BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



angling, is truly sayd to come from the sonnes of Seth, of 

 whom Noah was most principall. Thus you see it is good 

 as having no coherence with evil, worthy of use ; inas- 

 much as it is mixt with a delightful profit ; and most an- 

 cient, as being the Recreation of the first Patriarkes." 



Walton himself, speaking of the antiquity of angling 

 (p. 32), quotes the opinion of Jo. Da.* (as he calls the 

 author of " The Secrets of Angling ") thus : " Some say it 

 is as ancient as Deucalion's Flood ;" for in the poem (under 

 the head of " The Author of Angling, Poetical Fictions "), 

 the writer says, that urged by a lack of food for his starv- 

 ing family, 



" Then did Deucalion first this art invent 



Of angling, and his people taught the same. 



***** 



And thus with ready practice and inventive wit, 

 He found the means in every lake and brook 

 Such store of fish to take with little pain. 

 As did long time this people now sustain." 



But " others," adds our 'venerable father, " which I like bet- 

 ter" (meaning Gervase Markham, see B. 1, first edition), 

 " say that Belus (who was the inventor of godly and ver- 

 tuous Recreations) was the inventor of it ; and some others 

 say (for former times have had their disquisitions about it), 

 that Seth, one of the sons of Adam, taught it to his sons, 

 and that by them it was handed down to posterity. Others 

 say, that he left it engraved on those Pillars which hee 

 erected to preserve the knowledge of the mathematicks, 

 musick, and the rest of those precious arts, which by God's 

 appointment and allowance and his noble industry w^ere 

 thereby preserved from perishing in Noah's Flood." These 

 were the same with the tables of stone engraved with sacred 

 characters by the first Mercury, and translated, according 



* The name is noted only in the first edition. 



