[A pair of angling prints each captioned with quotes from Horace and Virgil:] Sic omnia retro ... [and:] Piscium et summa genus hoesit ulmo ..

London: Thomas McLean, 1825. Aquatint and engraving, coloured by hand. Sheet sizes: 9 3/8 x 11 5/8 inches and 9 1/2 x 11 7/8 inches. A handsome and humourous pair of angling prints.

The first image shows a fisherman with a slack line just after losing a fish and stepping into a cow pad, with the Virgil caption roughly translated as "Thus all things change for the worse." The Horace quotation is a play on words, substituting "Perchicos" [perch] for "Persicos" [i.e. Persian], and roughly translated as "The finest perch is not for me." The second image shows an angler who has pulled a fish from the water but whose line (and fish) are caught in a tree. The famous fishing-related Horace quotation follows, "The fish was entangled in the elm tree." The Virgil quotation refers to the climbing into the river to free his line and can be read as "courage to tempt the raging stream.