viii Preface. 



treatife more than to any other belongs the credit of having 

 affigned in popular eflimation to the angler his meditative 

 and gentle nature. Many pure and noble intelleds have 

 kindled into lading devotion to angling on reading her 

 eloquent commendation of it. Such men as Donne, Wotton, 

 and Herbert, Paley, Bell, and Davy, together with many 

 another excellent and fimple difpofition, have caught enthu- 

 fiafm from her lofty fentiments, and found that not their 

 bodily health only, but alfo their morals, were improved by 

 angling. It became a fchool of virtues, a quiet paflime in 

 which, while looking into their own hearts, they learnt leffons 

 of the higheft wifdom, reverence, refignation, and love — 

 love of their fellow-men, of the lower creatures, and of their 

 Creator. 



Nothing definite is known of the reputed authorefs. Dame 

 Juliana Barnes or Berners. She is faid to have been a 

 daughter of Sir James Berners of Roding Berners in the 

 county of Effex, a favourite of King Richard the Second, who 

 was beheaded in 1388 as an evil counfellor to the king and 

 an enemy to the public weal. She was celebrated for her 

 extreme beauty and great learning, and is reported to have 

 held the office of priorefs of the Benedidine Nunnery of 

 Sopwell in Hertfordfhire, a cell to the Abbey of St. Alban, 

 but of this no documentary evidence exifts. The firft edition 

 of her " Book of St. Alban's," printed by the fchoolmafler- 

 printer of St. Alban's in i486, treats of hawking, hunting, 

 and coat-armour. In the next edition, " Enprynted at 

 Weftmeftre by Wynkyn the Worde the yere of thyncarnacon 

 of our lorde. M.CCCC.lxxxxvi," among the other " treatyfes 

 perteynynge to hawkynge & huntynge with other dyuers 

 playfaunt materes belongynge vnto nobleffe," appeared the 

 prefent treatife on angling. The ariflocratic inftindts of the 



