DUM CAPIMUS CAPIMUR. 38 
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 by many 
swallowed alive ;” though it is to be presumed that the 
fish so disposed of were not of the same size as the four 
