xxvi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



they contain the essence of all that is known of fly-fishing 

 now. In the feudal times, when war was the business of 

 their lives, the nobles and gentry reserved the chase and 

 falconry for themselves ; nor would they be likely to aflect 

 the quiet, peaceful pleasures of our gentle art, though, that it 

 was held in some repute, the treatise above alluded to 

 shows ; for, when first added by Wynkyn de Werde to the 

 BoKE OF St. Albans, it had this concluding sentence, pro- 

 bably by the printer : " Bycause that this present treatyse 

 should not come to the handys of eche ydle persone which 

 would desire it, yf it were imprynted allone by itself and 

 put in a lytell plaunflet, therefore I have comprysed it in a 

 greeter volume of dyverse bookys concerning to gentyll 

 and noble men, to the entent that the forsayd ydle per- 

 sones, whych should have but lytell tresure in the sayd 

 dysporte of fyshynge, should not by this meane utterly 

 dystroye it." Notwithstanding, it was published a short 

 time after in " a lytell plaunflet allone by itself," the demand 

 for it by persons of inferior quality being too great a 

 temptation for the printer to resist.* In France, as among 

 the Romans, fishing, though regulated, was free to all, and 

 pains were taken to declare it so by royal ordinance (V. 

 L., art. i., 1681, also Code de la Peche Fluviale par M. 

 Brousse, Paris^ 1829). What must have contributed to 

 the cultivation of the angle, was its being allowed, as 

 Walton tells us, by the ancient Ecclesiastical canons, to 

 ecclesiastical persons,t as a harmless recreation — "a re- 

 creation inviting them to contemplation and quietness ;" 

 while hunting was forbidden, "as being a turbulent, toilsome, 

 and perplexing recreation ;" or, according to the observa- 



* The fact of this second impression is very doubtful. See the notice 

 of Mr. Haworth's copy (said in Pickering's edition of Sir Henry Ellis's 

 Catalogue to be unique), at the close of the remarks on the Treatyse, 

 pp. xxxiv, XXXV. 



t Nothing of this kind is found in the " Constitutions and Canons Ec- 

 clesiastical, as adopted by the Synod at London," under James, and pub- 

 lished 1639. 



