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CHAPTER IV. 



IZAAK WALTON — HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND SUCCESSORS 

 TO END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. 



The very mention of the name — clarum et venerabile — of 

 Izaak Walton in connection with the literature of angling, 

 suggests a task of far greater magnitude than can be here 

 accomplished, especially as the notices of authors before 

 his time have stretched to far greater length than was 

 anticipated, and those after him have yet to be dealt with. 

 Indeed a volume of no slight dimensions would be required 

 to do justice to Walton and his book ; and even a biblio- 

 graphical record of the various phases and mutations of 

 the Complete Angler as Mr. Westwood has shown in his 

 " Chronicle of Izaak Walton " (1864), affords subject matter 

 for a volume in itself, and yet be unexhausted. This will 

 be even better understood when it is mentioned that the 

 fifty- three editions cnronicled by Mr. Westwood in his 

 volume just mentioned have been increased to ninety by 

 himself and his coadjutor Mr. Satchell, and that their 

 enumeration, with short bibliographical notes on some of 

 them, takes up no less than twenty pages in the Bibliotheca 

 Piscatoria. A new edition of the " Chronicle " is now in the 

 press, with notes and additions, by T. Satchell. 



Let us glance at a few of the chief of these " Waltons." 

 The first edition of the Complete Angler was published 

 in 1653, and it was duly advertised by "the enterpris- 

 ing publisher" of the period. The announcement ran in 



