labors in the field of balladry have placed me under so great a debt of gratitude to him.