Perhaps, sometime, my boy himself

Shall find you out and take you down.
Then may he feel the joy once more

That thrilled me, filled me years ago
When reverently I brooded o'er

The glories of Boccaccio!
Out upon the vile brood of imitators, I say! Get ye gone, ye

Bandellos and ye Straparolas and ye other charlatans who would
fain possess yourselves of the empire which the genius of

Boccaccio bequeathed to humanity. There is but one master, and
to him we render gratefulhomage. He leads us down through the

cloisters of time, and at his touch the dead become reanimate,
and all the sweetness and the valor of antiquity recur; heroism,

love, sacrifice, tears, laughter, wisdom, wit, philosophy,
charity, and understanding are his auxiliaries; humanity is his

inspiration, humanity his theme, humanity his audience, humanity
his debtor.

Now it is of Tancred's daughter he tells, and now of
Rossiglione's wife; anon of the cozening gardener he speaks and

anon of Alibech; of what befell Gillette de Narbonne, of
Iphigenia and Cymon, of Saladin, of Calandrino, of Dianora and

Ansaldo we hear; and what subject soever he touches he quickens
it into life, and he so subtly invests it with that indefinable

quality of his genius as to attract thereunto not only our
sympathies but also our enthusiasm.

Yes, truly, he should be read with understanding; what author
should not? I would no more think of putting my Boccaccio into

the hands of a dullard than I would think of leaving a bright and
beautiful woman at the mercy of a blind mute.

I have hinted at the horror of the fate which befell Yseult
Hardynge in the seclusion of Mr. Henry Boggs's Lincolnshire

estate. Mr. Henry Boggs knew nothing of romance, and he cared
less; he was whollyincapable of appreciating a woman with dark,

glorious eyes and an expanding soul; I'll warrant me that he
would at any time gladly have traded a ``Decameron'' for a copy

of ``The Gentleman Poulterer,'' or for a year's subscription to
that grewsome monument to human imbecility, London ``Punch.''

Ah, Yseult! hadst thou but been a book!
VII

THE DELIGHTS OF FENDER-FISHING
I should like to have met Izaak Walton. He is one of the few

authors whom I know I should like to have met. For he was a wise
man, and he had understanding. I should like to have gone

angling with him, for I doubt not that like myself he was more of
an angler theoretically than practically. My bookseller is a

famous fisherman, as, indeed, booksellers generally are, since
the methods employed by fishermen to deceive and to catch their

finny prey are very similar to those employed by booksellers to
attract and to entrap buyers.

As for myself, I regard angling as one of the best of avocations,
and although I have pursued it but little, I concede that

doubtless had I practised it oftener I should have been a better
man. How truly has Dame Juliana Berners said that ``at the

least the angler hath his wholesome walk and merry at his ease,
and a sweet air of the sweet savour of the mead flowers that

maketh him hungry; he heareth the melodious harmony of fowls; he
seeth the young swans, herons, ducks, cotes, and many other fowls

with their broods, which meseemeth better than all the noise of
hounds, the blasts of horns, and the cry of fowls that hunters,

falconers, and fowlers can make. And IF the angler take
fish--surely then is there no man merrier than he is in his

spirit!''
My bookseller cannot understand how it is that, being so

enthusiastic a fisherman theoretically, I should at the same time
indulge so seldom in the practice of fishing, as if, forsooth, a

man should be expected to engage continually and actively in
every art and practice of which he may happen to approve. My

young friend Edward Ayer has a noble collection of books relating
to the history of American aboriginals and to the wars waged

between those Indians and the settlers in this country; my other
young friend Luther Mills has gathered together a multitude of

books treating of the Napoleonic wars; yet neither Ayer nor Mills
hath ever slain a man or fought a battle, albeit both find

delectation in recitals of warlikeprowess and personal valor. I
love the night and all the poetic influences of that quiet time,

but I do not sit up all night in order to hear the nightingale or
to contemplate the astounding glories of the heavens.

For similar reasons, much as I appreciate and marvel at the
beauties of early morning, I do not make a practice of early

rising, and sensible as I am to the charms of the babbling brook
and of the crystal lake, I am not addicted to the practice of

wading about in either to the danger either to my own health or
to the health of the finny denizens in those places.

The best anglers in the world are those who do not catch fish;
the mere slaughter of fish is simply brutal, and it was with a

view to keeping her excellent treatise out of the hands of the
idle and the inappreciative that Dame Berners incorporated that

treatise in a compendious book whose cost was so large that only
``gentyll and noble men'' could possess it. What mind has he

who loveth fishing merely for the killing it involves--what mind
has such a one to the beauty of the ever-changing panorama which

nature unfolds to the appreciative eye, or what communion has he
with those sweet and uplifting influences in which the meadows,

the hillsides, the glades, the dells, the forests, and the
marshes abound?

Out upon these vandals, I say--out upon the barbarians who would
rob angling of its poesy, and reduce it to the level of the

butcher's trade! It becomes a base and vicious avocation, does
angling, when it ceases to be what Sir Henry Wotton loved to call

it-- ``an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly
spent; a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a diverter

of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of
passions, a procurer of contentedness, and a begetter of habits

of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it!''
There was another man I should like to have met--Sir Henry

Wotton; for he was an ideal angler. Christopher North, too (``an
excellent angler and now with God''!) --how I should love to

have explored the Yarrow with him, for he was a man of vast soul,
vast learning, and vast wit.

``Would you believe it, my dear Shepherd,'' said he, ``that my
piscatory passions are almost dead within me, and I like now to

saunter along the banks and braes, eying the younkers angling, or
to lay me down on some sunny spot, and with my face up to heaven,

watch the slow-changing clouds!''
THERE was the angling genius with whom I would fain go angling!

``Angling,'' says our revered St. Izaak, ``angling is somewhat
like poetry--men are to be born so.''

Doubtless there are poets who are not anglers, but doubtless
there never was an angler who was not also a poet. Christopher

North was a famous fisherman; he began his career as such when he
was a child of three years. With his thread line and bent-pin

hook the wee tot set out to make his first cast in ``a wee
burnie'' he had discovered near his home. He caught his fish,

too, and for the rest of the day he carried the miserable little
specimen about on a plate, exhibiting it triumphantly. With

that first experience began a life which I am fain to regard as
one glorious song in praise of the beauty and the beneficence of

nature.
My bookseller once took me angling with him in a Wisconsin lake

which was the property of a club of anglers to which my friend
belonged. As we were to be absent several days I carried along a

box of books, for I esteemappropriatereading to be a most
important adjunct to an angling expedition. My bookseller had

with him enough machinery to stock a whaling expedition, and I