Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

PLUTARCH AN ANGLER—BURTON'S LIBEL 171the helpful service of Rouse 1—a trait fortunately stillcharacteristic of his Bodley successors—included the sentenceof damnation, which, even if verified, was, from being torn outof its context, certainly misunderstood and ill-digested ?One ought to be chary of attributing motives, much moreso reasons ; but the only apparent reason for the numerousrepetitions of Burton's slander must have been the line of leastresistance or least exercise, which deterred writer after writerfrom taking the trouble to consult the original context and thusdiscovering by whom and how the words were spoken.I haveso far failed to find a single defender of Plutarch on this countor any plea for reversal of a verdict based on evidence wrongfullyaccepted. 2Indignation at the injustice of the charge waxes all thehotter, when one remembers that the person indicted is thevery self-same Plutarch who stands out as our authority formuch unique lore on fish, fishing, and tackle. He, and noother, consoles the victims of an Emperor's decree of banishmentby pointing out the happiness of their lot in being farremoved from the intrigues, the vices, the dust, the noise ofRome to a fair ^Egean 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 sovigorously put into the mouth even of the pleader for the superiorcraftiness of fish, unless he himself had angled and possessedthe true angling spirit,the following sentences, as true and asuseful to-day as when written nineteen centuries ago ?" For the first and foremost, the cane of which the angleRod is made, fishers wish not to have big and thick, and yetthey need such an one as is tough and strong, for to pluck andhold the fishes, which commonly do mightily fling and strugglewhen they be caught, but they choose rather that which is small* Milton wrote (1646) a Latin Ode on sending a book to the Bodleian, inwhich he addresses RoUsius as," Aeternorum operum custos fidelisQuaestorque gazae nobilioris."2 Two years after this was written. I find that Mr. G. W. Bethune in hisedition of The Complete Angler (New York, 1891), p. 6, notes the Aristotimuspoint, but goes no farther in defence of Plutarch.N