DUM CAPIMUS CAPIMUR. , t 3 



his lady declined to be wedded to a man who pre- 

 ferred his basket to his bride ? 



Wasn't Sir Isaac Newton, like his great piscatorial 

 namesake, master of the art of catching gudgeon ? as 

 well as Bacon, Gay, Cecil, Hollinshed, and a host of 

 other celebrities ? Why, even our neighbours over the 

 Channel take naturally to it. Moule's Fish Heraldry 

 tells us that it was the cognisance of John Goujon, 

 one of the first French sculptors of the sixteenth cen- 

 tury; and old Salter says that in the waters round 

 Ghent " it is the general practice to angle for it with 

 a bit of raw sheep's liver." (How a Thames gudgeon 

 would turn up his nose at such a plebeian bait !) 



In a gastronomic point of view, gobio gives prece- 

 dence to none : a fry of fat gudgeon, eaten piping hot, 

 with a squeeze of lemon-juice, is a dish " to set before 

 a king," and as superior to anything that Greenwich 

 or Blackwall can produce, as Mouet's champagne is 

 to gooseberry pop. John Williamson, gent, aforesaid, 

 who seems to have had a keen eye to the good things 

 of this life, commends the gudgeon " for a fish of an 

 excellent nourishment, easy of digestion, and increas- 

 ing good blood." Nay, even as a cure for desperate 

 diseases, the gudgeon is not without his encomiasts ; 

 for Dr. Brookes says, in his History of Fishes, that he 

 " is thought good for a consumption, and ly many 

 swallowed alive;" though it is to be presumed that the 

 fish so disposed of were not of the same size as the four 



