PLUTARCH AN ANGLER—BURTON’S LIBEL 171 
the helpful service of Rouse!—a trait fortunately still 
characteristic of his Bodley successors—included the sentence 
of damnation, which, even if verified, was, from being torn out 
of its context, certainly misunderstood and ill-digested ? 
One ought to be chary of attributing motives, much more 
so reasons; but the only apparent reason for the numerous 
repetitions of Burton’s slander must have been the line of least 
resistance or least exercise, which deterred writer after writer 
from taking the trouble to consult the original context and thus 
discovering by whom and how the words were spoken. I have 
so far failed to find a single defender of Plutarch on this count 
or any plea for reversal of a verdict based on evidence wrong- 
fully accepted.? 
Indignation at the injustice of the charge waxes all the 
hotter, when one remembers that the person indicted is the 
very self-same Plutarch who stands out as our authority for 
much unique lore on fish, fishing, and tackle. He, and no 
other, consoles the victims of an Emperor’s decree of banish- 
ment by pointing out the happiness of their lot in being far 
removed from the intrigues, the vices, the dust, the noise of 
Rome to a fair A2gean island, where the sea breaks peacefully 
on the rocks below, and—an additional assuagement—‘ where 
there is plenty of fishing to be had !”’ 
Could a man who contemned and denounced fishing so 
vigorously put into the mouth even of the pleader for the superior 
craftiness of fish, unless he himself had angled and possessed 
the true angling spirit, the following sentences, as true and as 
useful to-day as when written nineteen centuries ago ? 
“For the first and foremost, the cane of which the angle 
Rod is made, fishers wish not to have big and thick, and yet 
they need such an one as is tough and strong, for to pluck and 
hold the fishes, which commonly do mightily fling and struggle 
when they be caught, but they choose rather that which is small 
* Milton wrote (1646) a Latin Ode on sending a book to the Bodleian, in 
which he addresses Roiisius as, 
“‘ Aeternorum operum custos fidelis 
Questorque gazz nobilioris.”” 
_? Two years after this was written, I find that Mr. G. W. Bethune in his 
edition of The Complete Angler (New York, 1891), p. 6, notes the Aristotimus 
point, but goes no farther in defence of Plutarch. 
N 
