Virgil speaks of the fish-haunted river Po, Piscosove amne Padusæ (E. xi, 457) but the epithet is a fruit of metre, not of experience. He breathes a fresher air and is filled with wild flowers. Surely the author of Alexis must be an angler? Does he not know the very feel of the bank, beyond which they are playing, the swish of the sedge, which lets one down? Propter aquæ rivum viridi procumbit in ulva. (E. viii, 87). One feels in fifty passages how near he is to the paradise of anglers, but alas! he remains always just outside, as he does from another Paradise. Lucretius is far too nakedly intellectual of course, for the peck of a float and the rustle of a line to interest him. He would have written with his geological mind-a superb monograph upon the fossil fishes in the British Museum: but one pines for Virgil at Gulliver's Hole by the banks of the Parret. Of all, the Latin poets-silverlings included-Ovid must bear the bell. Take the following piece of advice, does it not shew that the author knew the double-edged uncertainty of the craft? That if hopes were dupes, fears may be liars? speaks here. No layman Casus ubique valet; semper tibi pendeat hamus How true too in ring is Glaucus' description of himself in his earlier state! Ante tamen mortalis eram: sed scilicet altis Vertumnus, be it noticed, in the next book woos Pomona with sword and rod, not with sword and net. Miles erat gladio, piscator arundine sumpta (651). It was a god too, who told a plain fishing tale to insolent Pentheus (in the III book, 581). Patria Maonia est, humili de plebe parentes Here again we have the unmistakable angling hand. If further proof were wanted the Halieuticon would provide it. This disgracefully neglected piece calls for comment from the Marine Biological Institute at Plymouth and must be recommended to them for luminous explanations of the words scombri, boves, hippures, milvi, cercyros, cantharus, orphas, erythinus, sargus, sparulus and all their company. If we may wander from the rivers so far, it is instructive to compare at mugil cauda pendentem everberat escam excussamque legit, with this from the Badminton Library: "The bright looking baits (macaroni) soon attract a goodly congregation of fish, which inspect them, smell them, touch them with their sensitive lips, deliberate upon them and apparently come to the decision that they are most excellent food for mullet, but dangerous. Pre sently a big, old fellow will whisk smartly round and deliver a stroke with his tail which knocks off the bait; a friend below opens his wide lips and the bait disappears. The other baits are knocked off in the same contemptuous way and eaten."-Modern Sea fishing, 329. And this which follows: Lupus acri concitus ira Discursu fertur vario, fluctusque ferentes Prosequitur, quassatque caput, dum vulnere sævus Laxato cadat hamus et ora patentia linquat. reminds the pike-fisher of his own experience yesterday, though lupus is brother Bass. Take this from the Pontus letters (ii. 7.) Qui semel est læsus fallaci piscis ab hamo But here my old friend Karteros intervenes with a plea for Ausonius and cites the Idyllia X. The poet certainly know much about sweet-water fishes, but one eye is ever upon the frying pan, otherwise we grant that he would elbow out poor Ovid. Nec te puniceo rutilantem viscera salmo H splendid, of course, but the great point lies in line 102-dubiæ facturus fercula cænæ. His perches are delicacies which rival red mullets, his pike, rank eating, his tench, solatia vulgi, his bleak and shad and gudgeon have gustatory notes. His sturgeon he considers to be a dolphin and yet-yet how real are these lines (247.) Ille autem scopulis sabjectas pronus in undas Quos ignara doli postquam vaga turba natantum Dum trepidant, subit indicium, crispoque tremori Nec mora, et excussam stridenti verbere prædam Let us in charity suppose that Ausonius was the true artist, and that his culinary and housewifely asides were to propitiate his unangling public, just as the astronomer might parry the taunts of the vulgar, directed against his moongazing, by reminding them that his art helped to steer ships and thus |