xLii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



twelve virtues and qualities* which ought to be in every 

 angler. 2. What weather, seasons, and time of year is 

 best and worst, and what hours of the day is best for 

 sport. 3. To know each fish's haunt, and the times to 

 take tiiem. 



In 1G14 Gervase IMarkhamt (a gentleman and scholar, 

 skilled in various languages, who served as Captain 

 under Charles I.) published, though not with his name, 

 " The Pleasures of Princes, or Good Mens Recreations, 

 containing a Discourse of the General Art of Fishing with 

 an Angle,''^ 6z,c. ; which discourse he reprinted in the 2d 

 edition of his Country Contentments, or the Husbandman'' s 

 Recreations. 1618. This is the treatise already spoken of 

 as having been turned into prose from Dennys' Secrets 

 of Angling. Walton evidently was familiar with Mark- 

 ham's book. On the margin of the page in the first edition 

 of the Complete Angler, when he speaks of the antiquity 

 of angling, he put J. Da. (Secrets of Angling) and Jer. 

 Mar. (Gervase Markham), " whose opinion," he says, " he 

 likes better." 



There are some good passages in Markham's treatise ; 

 as this : " Since all are now become the sonnes of Pleas- 

 ure, and every good is measured by the delight which it 

 produceth, what worke unto men can be more thankful! 

 then the Discourse of that pleasure which is most comely, 

 most honest, and giveth the most liberty to Divine medita- 

 tion ? and that, without all question, is the art of angling, 

 which having ever beene rnost hurtlessly necessary, hath 

 become the Sporte or Recreation of God's Saints, of most 

 holy Fathers, and of many worthy and reverend Divines, 



• These are, faith, hope, love, patience, humility, courage, liberality, 

 knowledge, placability, thankfulness to God, endurance, memory. 



t He reprinted the Book of St. Albans in 1595 under the title of The 

 Gentleman's Academy, or the Book of St. Alban's. Besides several 

 works on Husbandry, Horsemanship, Military Discipline, Housewifery, 

 4ic , he wrote a tragedy, Herod and Antipater. 



