Notes 



Page 48. Divine Du Bartas. Guillaume de Saluste du Bartas, a French 

 Huguenot noble, was born in the same year as Tasso (1544), whose fame, in the 

 estimation of his contemporaries, he was to rival, and died in 1590. His famous 

 poem was entitled La Sepmaine [semaine~\ t ou Creation du Monde (1579), and so hit 

 the taste of the times by its conceits and its religious spirit, that it won an 

 instant popularity, going through thirty editions in six years, and being translated 

 into Latin, Italian, German and English. Men spoke of " Saluste of France " 

 in the same breath with "Tuscan Arioste." Among the poetical exercises of 

 the youth of James I. was a translation of Du Bartas, who, however, found a 

 better translator in Joshua Sylvester, whose version of the Divine Weekes ana 

 Workes, enjoyed a popularity equal to that of its original. Sylvester described 

 himself on his original title-page as " Marchant-Adventurer," but afterwards as 

 "Gent." Walton probably used the 1641 folio. 



Page 48. The mitred bishop and the cowled friar. Various stories are told of 

 fish resembling men. Rondeletius, vouched by Bellonius, gives an account of a 

 fish taken in Polonia, and brought alive to the king, that resembled a bishop, and 

 was afterwards let go into the water again. The same author also describes a fish 

 resembling a monk. Stow, in his Annals, p. 157, gives the following relation of a 

 sea-monster, taken on the coast of Suffolk, in the time of Henry II. " Neare 

 unto Orford in Suffolk, certaine fishers of the sea tooke in their nets a fish, having 

 the shape of a man in all points : which fish was kept by Bartlemew de Glaun- 

 ville, custos of the castle of Orford, in the same castle, by the space of six moneths 

 and more, for a wonder. He spake not a word. All manner of meates he did 

 eate, but most greedily raw fish, after he had crushed out the moisture. Often- 

 times, he was brought to the church, where he shewed no tokens of adoration. 

 At length, when he was not well looked to, he stole away to the sea, and never 

 after appeared." H. 



Redding, in The Itinerary of Cornwall (p. ill), says that sometimes, though 

 rarely, there is a species of shark (Squatina Angelus of Cuvier, taken on that coast, 

 which is called an angel or monk-fish, and might well be the original of both 

 " the mitred bishop and the cowled friar." B. 



Page 48. The cuttle-fish, etc. The cuttle-fish, which is not properly a fish, 

 but of the class ZMollusca, is confounded by Walton here with the Lophius Pisca- 

 torius, common angler, toad-fish, sea-frog, sea-devil. See Donovan, British Fishes, 

 vol. v. plate ci. Donovan has overlooked this passage in Walton, when he says 

 the name of sea-angler is of modern origin. Walton probably copied from Mon- 

 taigne, but this trait of the cuttle-fish is given in Plutarch, De Solertia Animalium, 

 and in Oppian, Ha/., xi. 192200, Jones's translation. The art employed by 

 this fish in taking its prey has been doubted by some naturalists, but not by Ten- 

 nant, or Donovan, or Yarrell, who says : " On the head are two long filaments, 

 .... which have great freedom of motion in any direction. . . . They are of 

 bone covered by the common skin, and very delicate organs of touch. . . . When 

 couching close to the ground, the fish by the action of its fins stirs up the mud ; 



405 



