10 FLY FISHING FOR TROUT. 



joys of fishing it is difficult to believe that she 

 did not have the Duke of York's prologue before 

 her, so much do they resemble each other. Both 

 treat their sport from the loftiest standpoint. 

 Both aver that its practice does not benefit 

 man's body alone, but his soul also; for it leads 

 liim nearer his God by keeping him free from 

 sin; particularly from idleness, foundation of 

 all evil. Both claim that it brings man into 

 contact with nature at her loveliest. It is 

 difficult to read both, cast as they are in the 

 same mould, imbued with the same spirit and 

 composed from the same standpoint, without 

 coming to the conclusion that Dame Juliana, 

 if she did not consciously copy, at any rate wrote 

 under the influence of Edward Duke of York. 

 All through the book the resemblance continues : 

 in arrangement, in language and in spirit they 

 are identical. And any angler who reads that 

 delightful record of skilled and gallant sports- 

 manship, the Master of Game, must rejoice 

 that the earliest record of his craft is grounded 

 on so noble a model. 



But there is another piece of evidence, 

 which, small in itself, points the same way. 

 The Treatise refers to the Master of Game as 

 the standard work on hunting. Now the 

 Treatise formed part, as will be described, of 

 the Book of St. Albans. This book is a collec- 

 tion of four treatises, all ostensibly by the same 

 author, and one of them is actually on hunting. 

 Now, if the author wanted to quote a work on 



