33reface 



TO 



MT 



K)nmt 3IuUana "BerncW Crcatpfe on JFgffbgnge togtlj 



an angle. 



l^HE fcholarly angler is here prefented with an 

 exa(5t facfimile of the firft Englifh treatife on 

 fifhing. The book is of extreme intereft for 

 feveral reafons, not the lead curious being 

 that it has ferved as a literary quarry to fo 

 many fucceeding writers on fifhing, who have not difdained 

 to adapt the authorefs's fentiments to their own ufe, and 

 even to borrow them word for word without acknowledgment. 

 Walton himfelf was evidently familiar with it, and has 

 clearly taken his "jury of flies" from its " xij flyes wyth 

 whyche ye fhall angle to y' trought & grayllyng ; " while 

 Burton, that univerfal plunderer, has extracted her eloquent 

 eulogy on the fecondary pleafures of angling for incorpora- 

 tion with the patchwork strudure of his " Anatomy of 

 Melancholy." Befides giving the earliefl; account of the art 

 of fifliing, the eftimate which the authorefs forms of the 

 moral value of the craft is not only very high, but has ferved 

 to ftrike the keynote for all fubfequent followers of the art 

 both in their praifes and their pradice of it. To this little 



