ANCIENT ANGLING AUTHORS 43 



" Which I deliver in English thus : 



" The church I governe as a shippe 

 Wee, Seas with world compare 

 The scriptures are enclosing nettes 

 And men the fishes are." 



Of the old angling works there are three which 

 stand out from the rest and form a class by them- 

 selves of pre-eminent interest and value. The first 

 of these, the Treaty se of ffysshynge wyth an Angle , 

 we have already dealt with ; the second, The Secrets 

 of Angling^ we have now to discuss; and the third, 

 Walton's deservedly famous Compleat Angler , will be 

 considered in a later chapter. 



The Secrets of Angling, by J. D., was first published 

 in 1613, and while it revealed many secrets of 

 angling, the secret of its author's name was for 

 many years unsolved. Walton attributed the work 

 to John Davors ; Hewlett and others to Donne or 

 Davies. It was not until 1811 that the author's 

 name was discovered to be John Dennys, from the 

 following entry in the Stationers' Registers, "23 Non. 

 Martii" 1612 (i.e. 1613): "Master Roger Jackson 

 entred for his copie under thands of Master Mason 

 and Master Warden Hooper, a booke called The 

 Secrets of Angling, teaching the choysest tooles, 

 bates, and seasons, for the taking of any fish, in pond, 

 or river, practised and opened in three bookes by 

 John Dennys Esquier, Vid." 



Dennys was a member of an old Gloucestershire 

 family residing at Pucklechurch in that county. A 



