Poole promptly asked him down to Nether Stowey. His friend relates that although his bodily infirmity was very great and his sensibility painfully acute--(“Here I am, the ruin of what I was!” he exclaimed on his arrival)--his mind still showed much of its wonted ardour and vigour. He spent his mornings in literary work, mainly on his “Salmonia; or, Days of Fly-fishing,” a philosophical disquisition on angling, published in 1828, and which, despite the rollicking banter of Christopher North, passed through five or six editions. Davy had the ambition to do for fly-fishing what Walton had done for the humbler art of bottom-fishing. But Davy’s book, although constructed on much the same lines as “The Compleat Angler,” lacks every feature which has made honest Izaak’s work immortal--the quaint simplicity, the homely wit, the delicate humour, the delightful charm--the reflection, in a word, of the mental features of a lovable man blessed with the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. The egotism and garrulity of Piscator are delicious; the loquacity and self-confidence of Davy’s Halieus are tiresome to the last degree. We are bored with his long didactic speeches, his consciousness of superiority, and his cheap and tawdry sentiment. It was a poor return for all the kindness and skill of Babington, that his patient should have seen in such a creation the character of one of the most charming and estimable of men. More than one mention has been made in this biography of what Maria Edgeworth termed Davy’s “little madness.” Indeed, the love of angling amounted to a passion with him; and he told Ticknor that he thought if he were obliged to renounce either fishing or philosophy he should find the struggle of his choice pretty severe. Whenever he could escape from town he would hie him to some favourite stream and spend the day in the practice of his beloved art. He was known to have posted a couple of hundred miles for the sake of a day’s fishing, and to have returned contented, although he had never a rise. When confined to Albemarle Street, and chafing at his inability to get away, he would sometimes turn over the leaves of his fly-book and derive much consolation from the sight of his hackles and harles, his green-tails, dun cuts, red spinners, and all the rest of the deadly paraphernalia associated in his mind with the memories of pleasant days and exciting combats. He greatly prided himself on his skill, and his friends were often secretly amused to notice his ill-concealed chagrin when a brother-angler outvied him in the day’s catch or in the narration of some piscatorial triumph. They were amused, too, at the costume which he was wont to don on such occasions--his broad-brimmed, low-crowned hat, lined with green and garnished with flies; his grey-green jacket, with a multitude of pockets for the various articles of his angling gear; his wading-boots and knee-caps--all made up an attire as original as it was picturesque.