ANCIENT ANGLING AUTHORS 11 



character of such a sedate, grave, pious, matron-like 

 Lady, as the Prioress of a Nunnery is imagined to 

 be ; a conjunction of such extreams, seeming quite 

 unnatural. Indeed, we have, and so we may have 

 had, your romping, roaring hoydens, that will be for 

 horsing and hunting after the wildest game, in the 

 most giddy company ; but to join so much of these 

 rough and impetuous diversions, as is required to 

 obtain the proficiency aforesaid, with the most serene 

 and solemn profession of a mortified and spiritual 

 life in herself, and the charge or care of training it 

 in others, must make an unaccountable mixture. In 

 that light, there appears such a motley masquerade, 

 such an indistinction of petticoat and breeches, such 

 a problem and concorporation of sexes, according to 

 the image that arises out of the several representa- 

 tions of this religious Sportswoman or Virago, that 

 one can scarcely consider it, without thinking Sir 

 Tristram, the old Monkish Forester, and Juliana, 

 the Matron of the Nuns, had united to form John 

 Clevelands Canonical Hermaphrodite. 



Though I do not think that the evidence is 

 sufficient to justify the belief that the Treatyse of 

 ffysshynge was either written or compiled by Dame 

 Juliana Berners, nevertheless in commenting on the 

 following extracts, partly perhaps from sentiment, 

 and partly for convenience, I have adopted the 

 popular supposition. 



In the first few extracts I have followed the 

 orthography of Mr Denison's manuscript in order 

 that the reader may, if he wishes, compare it with 

 the original text (see frontispiece). It commences 

 as follows : 



" Saloman in hys paraboles seith that a glad spirit 



