One ought to be chary of attributing motives, much more so reasons; but the only apparent reason for the numerous repetitions of Burton’s slander must have been the line of least resistance or least exercise, which deterred writer after writer from taking the trouble to consult the original context and thus discovering by whom and how the words were spoken. I have so far failed to find a single defender of Plutarch on this count or any plea for reversal of a verdict based on evidence wrongfully accepted.[395] Indignation at the injustice of the charge waxes all the hotter, when one remembers that the person indicted is the very self-same Plutarch who stands out as our authority for much unique lore on fish, fishing, and tackle. He, and no other, consoles the victims of an Emperor’s decree of banishment by pointing out the happiness of their lot in being far removed from the intrigues, the vices, the dust, the noise of Rome to a fair Ægean 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 so vigorously put into the mouth even of the pleader for the superior craftiness of fish, unless he himself had angled and possessed the true angling spirit, the following sentences, as true and as useful to-day as when written nineteen centuries ago? “For the first and foremost, the cane of which the angle Rod is made, fishers wish not to have big and thick, and yet they need such an one as is tough and strong, for to pluck and hold the fishes, which commonly do mightily fling and struggle when they be caught, but they choose rather that which is small and slimmer, for fear lest if it catch a broad shadow, it might move the doubt and suspicion that is naturally in fishes.” “Moreover, the line they make not with many water knots” (happy anglers!), “but desire to have it as plain and even as possibly may be, without any roughness, for that this giveth as it were some denuntiation unto them of fraud and deceit. They take order likewise that the hairs which reach to the hook should seem as white as possibly they can devise, for the whiter they be the less are they seen in the water for their conformity and likeness in colour to it.”[396] We anglers seem of a verity “nae gleg at the uptak.” After some 1650 years we find John Whitney, in the preface to _The Genteel Recreation: or the Pleasure of Angling_, ascribing with modesty as to personal prowess, but quiet pride as to discovery, his success very largely to the use of “fine Tackling” which in the poem (!) he further, if in barbarous verse, enforces, “Fineness in Angling’s th’ Anglers nearest Rule: For Prudence must still regulate in all.”[397]