Weekly national intelligencer. [volume] (Washington [D.C.]) 1841-1869, 1845-04-05
NATIONAL INTELLIGENCER.
NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.


This pleasant season, bringing us as it doth tn,
first genial taste of spring. the breath of its eares
flowers, invites the thoughts out of their prisons
the winter, calls the fancy abroad bids us to gar
dens, to fields, to the country, to rural employ
ments and the approach of rural pleasures of every
sort. The shal lin our part of the world that ear
Hest yernaR messenger, more welcome too than TIT
swallow, because il bringeth better price in mar
ket) hath been with us several weeks though check
ed in its abundance of arrival by intervening spells
of cold weather.
The French have sort of culinary adage abou
the shad; for that popular wisdom which maketf
proverbs is particularly apt in France to make them
about cooking Ii il be true that the best OF all de-
fntons of man is, not that he is featherless BIZ
ped" nor :" laughing and crying animal, but :. a
cooking animal" then your Gau must stand at the
head of all human races, as the supreme specimen
of the faculty which distinguished the human AMI
NAL from all others--the faculty of cookery. This
by way of parenthess, however, like late Presl-
dental reign.
Well, Monsieur says, in his profound way about
shad, Jamais richie ne mangea lne bonnie alose, nj
pauvre une mauvaise;' 80 for the shad that arrive
first sell highest and are the worst.
Another thing we have to say about them
though not without some misgivings OF having our
statement received with incredulity-shad will some
times bite at the hook. We may say that we know
the fact for one season, in Southern river, we
heard repeated instances of their being taken in that
way, from friends whose veracity we could not for
an instant doubt, and who witnessed the thing But
we never heard of the like. before nor since. The
thing is an anomaly in fishing, and quite worthy to
have been celebrated in the most charming of all
piscatory books, of which we have before us the
following very pretty and ornate edition, to notice
OF which the preceding is intended to be preface
sThe Complete Angler; or Contemplave Mans Recrea-
ton being discourse Rivers Fshponds Fish and Fish
ing. By Izaak Walton and Charles Cotton. With notes
biographical and explanatory, and the lives OF the authors
London. L. A. Lewes, post svo.
There are few books in our language of greater
merit than this, merely literary production 1t
would be difficult, indeed to point in English to
better model of that old style for which the French
have name, (the naIf) but we none-the style of
which Amyot and Montague are the exemplars in
that tongue and Walton in ours. 1t is manner
full of sweetness of unaffected elegance and sense,
heightened all in their effect by air of harusti
cal LONELINESS, and dicton touched with archasms
and quaintness. In Walton, the charm of all this
is graced besides with exclusive but most unre-
strained fancifulness; with spirit the most amable
and cheerful, but religious and with great happi
ness and art of spreading interest over his subject
There is poetic love of Nature through his whole
book which must be infinitely attractive to all who
preserve minds undebauched of such tastes. In a
word, it is volume which must be confessed to be
one of those which every one should have read,
whether votaries or not of his art.
True, the gentle craft has its depreciators; but
so have all its sisters-Poesy, of which Sir Philip
Sydney, that ornament of modern knighthood, was
compelled to write defence; Music, which some
fo1 trrnp Of he OH Arm yphi ph
the Peace Society would Danish, no doubt that the
badly strong might buffet the helpless they liked
Learning, which Jack Cades men thought an abom-
inaton Medicine, long denounced in favor of old
women and quacks Wine, because some drink too
much whiskey; Eloquence, because it is too per-
suasive; Beauty, because il takes the mind captive
and even Religion, because it has its wonders.
That behemoth of arrogance and pomposity, for
instance, DIR. Johnson, who believed in ghosts and
had obvious msgivings about Second Sight, did not
believe in angling which is no great wonder in
man to whom Nature had given little eyesight and
hardly any of the finer perceptions. Dr. Ben.
Franklin too, sworn utilitarian, who thought all
sports unhrifty, hath INDUCED in of the gibes
of his peculiar philosophy at the expense Of anglers.
And Lord Byron fatty villipends the good old
Izaak-as, indeed, he doth at times nearly all that
is amiable and fit to be reverenced.
On the other hand, what admirable names shine,
from the earliest time, in the roll of anglers! Tu-
balCain of course invented it. as first of all the arts
he being the great discoverer Of all in common.
Nimrod, who so fond Of hunting, must have
loved fishing too, he dwelt the Euphrates.
Young Tobt caught fish for his father. David
and Solomon both mention fishing with respect.
Samson was great fox-hunter, and therefore pro-
badly fished, when the season for the other sport
was past. The Apostles, most of them fshed ex-
cept probably Judas. The Romans were exces-
sively fond of fish and fish-ponds and we collect
from Plutarch that Queen Cleopatra THAT peerless
beauty was good and Mark Anthony very bad
angler. These are but some Of the ancient exam
pies: the modern are endless
Rich ate good shad, poor man bad one