IZAAK WALTON. 77 



author of The Innocent Epicure, first published in 1697, 

 thus apostrophises : — 



" Hail great Triumvirate of Angling ! hail, 

 Ye who best taught, and here did best excel." 



But, as it has been remarked in reference to Dame 

 Juliana Berners' treatise, that it gave no stimulus to 

 angling authorship, so it may be noted in reference to 

 the Walton and Cotton's Complete Angler, that it seems 

 to have had the effect of making anglers rather shy of 

 authorship. Perhaps this may be construed into a com- 

 pliment to the joint authors ; but anyhow, the fact remains 

 that during a period of a hundred years, dating from the 

 fifth edition of the Complete Angler, or, as it might be put, 

 down to the end of the eighteenth century, but a very few 

 works on angling made their appearance, though the 

 Complete Angler by that time had gone through fifteen 

 editions. Barlow's extremely scarce book, The severale 

 ivayes of hunting, haiuking, and fishing, according to the 

 English manner, was published in 1671. 



In 1674 appeared the Gentleman s Recreation, by Nicholas 

 Cox, another of those strange "combination" books/contain- 

 ing treatises on several sports and country pastimes, and all 

 kinds of odds and ends connected with rural pursuits. 

 Such volumes for a long period are a marked feature of 

 the literature connected with fish and fishing. But Cox's 

 book is a bad sample of its kind, though it has gone 

 through several editions. In the first place, it is not an 

 original book, but a compilation, or rather a " cribbing," 

 from Gervase Markham and other authors ; and in the 

 second place, the author is a dealer in miracles, marvels, 

 superstitions, astrology, necromancy, and what not. The 

 Accomplisht Ladies' Delight, ^uhWshQd in the following year, 



