AUTHORS ON SEA AHD RIVER FISHING.' 55 



perpetuate what he considered an implied libel on the 

 "divine herb." 



The next piscatorial author to be mentioned is Gervase 

 Markham, whose various works, and editions of them, are 

 so various and complicated that no less than four and a 

 half pages are devoted to them in the " Bibliotheca Pisca- 

 toria." All of them contain more or less of disquisitions 

 on fish and fishing, combined with "Res rustical." His 

 first work was published in 161 3, the year of the 1st 

 Edition of J. D., and was entitled The English Hiisband- 

 iiiaii, in ''two bookes." But the first book, and also the 

 second part of the second book, were sold separately. It 

 is in this second part, dated 16 14, and known as TJie 

 Pleasures of Princes ; Goodmaiis Recreations, that we find 

 " a discourse on the general art of fishing with an angle, 

 &c.," which is evidently a prose version of J. D.'s Secrets, 

 or, as Mr. Westwood calls it, "a transmigration," adding 

 that " the transmuting process was effected by no unskil- 

 ful hand, and without too much sacrifice of the precious 

 metal of the original," a compliment which very few such 

 experiments deserve. "This small Treatise in Rime, now, 

 for the better understanding of the reader, put into prose," 

 as Markham speaks of it in his Coicntry Contentments, &c. 

 (6th Ed., 1649), is interesting as a contemporary recogni- 

 tion, and the only one, of J. D. It would answer no good 

 purpose to enumerate the many productions of Markham, 

 extending as they did, down to the year 1707. One in 

 the possession of the writer, entitled A Way to Get Wealth 

 (1653), has already been mentioned in Chapter I., and its 

 further title, " Containing six principall Vocations or Call- 

 ings in which every good Husband or Housewife may 

 lawfully employ themselves," suggests the kind of Olla 

 Podrida volumes produced by our author. It contains 



