BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. xxvii 



tion of St. Ives, the compiler of Ecclesiastical Canons, 

 angling is a thing simple and innocent, no ways repugnant 

 to the clerical character : non inveniri in Scripturis Sanc- 

 tis, sanctum aliquem venatorem ; piscatores inveniri sanctos 

 (Esau., c. 86). For similar reasons, and to avoid idleness 

 in the time that must have hung heavily on their hands, 

 the religious w^ere told to make fishing-nets : ut texantur 

 ah eis Una capiendis piscihus. Nor could angling have 

 well been forbidden then by their church, as St. Peter, 

 their Rock, was, according to St. Ambrose* (on Luke v., 

 1-3), the angler among the apostles : Solum Petrum piscari 

 Dominus jubet, dicens : mitte hamum, et eum piscem, qui 

 primus ascenderit, tolle. 



We are not, therefore, surprised at finding, among the 

 first books printed in England, the one on the art of fishing, 

 just alluded to ; which deserves from us more particular 

 attention, as it is " not only the earliest, but by far the most 

 curious essay on the subject in the English, or perhaps in 

 any other language" {advt. to Pickering^s reprint, 1827). 



In the year 1486, William Caxton (who is generally 

 acknowledged to have been the first printer of a bookf in 

 England) and his assistant, Wynkyn de Werde (a native of 

 Lorraine, who came with, or followed him to England when 

 quite young) printed the book generally known as the Book 



* We may even suspect the " glorious" Bishop of Milan of having been 

 himself an angler, for he never loses an opportunity of speaking in praise 

 of fishermen, and in his Hexcsmeron (v.) he gives eight or nine sections 

 on fish and fishing con amore. Indeed, he gets up quite an ecstasy (v. 6) 

 when speaking of the fish taken by Peter's hook, making him a parable of 

 all good Christians : wVo/t igitur, o bone piscis, Petri hamum timere : non 

 occidit sed consecrat. Some one has said, that he gives a direct exhortation 

 to angle, but I have searched in vain for the passage, and think that his 

 spiritualis piscatio has been mistaken in a natural sense. 



f The Game of Chess (or, as Mr. Dibdin thinks, the Romance ofJason)^ 

 discovered soon after the Restoration, at Westminster, 1474 : a book in the 

 library of Cambridge, dated 146S, but the date is doubted for good reasons. 

 (See Lives of Eminent Persons by Soc. for the Diff. of Useful Knowledge, 

 art. Caxton.) 



