The Tench. 
363 
solidateth any green gash in any fish. But the pike is principally 
beholding unto him for cures in that kind; and some have observed 
that that tyrant, though never so hungry, forbeareth to eat this fish,, 
which is his physician; not that pikes are capable (which many men 
are not) of gratitude : but that they are indued with a natural policy, 
not to destroy that which they know not how soon they may stand in 
need of.” ( Worthies , vol. i. p. 309.) 
It lias been suggested that this consideration on the part 
of the pike is due to the difficulty he finds in catching 
the tench, as the latter keeps generally at the bottom of 
the water. It was also thought vv that the tench, unlike 
other fishes, enjoyed an immunity from all diseases. 
The commentators have worried themselves and their 
readers by their vain endeavours to explain the meaning 
of the carrier's phrase, “ Stung like a tench ” (1 Henry IV., 
ii. I, 17). The smooth appearance of the fish affords no 
clue to the meaning of the simile. The Carrier would 
doubtless have been as much puzzled as any one, if he had 
been called on to give a reason for his words, and as this 
is the only mention of the tench by Shakspeare, we are 
left rather in the dark as to the amount of the poet’s 
knowledge of its appearance. It may be, however, that 
the tench has in process of years lost its spots, as the 
following passage from Sir Thomas Herbert’s Travels 
(p. 384) certainly implies that at one period of its exist¬ 
ence it possessed them. In his description of the pro¬ 
duct of the seas around the Island of Mauritius, this 
author writes:— 
“ Give me leave to name w T bat fish we took ; dolphins, bonetaes, albi- 
cores, cavalloes, porpice, grampasse, which Mr. Sands thinks is the 
right dolphin, none else being of that opinion; this some call the sus - 
marinus , mullet, bream, tench, trout, sole, flounders, tortoise, eels, 
pike, shark, crab, lobster, oysters, crafish, cuttle-fish (which though 
its blood be as black as ink caused by a high concoction, is nevertheless 
meat very delicious), rock-fish, limpits, and a speckl’d toadfish or poy- 
son fish as the seamen from experience named it; which last-named 
came first to net and eaten too greedily by the heedless sailors was an 
