170 PLUTARCH— CLEOPATRA— OPPIAN—ATHEN^US 



Holland translates the passage, " for the cowardice, 

 blockishness, stupidity, want of shifts and means in fishs, 

 either offensive or defensive, causes the taking of them to be 

 dishonest, discommendable, unlovely, and illiberal." I subjoin 

 the Greek so that each reader may make his choice of or a 

 translation of his own. ^ 



These words do, it is true, occur in Plutarch's de Sol. 

 Anim., 9. But the chapter merely gives a fanciful report 

 of an imaginary debate before a jury empanelled to determine 

 whether land or water animals are the more crafty. The words 

 embody, not the opinion, matured or other, of the author, but 

 one of the charges in the opening speech of Aristotimus, who 

 appears on behalf of the superior sagacity of the terrestrials 

 as against the aquatics. 



From a sentence in the mouth of a special pleader Plutarch 

 has been branded for centuries, at any rate since the time of 

 Burton's book (1621), as the foe of fishing and the maligner of 

 the craft. And with as much reason you might make Plato 

 responsible for an opinion alien to his nature but advanced by 

 one of his dialecticians, or saddle Father Izaak with some heresy 

 of Venator's. 



An attempt to account for so learned and on the whole so 

 fair an author as Burton being led into a charge, the inaccuracy 

 of which even cursory perusal of chapter nine evinces, may, 

 if fishless, yet interest some of my readers. One of the blemishes 

 ascribed to the Anatomy is the burdening of the text with too 

 profuse quotations, ransacked from not only classical and 

 patristic writers, but also (literally) from " Jews, Turks, and 

 Infidels." 



Making full allowance for Burton's encyclopaedic knowledge, 

 whence, and how, were these all amassed ? Hearne, the 

 Oxford historian, helps towards an answer in his statement that 

 ]\Ir. John Rouse, of Bodley's Library, for many years provided 

 his friend of Christ Church with choice books and quotations. 

 Is it too much to surmise that the passages " provided " by 



^ rh yap aytwi s /cat aixr)x<'-vov oAoir koX onravovpyov avruiv alaxp^v koX &(,t)\ov koX 

 iLVfXfvdfpov tV &ypav irciroi-nKf. Holland's Translation , published in 1657, if only 

 on account of its quaint turns is preferable to another published in the last 

 century. 



