46 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



cocks and the husbandry of bees; planting of 

 orchards and management of hawks ; the order- 

 ing of feasts, preserving of wine, and the 

 secrets of divers distillations and perfumes : 

 all these and much more can be learnt from 

 Gervase Markham. 



His treatment of fishing is typical. In 1613 

 he published The English Husbandman, which 

 does not mention fishing. Now, in this same 

 year, appeared Dennys' Secrets of Angling. 

 Markham's quick observation was doubtless 

 caught by this work, for when in the following 

 year he produced the Second Book of the Eng- 

 lish Husbandman, it contained a Discourse of 

 the Generall Art of Fishing with the Angle or 

 otherwise : and of all the hidden secrets belong- 

 ing thereunto, a good deal of which is the 

 Secrets pirated into prose. Though the Dis- 

 course was published over and over again as 

 Markham's, it has been suggested that Lawson 

 either wrote it or helped to do so. I am con- 

 fident he did not write it, for his style is very 

 different from that of the sober text book writer 

 Markham. But it is quite possible that he 

 helped. The two men were closely associated 

 in literary work, and Lawson's New Orchard 

 and Garden was repeatedly issued with Mark- 

 ham's treatises under a collective title. More- 

 over it is obvious that the dressings of flies in 

 the Discourse have been revised by a master 

 hand, and we know that Lawson was a master, 

 while of Markham's skill we know nothing. 



