AUTHORS ON SEA AND RIVER FISHING. 43 



Rondeletius ; and later on in the seventeenth century 

 (without paying due regard to chronological order) those 

 of Du Bartas, Du Cange, Cats of Amsterdam, Aldrovandri, 

 and Giannettasius. Several of the above, as readers of 

 Izaak Walton remember, are frequently quoted by him, 

 but the works of most of them will not repay study, being 

 the products of a period singularly deficient in knowledge 

 and the gift of scientific observation ; while the poetical 

 writers among them seldom rise above mediocrity. As a 

 whole they have but little interest for English readers, 

 whether anglers or otherwise ; while in some cases they 

 can hardly be considered as contributors to piscatorial 

 literature at all, though they have been claimed as such by 

 some bibliographers. Several of them find no place in the 

 Bibliotheca Piscatoria. 



We are naturally much more interested in the works of 

 English writers, and with these it may be presumed that 

 this little volume was intended to have most to do. How- 

 ever much our literary Prioress of Sopwell may have 

 stimulated the practice of angling, she does not appear, as 

 far as we know, to have stimulated angling authorship. It 

 is not till the year 1590 that we come to another real 

 angling author, Leonard Mascall, who at that date pub- 

 lished his Booke of Fishing with Hooke and L ine, and all 

 other instruments thereunto belonging, a quaint black-letter 

 quarto. With the exception of some remarks upon the 

 " preservation of fish in ponds," and intructions for killing 

 vermin, piscatorially it is no improvement upon Juliana. 

 Indeed the portion relating to fish and fishing is mainly 

 taken, though very clumsily, from the Treatyse of the 

 Prioress ; and thus Mascall set an example of literary theft, 

 which has continued to be a feature of angling literature up 

 to the present day. A copy of the first edition is in the 



