Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

:JOHNSON, GUILTLESS " WORM-FOOL " LIBEL 173published in 1676—of The Cofnpleat Angler, of which hiscriticism, " a mighty pretty book," hardly indicates contemptfor its subject, or author, whose life he once meant writing.On Voltaire also the Worm-Fool libel has also beensaddled, but wrongly. To another Frenchman, Martial Guyet,it has been attributed, but not convincingly.linesIn Notes and Queries, 3rd series, X, 472, can be found the" Messieurs, je suis pecheur, et pecheur de la ligne,J'en fait ici I'aveu. Ce cas semble peu digneDe vos graves esprits : car on I'a dit souventLa ligne, avec sa canne, c'est un long instrumentDont le plus mince bout tient un petit reptile,"Et dont I'autre est tenu par un grand imbecile !" These lines were written by Guyet, who if he were MartialGuyet died nearly one hundred years before the great lexicographerwas born." 1 Even before Guyet the libel seems tohave become hackneyed, " car on I'a dit souvent."Plutarch's works figure so frequently in these pages that Iwill not here specially dwell on or quote from them, except" once more the tale to tell " of Antony and Cleopatra's fishingas given in his Life of Antony, 29, 2.Antony (who " fishes, drinks, and wastes the lamps ofnight in revel "), when with Cleopatra on the Nile had, of course,if Beaumont and Fletcher's lines hold, not been half as successfulas his mistress :" She was used to take delight, with her fair handTo angle in the Nile, where the glad fish,As if they knew who 'twas sought to deceive them,Contended to be taken." ^To shine in her eyes,attach fish to his hook.he secretly commanded his diver toCleopatra, becoming aware of the trick,signalled her diver to go down (or as some others relate, bribedAntony's own servants) to affix to his hook, a salted fish[rdpixog). This he promptly struck and hauled out mid^ As to the various Guyets, see 6th series. III. 87, 5th series, V. 352, andLawrence B. PhiHp's Diet, of Biog. Reference, which gives " Martial Guyet,French poet and translator, 17th century."^ The False One, Act I., Scene 2.