154 ANCIENT ANGLING AUTHORS 



Conyers at the Ring in Little Brittain, and both 

 were sold for sixpence. They were, moreover, with 

 Gilbert's Angler's Delight ',the earliest works to advise 

 the adoption of specific methods for special rivers. 

 These points of resemblance seem to me to suggest 

 the probability that the success of The True Art of 

 Angling induced Conyers, who at the time was 

 publishing posthumous editions of Markham's works, 

 to publish (sometime between 1706 and 1716) another 

 book, similar in price but of even smaller size, and 

 to affix to it the initials of the well-known writer 

 Gervase Markham. 



Another very interesting point in this connection 

 is, that the fourth edition (1716) and some of the 

 subsequent editions of The True Art of Angling 

 contain an advertisement of The Young Sportsman 's 

 Instructor in Angling, Hawking, Hunting, Ordering 

 of Singing Birds, Connies, Dogs, their Diseases and 

 Cure. Price 6d. 



A work which attained some popularity about 

 this period was The Innocent Epicure ; or, the Art of 

 Angling, a poem, London, 1697. The preface is 

 signed by N. Tate, who states that the poem was 

 sent to him by an unknown author, " with Commission 

 to Publish or Suppress it " as he thought fitting. Tate 

 submitted it to several experienced anglers, who 

 agreed in their opinions that it far surpassed any- 

 thing which had been published in prose on the 

 subject, even in the useful and instructive part of 

 the work, and that it contained not only all the 



