PLUTARCH AN ANGLER— BURTON'S LIBEL 171 



the helpful service of Rouse 1 — a trait fortunately still 

 characteristic of his Bodley successors — included the sentence 

 of damnation, which, even if verified, was, from being torn out 

 of its context, certainly misunderstood and ill-digested ? 



One ought to be chary of attributing motives, much more 

 so reasons ; but the only apparent reason for the numerous 

 repetitions of Burton's slander must have been the line of least 

 resistance or least exercise, which deterred writer after writer 

 from taking the trouble to consult the original context and thus 

 discovering by whom and how the words were spoken. I have 

 so far failed to find a single defender of Plutarch on this count 

 or any plea for reversal of a verdict based on evidence wrong- 

 fully accepted. 2 



Indignation at the injustice of the charge waxes all the 

 hotter, when one remembers that the person indicted is the 

 very self-same Plutarch who stands out as our authority for 

 much unique lore on fish, fishing, and tackle. He, and no 

 other, consoles the victims of an Emperor's decree of banish- 

 ment by pointing out the happiness of their lot in being far 

 removed from the intrigues, the vices, the dust, the noise of 

 Rome to a fair ^Egean island, where the sea breaks peacefully 

 on the rocks below, and — an additional assuagement — " where 

 there is plenty of fishing to be had ! " 



Could a man who contemned and denounced fishing so 

 vigorously put into the mouth even of the pleader for the superior 

 craftiness of fish, unless he himself had angled and possessed 

 the true angling spirit, the following sentences, as true and as 

 useful to-day as when written nineteen centuries ago ? 



" For the first and foremost, the cane of which the angle 

 Rod is made, fishers wish not to have big and thick, and yet 

 they need such an one as is tough and strong, for to pluck and 

 hold the fishes, which commonly do mightily fling and struggle 

 when they be caught, but they choose rather that which is small 



* Milton wrote (1646) a Latin Ode on sending a book to the Bodleian, in 

 which he addresses RoUsius as, 



" Aeternorum operum custos fidelis 

 Quaestorque gazae nobilioris." 

 2 Two years after this was written. I find that Mr. G. W. Bethune in his 

 edition of The Complete Angler (New York, 1891), p. 6, notes the Aristotimus 

 point, but goes no farther in defence of Plutarch. 



N 



