504 FISHERIES AND FISHERMEN 



smoke : such as " pikes, mullets, prasnie and borbochi, and 

 those they call syck in Gothland," and he describes a custom 

 common in that country, where the rivers are frozen up for 

 months together, of fishing through the ice and using horses 

 to assist the men. The natives would walk on the ice clad 

 in iron-pointed shoes, and in default of these would go 

 barefoot rather than use the ordinary oiled leather which 

 soon froze and became as slippery as the ice itself. The 

 freezing of the river did not hinder them from pursuing 

 their favourite occupation. Two great holes were opened 

 in the ice some eight or ten feet broad, and distant about 

 150 or 200 paces from each other. Between these limits 

 thirty or forty lesser openings were made, and cords, 

 having nets attached to them, being dropped into the water 

 at one extremity, were guided by means of spears penetra- 

 ting through the smaller holes to the great opening at the 

 further end. Here the cords were drawn out of the water 

 and given to men on horseback, who rode off at a smart 

 pace in order to drag the net out quickly and prevent the 

 fishes from having time to break the mesh. 



Jacopo Sanazzaro, a poet whose fishing eclogues were 

 published by Aldus at Venice in 1570, with the well-known 

 and appropriate emblem of the dolphin and anchor, had 

 already obtained the praises of two Popes for the religious 

 sentiment displayed in a former poem. As for his piety 

 we readily concede it, but as to poetry we may be permitted 

 to exercise an independent judgment. His verses are as 

 correct, and about as much worth reading, as those of a 

 fourth form schoolboy of twenty years ago. They teem 

 with allusions to Melisaeus, and Damon, and Alexis, and all 

 the regular stock-in-trade of the Latin eclogue maker, and 

 they have not a breath of nature about them. With the 

 execrable, if accountable, taste of the time, Sanazzaro 



