JOHNSON, GUILTLESS “ WORM-FOOL” LIBEL 173 
published in 1676—of The Compleat Angler, of which his 
criticism, “a mighty pretty book,” hardly indicates contempt 
for its subject, or author, whose life he once meant writing. 
On Voltaire also the Worm-Fool libel has also been 
saddled, but wrongly. To another Frenchman, Martial Guyet, 
it has been attributed, but not convincingly. 
In Notes and Queries, 3rd series, X. 472, can be found the 
lines : 
‘* Messieurs, je suis pécheur, et pécheur de la ligne, 
Jen fait ici ’aveu. Cecas semble peu digne 
De vos graves esprits : car on l’a dit souvent 
La ligne, avec sa canne, c’est un long instrument 
Dont le plus mince bout tient un petit reptile, 
Et dont l’autre est tenu par un grand imbécile ! ” 
“ These lines were written by Guyet, who if he were Martial 
Guyet died nearly one hundred years before the great lexico- 
grapher was born.” ! Even before Guyet the libel seems to 
have become hackneyed, “cay on l’a dit souvent.” 
Plutarch’s works figure so frequently in these pages that I 
will not here specially dwell on or quote from them, except 
“once more the tale to tell”’ of Antony and Cleopatra’s fishing 
as given in his Life of Antony, 29, 2. 
Antony (who “fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps of 
night in revel ’’), when with Cleopatra on the Nile had, of course, 
if Beaumont and Fletcher’s lines hold, not been half as success- 
ful as his mistress : 
“She was used to take delight, with her fair hand 
To angle in the Nile, where the glad fish, 
As if they knéw who ’twas sought to deceive them, 
Contended to be taken.” 2 
To shine in her eyes, he secretly commanded his diver to 
attach fish to his hook. Cleopatra, becoming aware of the trick, 
signalled her diver to go down (or as some others relate, bribed 
Antony’s own servants) to affix to his hook, a salted fish 
(rdptxoc). This he promptly struck and hauled out mid 
1 As to the various Guyets, see 6th series, III. 87, 5th series, V. 352, and 
Lawrence B. Philip's Dict. of Biog. Reference, which gives ‘’ Martial Guyet, 
French poet and translator, 17th century.” 
2 The False One, Act J., Scene 2, 
