B. C.), the father of philosophy' and one of the Seven Sages of Greece, taught that water is the primal substance, out of which all things are composed, and to which they revert. The problems of philosophy so soon took a different form that it is improbable that many philosophers' accepted Thales's solution, however flattering to anglers.

PAGE 35. 11. increase. The plural verb shows that 'offspring' is here the meaning.

16. the casting off of Lent. The laws commanding a Lenten fast were not repealed till 1863, but after the Reformation there was considerable laxity in observing them, so that in the reigns of Edward VI, Elizabeth, James I, Charles I, and James II, numerous acts and proclamations were issued to enforce them, not so much ' as a means to virtue', but to protect the fishingtrade, upon which the Navy depended for men and ships. The Puritans, however, made a point of disobeying, and others disobeyed from purely secular motives. The strictness of the laws may be gauged from a Proclamation of 1560, by which a fine of £20 for each offence is imposed on any butcher slaughtering animals in Lent.

17. given the lie to: i. e. ‘gone contrary to ', but I can find no parallel of this use. Before the Reformation, at least, Founders of Colleges made special provisions in their Statutes for the proper observance of Lent.

20. many putrid, shaking, intermitting agues. In Walton's time, and (pace Walton) for centuries before, London had been a hot-bed of exotic diseases, which culminated in the Great Plague of 1665. Walton, as a member of the Established Church and a friend of many bishops, hardly shrinks from suggesting that the Puritans are the culprits.

24. in story: i. e. 'in history', including contemporary history and books of travel.

27. the chief diet. Leviticus xi. 9 and Deuteronomy xiv. 9 ordain that the Israelites may eat all things in the waters that have fins and scales. It is a fisherman's exaggeration to say that fish was to be their chief diet.

30. the Whale is not a fish, but a warm-blooded mammal. 32. The Romans. The early Romans did not eat fish, but later the taste for fish became so exaggerated that obsonium, which originally meant any cooked food, came to mean cooked fish only. Fortunes were squandered in building and maintaining fish-ponds from which to supply their tables. The famous gourmand Lucullus spent more on his fish-pond than on his house. Athenaeus (vii, p. 294 c) tells how the sturgeon was brought in to music by garlanded servants. Enormous sums were paid for single fish. A mullet, which rarely weighs more than two pounds, was sold

for £50 (Seneca, Ep. 95. 42), £60 (Juvenal, iv. 15), £70 (Macrobius, Sat. iii. 16. 9), £80 (Pliny, ix. 67). Under Tiberius three sold for £300 (Pliny, ix. 66).

Ambrosius Theodosius Macrobius (fifth century A. D.) wrote Saturnaliorum Conviviorum Libri Septem: of his career nothing is known for certain.

For Varro see note to p. 28, 1. 1. The reference here is to De Re Rustica, iii. 17.

PAGE 36. 13. Dr. Wharton. Thomas Wharton, M.D. (1614-73) discovered the sub-maxillary (Wharton's) gland. As physician to St. Thomas's Hospital, he was one of the few doctors who remained at their posts during the Plague of 1665.

PAGE 37. 1. St. Jerome (345 ?-420). One of the Fathers of the Church who made the Latin translation of the Bible known as the Vulgate. I cannot find the authority for his wish.

5. the monuments of Livy. No such monument is known in Rome. At Padua there is a tomb which was long honoured as Livy's, until the progress of scholarship corrected an error in deciphering the inscription.

6. of Tully. No such monument of Cicero is known to exist. It would be interesting to know why the anglicization of Tullius, Cicero's second name, should have died out, while we still talk of Virgil and not Maro, Horace and not Flaccus, &c.

8. of Virgil. Virgil was buried not in Rome, but on the road from Naples to Pozzuoli: a grotto, which the old highway may have passed, has been shown for more than six centuries as the tomb, but its authenticity is uncertain.

10. the humble house. Under the Church of Santa Maria in Via Lata in Rome is a crypt which tradition asserts to have been part of St. Paul's 'own hired house'.

