This quotation from Westwood and Satchell might cause a casual reader to suppose that (α) from _De Vetula_, written only some two centuries before _The Boke of St. Albans_, we gain our first information “of these modes of fishing,” and (β) that these were “modern,” whereas Oppian had described them all, some thirteen hundred years before _The Boke of St. Albans_ saw light. With the exception of de Fournival and the elusive MS. of Dom Pichon,[106] which (written about 1420 but only rediscovered about 1853) probably stamps this monk as the first to practise artificial hatching, the Continent produced practically nothing till the appearance at Antwerp in 1492 of the first printed original book on Fishing, which as regards printing precedes _The Boke of St. Albans_. This little Flemish work by an unknown author contains twenty-six chapters of a few lines, gives recipes for artificial baits, unguents, and pastes, and in the last two pages notes the periods when certain fish eat best. As its title sets out, it teaches “how one may catch birds and fish with one’s hands, and also otherwise.”[107] The earliest description of fishing in the English language meets us in _The Colloquy of Aelfric_, A.D. 995, which Skeat first brought to notice and first “Englished” in _The Oldest English Treatise on Fishing_.[108] This takes the form of a short dialogue introduced into the _Colloquy_ written by Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the purpose of teaching his pupils Latin, and therefore written in Anglo-Saxon with a Latin translation beneath. “It is arranged as a conversation between the master and his pupil; the latter in turns figuring as huntsman, fisherman, falconer.” The length of the _Colloquy_, even of the fishing portion, prevents inclusion here, but the pupil’s objection to fishing in the sea, “because rowing is troublesome to me,” and to going a-whaling, “because I had rather catch a fish I can kill than one that can, with one stroke, kill both me and my comrades,” strikes me as well taken and pertinent. A poem by Piers of Fulham, written about 1420 (the original MS. of which can be seen at Trinity College, Cambridge) claims next our notice. The author, judging from Hartshorne’s rendering, fully justifies the description of him as a somewhat pessimistic angler. He seems to have anticipated De Quincey’s “fishing is an unceasing expectation and a perpetual disappointment.” He fully appreciated its difficulties and disappointments, but clearly possessed some sportsmanlike instincts, as the following, among other, verses show[109]:— “And ete the olde fishe, and leve the yonge, Though they moore towgh be uppon the tonge.”