12 ELY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



treats of Hunting, Hawking and Heraldry, 

 three essentials of a polite education. 

 Apparently it was successful, for ten years 

 later Wynkyn de Worde brought out a second 

 edition, and probably finding that fishing was 

 a popular sport, he completed the book by 

 adding the Treatise of Fishing with an Angle. 

 It thus became a sort of Gentleman's Manual, 

 the kind of book which two centuries later 

 would have been called the 'Compleat' some- 

 thing : the Compleat Gentleman or the 

 Compleat Sportsman ; while to-day, in this age 

 of specialisation, it would have been split up 

 into a series of text-books. The authoress was 

 stated to be Dame Julyans Barnes, or Bernes, 

 a mythical lady whose name has now been 

 changed by devout disciples into Dame Juliana 

 Berners, and a romantic though mendacious 

 biography has been compiled for her. But in 

 a fishing book it is not necessary to discuss her 

 existence, for though someone called Dame 

 Julyans Barnes may have been the author of 

 the portion on Hunting, so far as the word 

 'author' can be applied to a work which is only 

 a compilation produced in an age when literary 

 property did not exist, there is nothing what- 

 ever to connect her with the Treatise of Fishing, 

 which was merely added by Wynkyn de Worde 



to make his Manual more attractive.* And 



I 



* Though Dame Juliana Berners has been deposed, no 

 successor has been appointed. Accordingly I shall treat her 

 as author until a better claimant appears : for it is awkward 

 to have to cite an anonymous book. 



