[392] The Anatomy of Melancholy (London, 1806), I. 406. If Burton, “that universal plunderer” has cribbed from Dame Juliana Berners her eloquent eulogy on the secondary pleasures of angling, this book, in turn, till its resurrection in the eighteenth century was ruthlessly pillaged without acknowledgment. Warton, Milton, 2nd edition, p. 94, suggests that Milton seems to have borrowed the subject of L’Allegro and Il Penseroso, together with some thoughts and expressions, from a poem prefixed to the book, while a writer in The Angler’s Note Book, March 31, 1880, believes that “Walton probably drew the inspiration of his Angler’s song from the wonderful storehouse of this quaint and original author.”
[393] τὸ γὰρ ἀγεννὲς καὶ ἀμήχανον ὅλως καὶ ἀπάνουργον αὐτῶν αἰσχρὸν καὶ ἄζηλον καὶ ἀνελεύθερον τὴν ἄγραν πεποίηκε. Holland’s Translation, published in 1657, if only on account of its quaint turns is preferable to another published in the last century.
[394] Milton wrote (1646) a Latin Ode on sending a book to the Bodleian, in which he addresses Roüsius as,
“Aeternorum operum custos fidelis Quæstorque gazæ nobilioris.”
[395] 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.
[396] De Sol. Anim., 24. (Holland’s Translation.)
[397] London, 1700. Dr. Turrell, op. cit., p. 157, believes Whitney to have been the first to recommend the use of the floating fly—not for the purpose of circumventing the wily trout, but to prevent the fly being gobbled by the minnows.
[398] Cf. R. B. Marston, Walton and some Earlier Writers on Angling, 1894, an informative and yet delightful volume.
[399] 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.”
[400] The False One, Act I., Scene 2.