Of the making and explaining of symbols in early and mediæval times there is no end. The monkish mind, perhaps owing to environment and fasting, found this a congenial and pleasant pursuit. Among the books on this subject, _Mundus Symbolicus_, although, or perhaps because, published in 1681, attracts me most, not merely by its fulness of information and of quotation from classical, Patristic, and mediæval literature—it is a good competitor with Burton’s _Anatomy_ for _Collectanea_—but also by the number and _naïveté_ of its _lemmata_, or appropriate apophthegms, which appeal alike to one’s ignorance and one’s humour. Of 737 pages of the volume before me 43 concern themselves solely with fish, and provide delightful browsing.[702] The object and practice of Picinelli, from whose _Il Mondo Simbolico_ Erath makes the Latin translation, is to examine into the habits, real or alleged, of each fish, and deduce, as was the frequent custom of books in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from its delinquencies or virtues a moral lesson or lessons. Thus the _lemma_, “_Fallacis fructus amoris_,” not inaptly summarises the amatory character of the _Sargus_, as indicated in my chapter on Tackle. Nor, again, is the author far astray with his _lemma_ for the _Monachus_ or Monk fish (a name derived from the hood on its head)—“_Habitum non virtutem_”—which recalls the mediæval jeer, “The cowl makyth not the Monk,” and Oscar Wilde’s description—half-echoing Browning—of the pike as “some mitred old bishop _in partibus_.” Of the Monk fish—also Bishop fish—a well intended representation can be found in the pages of the learned Gesner. Under _Salmo_, when suffering from leeches or gill-maggots, the author provides us not only with the _lemma_, “_Hæret ubique_” and the appropriate, if not quite original, reflection of St. Bernard that conscience is like the leech which ceaseth not night nor day from making its presence felt, but also with a vivid description of a kelt dying—“_donec toto corpore tabescat_.” Any connection between a salmon and a swallow (_hirundo_) for a moment seemed a new ichthyic revelation! The context, however, and not least St. Bernard’s pointing of the moral, led to the discovery of the misprint of _hirundibus_ for _hirundinibus_ (‘leeches’). With one more passage I regretfully leave Picinelli, or rather Erath. The collocation of the rose and fish held in the hand of Cupid, which Alciatus “_non sine mysterio instruxisset_,” occasioned “the erudite” and anonymous epigram (p. 671) showing that Love resembles the rose and the fish. This apparent incongruity finds explanation thuswise: while each has prickly points, the first fades in a day and the second is incapable of being tamed—a comparison which, if unique, ignores the Egyptian and Roman powers of domestication.[703]