2110-4-1-8

[J.W. Hills]

House of Commons Library

30 March 1922

My dear John

After two days in the British Museum and a long hunt with a catchy scent, I ran down Doubledays sonnet in Alaric Watts' Literary Souvenir for 1826. You may have seen it there; or in a collection of sonnets made by Housman about 1835; but more probably either in Coquet-Dale Songs or in the Dry Fly fishing of Halford, who quotes it. Anyhow, I have got it, and I am much

relieved. I shall write something about Doubleday: he seems to me worth digging up.

Musa Piscatrix was a fine performance for 19. You ought to bring out another edition. There is a lot more stuff - both earlier and later. Some of it quite good. There is no good modern collection of fishing verse except yours - and that's getting on for a generation old.

Well, many thanks. Fishing is more enduring than politics. Possibly Edward Grey will live longer as a writer of lovely prose than as Foreign Minister in the Great War. And I'll warrant that Salmonia is the only work of Sir Humphry Davy anyone reads now. Yours ever J. Walter Hills.