14. lie buried together. The body of St. Paul is under the High Altar of the Basilica of St. Paul without the Walls, and his head is in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, while the tomb of St. Peter is under the High Altar of St. Peter's.

20. the very sepulchre. Macarius, a bishop, was commissioned by the Emperor Constantine to find the Holy Sepulchre. For some unknown reason, perhaps a tradition, he decided that it was under a temple of Aphrodite erected in Jerusalem by Hadrian. The temple was removed and a rock-cut Jewish sepulchre was discovered. A magnificent church was built over it, since destroyed by the Turks and built again. The authenticity, however, of the tomb is very doubtful.

25. but for my element of water. Not all travellers consider the English Channel would be a greater barrier if it had no water in it. But perhaps Walton did not understand that there was solid earth beneath the waters.

31. to have spoken to a fish. 'The Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.' Jonah ii. 10. 32. made a whale a ship. Jonah i. and ii. But the great fish' is not said to have been a whale.

6

PAGE 38. 7. except against. Object to' or take exception to'. Rare since the seventeenth century. In Roman Law excipere (adversus aliquem) was to limit the right alleged by the plaintiff by setting up an opposite right in the defendant which excepted' or 'took out his case from the general rule.

PAGE 39. 11. any Hawk you have named. It was Auceps, who has now left them, and not Venator, who gave the list of hawks. See p. 29.

13. Marlin. A species of falcon.

18. like poetry, men are to be born so.

There is a Latin

proverb of uncertain origin: Poeta nascitur, non fit.

22. wit. In original sense of 'intellect'.

6

31. first, for the antiquity, &c. In the first edition there is a marginal note, J. Da. Jer. Mar.,' i. e. John Davors, Jervis (Gervase) Markham.

In The Secrets of Angling, by J. D. Esqre (London, 1613), Bk. i, there is a chapter headed 'The Author of Angling', which describes how, after the great flood, Deucalion (the Noah of Greek and Roman mythology) and Pyrrha his wife re-peopled the earth by throwing stones over their shoulders, which immediately became men and women, and how, to feed this sudden family, Deucalion was inspired with the idea of angling. The previous chapter contains the verses on p. 58, which are attributed by Walton to John Davors. It appears, however, from an entry dated March 23, 1612, in the Books of the Stationers' Company, that the author's real name was John Dennys. Nothing is known of him.

The reference to Markham is to The Pleasures of Princes or Good Men's Recreations, containing a Discourse of the generall art of Fishing, &c. London, 1635, chap. i, § 3, 'The Antiquity of Angling,' where Markham reconciles the various traditions, 'for it is most certaine that both Ducallion, Saturne and Bellus are taken for figures of Noah and his family, and the invention of the Art of Angling is truely sayd to come from the sonnes of Seth, of which Noah was most principall.' Seth was ancestor in the eighth generation of Noah (Genesis v. 6–18).

PAGE 40. 2. Belus. In Greek mythology, a son of the sea-god Poseidon, and father of Aegyptus and Danaus. He was probably the ancestral hero of many nations in the East, whence his legends were transplanted into Greece. Markham calls him the son of Nimrod'.

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6. Seth. The son born to Adam after the death of Abel. Josephus, Ant. I. ii. 3, says that the descendants of Seth discovered astronomy and other sciences, and inscribed their discoveries on two pillars, one of which survived in his time.

20. in the Prophet Amos, &c. Amos iv. 2 and Job xli. 1. There are other references to angles and fish-hooks in the Bible. See Isaiah xix. 8 and Habakkuk i. 15. The question of the date and authorship of the Book of Job is still unsettled, but it is said to be the oldest book in the Bible: it has seldom, if ever, been claimed for Moses.

PAGE 41. 23. the words of our Saviour. Luke x. 41-2: 'Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.'

PAGE 42. 15. Pet. du Moulin (1568–1658). Peter du Moulin was a famous French Protestant divine, who received from James I a prebend at Canterbury for assisting him in his religious controversies. His son of the same name was chaplain to Charles II. Walton refers to a passage in the preface to The accomplishment of the Prophecies, Translated out of the French by J. Heath (Oxford, 1613).

