5 66 LITERATURE OF SEA AND RIVER FISHING. 



may seriously be called in question, judging at least from 

 an old MS. of much earlier date in the Denison collection), 

 we will not now discuss. Certain it is that she wished to 

 encourage the art of angling to be raised in public estima- 

 tion, as the following paragraph appended to her discourse 

 shows : 



" And for by cause that this present treatyse sholde not come 

 to the hondys of eche ydle persone, whyche wolde desire it yf it 

 were emprynted allone by itself, and put in a lytyll paunflet; 

 therefore I haue compylyd it in a greter volume of dyuerse bokys 

 concernynge to gentyll and noble men. To the intent that the 

 forsayd ydle persones whyche scholde haue but lytyll mesure in 

 the sayd dysporte of fysshyng sholde not by this meane vtterly 

 dystroye it." 



However, the good Prioress herself, or some one with or 

 without her consent the law of " copyright " then being as 

 little understood or observed as it is now republished the 

 treatise in a separate form in the same year, entitling it 

 The Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle. It was "Im- 

 printed at London, by Wynkyn de Worde, dwellynge in 

 Flete-street, at the sygne of the Sonne," and must have 

 appeared very soon after the second edition of the Book of 

 St. Albans in 1496. Here, then, we have the first printed 

 volume of our angling literature ; and only one copy of it 

 is known to be in existence, though many MS. copies of it 

 are to be found in the greater libraries, and at least ten 

 printed editions of it appeared before the year 1600. One 

 of the best fac-similes of the treatise, from the second 

 edition of the Book of St. Albans of 1496, is that produced 

 by Mr. Elliot Stock (Paternoster Row), in 1880, with a most 

 interesting preface by the Rev. M. G. Watkins. This, like 

 many other reprints of old books, which are one of the 

 literary fashions of the day, is likely soon to become very 



