38 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. 



in other nations. He that reads the Voyages of Ferdinand Men- 

 dez Pinto,* shall find, that there he declares to have found a king 

 and several priests a fishing. 



And he that reads Plutarch, shall find that angling was not 

 contemptible in the days of Mark Antony and Cleopatra, and 

 that they in the midst of their wonderful glory used angling as a 

 principal recreation. And let me tell you, that in the Scripture, 

 angling is always taken in the best sense, and that though hunt- 

 ing may be sometimes so taken, yet it is but seldom to be so 

 understood. And let me add this more, he that views the ancient 

 ecclesiastical canons, shall find hunting to be forbidden to church- 

 men, as being a turbulent, toilsome, perplexing recreation ; and 

 shall find angling allowed to clergymen, as being a harmless 

 recreation, a recreation that invites them to contemplation and 

 quietness. f 



I might here enlarge myself by telling you what commenda- 

 tions our learned Perkins bestows on angling : and how dear a 

 lover, and great a practiser of it our learned Doctor Whittakerij: 



* Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, a Portuguese, who might be called the men- 

 dacious Pinto. " He was travelling for nearly twenty-one years in the East 

 with many strange adventures. He is not named in the first edition. The 

 voyages and adventures of Pinto were translated by H[enry] C[ogan] Gent, 

 ]633. The passage alluded to by Walton, occurs p 319."— Major. 



t I have alluded to this in the Bib. Pref. In a collection of canons by 

 St. Ives (Yves, Yvon, Yon), at the close of the eleventh century, he gives 

 the decree of Gratian forbidding hunting, founded upon the passage ascribed 

 to .St. Jerome on xc. (in King James's version, xci.) Psalm (which I have 

 given in my Bib. Pref., commencing Esau, the usual way of quoting canon 

 law). The reasons for angling being preferred, are either conjectured by 

 Walton, or supplied by St. Ives, the compiler. I quote from the Corpus 

 Juris Canonici, of Gregory xiii., ed. 16S2 (where the decree is found Dist. 

 Ixxxvi., c. 11), which has been kindly lent me by a well-read friend. 

 This reference has not been made by any previous commentator on Wal- 

 ton.— j?m. Ed. 



X William Perkins was a learned divine and a pious and painful preacher. 

 Dr. William Whittaker was an able writer in the Romish controversy, and 

 Ren-ius Professor of the University of Cambridge. They both flourished 

 at the latter end of the 16th century. I remark the extreme caution of our 

 author in this passage ; for he says not of Perkins as he does of Whittaker, 

 that he was a " practiser of, but only that he bestows (in some of his writ- 