PAGE 43. 1. an ingenuous Spaniard. Moses Browne, who edited The Compleat Angler (1750) at Dr. Johnson's suggestion, says that the reference is to The Hundred and Ten Considerations of Signor Valdesso, of which an English translation by Nicholas Farrar, junior, was published in 1638: but the passage does not appear there. Valdesso had been a soldier of the Emperor Charles V, but obtained leave to retire by urging that some space should intervene between the employment of life and the day of death. Charles V reflected on this saying and decided to abdicate himself (see Walton's Life of Herbert).

19. a river in Epirus. Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 228, relates that Jove's fountain at Dodona in Epirus performs this feat.

21. Some waters, &c. Lyncestis causes drunkenness, Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 230; but I cannot trace the others.

23. Selarus. The Silarus, which forms the boundary of Campania and Lucania in South Italy. For its petrifying power, see Pliny, Nat. Hist. ii. 226; Strabo, v. 251; Sil. Ital. viii. 582.

24. Camden. See note to p. 6, 1. 25. The English well is at Knaresborough, vol. iii, p. 8 (Gough's edition); there is no mention of a Lochmere in Camden, but the petrifying properties of Lough Neagh are mentioned in vol. iii, p. 616.

26. river in Arabia. Lucian, De Syria Dea, viii, tells of a river Adonis rising in Mt. Libanus, which turns blood-red every spring.

29. Aristotle (384–322 B.C.). The greatest of Greek philosophers. The first edition of The Compleat Angler has a marginal note, 'In his wonders of Nature.' I cannot trace either the passage in Aristotle or the river.

PAGE 44. 2. a well. See Britannia (Gough's edition), vol. iii, P. 148.

4. Mole. See Britannia (Gough's edition), vol. i, p. 168. It rises near Horley and joins the Thames at Hampton Court. In dry seasons it disappears for nearly three miles, from Burford Bridge to near Leatherhead, being drained by two swallows into an underground course, which, except in dry seasons, is already full of water.

9. Anus. Camden rightly has 'Anas', the ancient name of the Guadiana, a corruption of Wadi (Ar. 'bed of a river') Anas. The Guadiana Alto shortly after leaving the last of the Lagunas de Ruidera disappears into the ground. It was formerly thought to reappear at the large springs known as Los Ojos de Guadiana ('The Eyes of Guadiana '), and thence to join the Zancara; but it has since been discovered that its underground channel takes a north-westerly course and runs straight into the same river. In either case the subterranean course is between twenty and thirty miles long.

11. Josephus (A. D. 37–100 ?). Jewish general and historian. His chief works (written in Greek) are The History of the Jewish War (170 B. C.-A. D. 70) and The Jewish Antiquities. A Syrian Sabbatical river occurs in The Jewish War, vii. 5, which runs on one day and is dry the rest of the week. Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxi. 24, says there is a river in Judaea which is dry on one day of the week only.

18. Pliny the philosopher. C. Plinius Secundus (23-79), known as Pliny the Elder to distinguish him from his nephew, the letter-writer, was not a philosopher in the modern sense of a seeker after fundamental truth. In the seventeenth century the term was applied to all persons with intellectual hobbies. The thirty-seven books of his Natural History are a compilation of facts, the more marvellous the better, from all previous Greek and Latin works. The nephew has left a vivid account of the eruption of Vesuvius in which his uncle perished.

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20. Balaena. Pliny (§ 4) talks of ballaenae quaternum jugerum 'whales of four acres each', and gives them no other name. Walton means 'Whirlpool' as a translation of Ballaena. Cf. Job xli. 1, marginal note on Leviathan, ‘a whale or a whirlpool;' and in a list of sea-monsters in the Faerie Queene (II. xii. 23) comes,' Great whirlpooles which all fishes make to flee.'

29. Cadara, an island near this place. Cadara, says Pliny, is a large peninsula in the Red Sea : 'this place' is the Indian Sea.