Note 49 — Chapter XII · HUMPHRY PRACTISES AS A SURGEON—ON HIMSELF.

“Davy’s passion for angling betrayed itself upon all occasions,” says Dr. Paris; “whenever I had the honour of dining at his table, the conversation, however it might have commenced, invariably ended on fishing; and when a brother of the angle happened to be present, you had the pleasure of hearing all his encounters with the finny tribe—how he had lured them by his treachery, and vanquished them by his perseverance. He would occasionally strike into a most eloquent and impassioned strain upon some subject which warmed his fancy; such, for example, as the beauties of mountain scenery: but before you could fully enjoy the prospect which his imagination had pictured, down he carried you into some sparkling stream, or rapid current, to flounder for the next half-hour with a hooked salmon.... Nothing irritated him so much as to find that his companions had caught more fish than himself, and if, during conversation, a brother fisherman surpassed him in the relation of his success, he betrayed similar impatience.”