APPENDIX. 163 



I fayne fynde," and " Ever gramercy myn own 

 purse," in rhyme ; A Treatise of Fishing with an 

 Angle ; and the Biasing of Arms. Of the treatise 

 of angling, which it appears Wynkyn de Worde 

 also printed separately, it may not be out of 

 place to give a short account here, as it formed the 

 ground-work, and constituted the principal part, of 

 every other prose treatise on the same subject, 

 (Barker's Art of Angling, which was first printed in 

 1651, excepted,) from the time of its first appearance 

 till Izaak Walton, who also availed himself of its 

 contents, published his " Compleat Angler," in 

 1653. 



The earliest books printed in any country afford 

 a tolerably fair criterion of the taste of the " reading 

 public " of the period ; and it is easy to perceive 

 from the works which proceeded from the presses of 

 our first printers, that the predilection of our coun- 

 trymen did not lead them to the study of the classics. 

 It is probable that the Book of St. Alban's had gone 

 through four or five editions before either Oxford or 

 Cambridge had presented their alumni with a single 

 classic. The first classical work printed at Oxford 

 who in this respect must take precedence of her 

 learned sister was Tully's Epistles, which appeared 

 in 1540. 



From the first publication of the "Treatyse of 

 fysshynge wyth an angle" to the appearance of 

 Walton's Complete Angler, there seems to have 

 been no improvement of the original work. On the 

 contrary, the "doers " of new editions of the book 

 under new titles, appear to have had but little skill 



