74 THE COMPLETE ANGLEE. [PART I. 



As also rams, calves, horses, hares, and hogs, 

 Wolves, urchins, lions, elephants, and dogs ; 

 Yea, men and maids ; and, which I most admire, 

 The mitred bishop l and the cowled friar, 

 Of which examples, but a few years since, 

 Were ghewn the Norway and Polonian prince. 



These seem to be wonders; but have had so many con- 

 firmations from men of learning and credit, that you need 

 not doubt them. Nor are the number, nor the various 

 shapes of fishes more strange, or more fit for contemplation, 

 than their different natures, inclinations, and actions ; 

 concerning which, I shall beg your patient ear a little 

 longer. 



The cuttle-fish 2 will cast a long gut out of her throat, 

 which, like as an angler doth his line, she sendeth forth, and 

 pulleth in again at her pleasure, according as she sees some 

 little fish come near to her ; and the cuttle-fish, 3 being then 

 hid in the gravel, lets the smaller fish nibble and bite the 

 end of it ; at which time she, by little and little, draws the 



1 This story of the bishop-fish, as told by Rondeletius, and vouched by 

 Bellonius, is as follows : "In the year 1531, a fish was taken in Polonia 

 that represented a bishop. He was brought to the king ; but seeming to 

 desire to return to his own element, the king commanded him to be 

 carried back to the sea, into which he immediately threw himself." 

 Rondeletius had before related the story of a monk-fish, which is what 

 Du Bartas means by the "cowled friar." Stowe, in his " Annals," 

 p. 157, gives the following relation of a sea-monster, taken on the coast of 

 Suffolk, temp. Hen. II. : "Neare unto Orford, in Suffolk, certaine fishers 

 of the sea tooke in their nettes a fish, having the shape of a man in all 

 points : which fish was kept by Bartelmew de Grlaunville, custos of the 

 castle of Orford, in the same castle, by the space of, six moneths and 

 more, for a wonder. He spake not a word. All manner of meates he 

 did eate, but most greedily raw fish, after he had crushed out the 

 moisture. Oftentimes, he was brought to the church, where he showed 

 no tokens of adoration. At length," says this author, "when he was not 

 well looked to, he stole away to the sea, and never after appeared." H. 

 Redding, in his "Itinerary of Cornwall," p. Ill, says that sometimes, 

 though rarely, there is a species of shark (Squatina angelus of Cuvier) 

 taken on this coast, which is called an angel or monk-fish, and might 

 well be the original of both "the mitred bishop and the cowled friar." 

 ED. 



2 Walton here confounds the cuttle-fish with the Lophius piscatorius, or 

 sea-devil, of which we annex a figure on our next page. 



3 Montaigne (Essays) and others affirm this. 



