Introduction. \ r 



hoped he would have contributed something to its settlement, but he leaves it 

 as he found it. "There seem to have been four editions," he says, "the second 

 and third undated." I have shown that the unique copy of the second is, in 

 all probability, undated, only through the misdoing of the binder's knife, and 

 that of the third, a copy is extant with the date. In Mr. Hazlitt's description 

 of the Bodleian copy of the first edition, he appears to have been guided by 

 Bonn's Lowndes, for he adopts (as I did myself, in the first instance, from 

 want of evidence) one of the blunders of that authority. The copy in question 

 is not Milner's copy, which is thus described in his sale-catalogue : ' ; Denny's 

 Secrets of Angling, a Poem, augmented with many approved Experiments by 

 Lauson, frontispiece, date cut off." This was evidently, therefore, a mutilated 

 copy of the edition of 1652, in which alone the woodcut figures as a frontispiece. 

 The Bodleian copy, on the contrary, is complete ; has no mention of Lauson 

 on the title-page and bears the imprint of 1613. It must have found its way 

 into the library at an earlier date, for two compilers of Angling-book lists, (in 

 MS.) Mr. White of Crickhowell (in 1806-7) an d Mr. Appleby (in 1820) refer to it. 

 The former states that it was entered under the name of John Davies, of Kid welly. 



In further corroboration of Mr. Ellacombe's view, I must add that it is 

 adopted by Mr. Tomkins, a descendant of the Dennises of Pucklechurch. (See 

 Notes and Queries. 4th Series, Aug. 28th. 1869.) 



The only contemporary recognition of I. D., that I am acquainted with, is 

 in " the Pleasures of Princes, good mens recreations : containing a discourse of 

 the Generall Art of Fishing with the Angle or otherwise ; and of all the hidden 

 Secrets belonging thereunto^ Together with the Choyce, Ordering, Breeding, 

 and Dyeting of the Fighting Cocke," the latter being added, peradventure, for 

 increase of princeliness. This scarce tract is commonly considered to be the 

 transmigration of the "Secrets" into prose. It first appeared with separate 

 pagination in "The second booke of the English Husbandman," 1614, and in 

 subsequent issues of that work ; and was also incorporated with Markham's 

 "Country Contentments," possibly in 1623, but certainly in 1631 and afterwards. 

 In the latter form it is entitled: "The whole Art of Angling ; as it was written 

 in a small Treatise in Rime, and now, for the better understanding of the 

 Reader, put into Prose and adorned and enlarged." The transmuting process 

 (for there can be little doubt of the correctness of the general surmise) was 



