FROM TREATISE TO COMPLEAT ANGLER. 43 



a bush, bray, foame, etc' He says also that 

 May, June and July are the best months, which 

 alone proves him a fly fisher. In the evening a 

 fly with a short line moved on the crust of the 

 iwater under trees or bushes is deadly, provided 

 you are well hidden. This, now called dapping 

 or daping, he calls bushing. 



One advantage the fisherman enjoys lies in 

 the attractive character of those who have 

 written on the sport. Gervase Markham is an 

 instance. Bred a soldier, and having served in 

 the Low Countries and as captain under Essex 

 in Ireland, he soon abandoned arms for litera- 

 ture, but he brought into his new profession a 

 quality which he may have learnt in his old, 

 an irresistible propensity to loot. He lived by 

 literature, and lived exceedingly well. Few 

 who come across him have a good word to say 

 for him, and truly he is hard to defend, for he 

 is doubly condemned by his contemporaries. 

 The London stationers, tired of his habit of 

 writing or annexing several books on the same 

 subject and selling them under different titles 

 to different houses, combined against him and 

 made him sign an agreement which can still be 

 seen, promising to write no more books on the 

 diseases of horses or cattle. And Ben Jonson 

 called him not of the number of the faithful 

 but a base fellow. Thus he stands convicted 

 both as a man of integrity and as a man of 

 letters. But before Markham is condemned as 

 a man of letters it must be remembered how 



