92 FOURTEENTH TO THE 



CHAPTER Y. 



Angling Literature from the Revival of Letters, and the Estab- 

 lishment of the Art of Printing to the Commencement of 

 the Eighteenth Century. 



ON the revival of letters in Europe, or about the com- 

 mencement of the fourteenth century, angling effusions in 

 prose and verse partook of the general mental impetus of 

 the age. The Italians wrote piscatory plays, and other 

 fanciful and light pieces on fishing generally, both by sea 

 and land. They invested their Syrens and Tritons with 

 angling habits and modes of thought; and made them 

 expatiate, in glowing terms, on the beauties arising from 

 the contemplation of the floods and hills, and woods and 

 vallies, of their picturesque and highly interesting country. 

 In one of the manuscript plays of this kind, in the library 

 of the Yatican, at Borne, we have the adventures of a lover, 

 who kept up a correspondence with the object of his affec- 

 tions by means of the art of angling ; and we have the 

 various contrivances or dodges he used to gain his ends, 

 and overreach the jealous vigilance of the lady's parents, 

 depicted with great minuteness and humour. There are 

 likewise songs introduced, descriptive of river scenery, and 

 to represent the parallel which the imagination may in- 

 stitute between the variable success that anglers meet 



