ETYMOLOGY OF BAIT. 55 
Milton, too, uses the word in a similar sense, 
when speaking of 
“ Fruit like that 
Which grew in Paradise, the bait of Eve 
Used by the tempter.” 
This last quotation, sad to say, has most probably 
given rise to the assertion made by some irreverent 
reprobate, that Satan was the first fisher! What. 
would good old Izaak Walton have said, if he had 
found the following lines inscribed on the window of 
his favourite hostelry, Bleak Hall, after passing a 
night in the ever memorable “ fresh sheets smelling 
of lavender ?”— 
“ When Eve and Adam lived in peace, 
Sans either brawl or jangling, 
The Serpent, from his brimstone den, 
Thought he would go an angling ; 
He baited his hook, with fiendish look, 
_Says he, This will entangle her— 
And so, my friends, you all may see 
The Devil was the first angler.” 
The Honourable Robert Boyle, in his Occasional 
Reflections, improves, as some people would say, upon 
the idea, thus :—‘“ As the Apostles were fishers of 
men, in a good sense, so their and our grand Adversary 
is a skilful fisher of men, in a bad sense, and too often, 
in his attempts to cheat fond mortals, meets with a 
success as great and easy. Certainly that tempter, as 
