Fearing. — An Angling Library 55 



Probably, no book published in the last three hundred 

 years has so increased in value. Published originally 

 at the price of eighteen pence, in Dr. Bethune's time 

 (1847) he values a perfect copy at twelve guineas. A 

 copy in the original binding, but a little soiled, was 

 offered to the owner of this library in London in 1889 

 for forty-five guineas. Unluckily for him he was not 

 at that time interested in angling books. At the sale 

 of the Von Antwerp Library in London in 1907 Quaritch 

 paid £1,290 for a copy in the original binding and in 

 perfect condition. This copy formerly belonged to 

 Locker Lampson and has a poem written in pencil by 

 him on one of the alba. That copy is now in the library 

 of J. P. Morgan. So high a price may never be reached 

 again, but since that date several copies have sold for 

 over a thousand pounds each. 



A small book, some 5% by 3% inches in pristine bind- 

 ing, no one knows how many of this edition of 1653 were 

 issued. As a friend has pleasantly written concerning 

 it: "Its descriptions of nature, its sage reflections on 

 manners and customs and the everyday problems of 

 life, and, beyond all else, the genial humanity which 

 show through its every page won for it quick popularity. 

 It was a book to pick up in a leisure half -hour and skim 

 with the assurance of a quiet pleasure which few 

 volumes of today can convey. So it happened that the 

 'Compleat Angler' met with a ready sale in its first 

 edition. 



"Perhaps it was because of the low price at which it 

 was sold, that copies of this little book of 250 years ago 

 have disappeared so amazingly. Some were left in stage 

 coaches, derelicts whose mission was ended after they 

 had beguiled the weary hours of a journey; some were 

 lost in garrets and some burned in house fires; others 

 doubtless ruined by immersion in the streams of which 

 the author loved to write; until to-day nobody knows 

 how many have outlived the passage of the years." 



Acknowledged by all lovers of English literature to- 

 day as one of the classics of the English language, its 



