Preface. ix 



authorefs prompted this mode of publication, as (he herfelf 

 explains in the concluding paragraph — "by caufe that this 

 prefent treatyfe sholde not come to the hondys of eche ydle 

 perfone whyche wolde defire it yf it were enprynted allone 

 by itfelf & put in a lytyll plaunflet, therfore I haue com- 

 pylyd it in a greter volume of dyuerfe bokys concernynge 

 to gentyll & noble men to the entent that the forfayd ydle 

 perfones whyche fholde haue but lytyll mefure in the fayd 

 dyfporte of fyffhyng fholde not by this meane vtterly dyflroye 

 it." The prefent publication is the "little pamphlet " which 

 was enclofed in this " greater volume." An edition of it as 

 a diftindt treatife appears to have been iffued by Wynkyn de 

 Worde foon after that of 1496, with the title, " Here be- 

 gynnyth a treatyfe of fyffliynge wyth an Angle" over the 

 curious woodcut of the man fifhing which is on the firft page 

 of the prefent fac/imile, but only one copy of it is known 

 to be in exiflence. At lead ten more editions appeared 

 before the year 1600. This (hows the great popularity of 

 the book at the time of its publication, and confidering how 

 human nature remains the fame, and the charms of angling 

 are equally grateful to every fre(h generation of anglers, 

 affords a fufficient reafon for the ftrong antiquarian delight 

 which all literary anglers of the prefent century have felt 

 in the book. It is worth while briefly to trace the biblio- 

 graphy of angling onwards until the appearance in 1653 

 of Walton's Compieat Angler, when the reader will be on 

 familiar ground. In the interval of more than a hundred and 

 fifty years between thefe two names of Berners and Walton, 

 fo deeply reverenced by every true fcholar of the craft, 

 there occur but four books on angling, though each one of 

 these poffeffes a fame peculiar to itfelf. Firft came Leonard 



Mafcall's Booke of Fifhing with Hooke and Line, publifhed in 



b 



