TO 

 MY MOST WORTHY FATHER AND FRIEND 



MR. IZAAK WALTON, THE ELDER 



SIR, Being you were pleased, some years past, to grant 

 me your free leave to do what I have here attempted ; 

 and observing you never retract any promise when made 

 in favour of your meanest friends ; I accordingly expect 

 to see these following particular directions for the taking 

 of a trout, to wait upon your better and more general 

 rules for all sorts of angling. And though mine be neither 

 so perfect, so well digested, nor indeed so handsomely 

 couch'd as they might have been, in so long a time as 

 since your leave was granted, yet I dare affirm them 

 to be generally true : and they had appeared too in 

 something of a neater dress, but that I was surprised 

 with the sudden news of a sudden new edition of your 

 Compleat Angler, so that, having little more than ten 

 days' time to turn me in, and rub up my memory (for, 

 in truth, I have not, in all this long time, though I have 

 often thought on't, and almost as often resolved to go 

 presently about it), I was forced, upon the instant, to 

 scribble what I here present you : which I have also 

 endeavoured to accommodate to your own method. 

 And, if mine be clear enough for the honest brothers of 

 the angle readily to understand, which is the only thing 

 I aim at, then I have my end, and shall need to make 

 no further apology ; a writing of this kind not requiring, 

 if I were master of any such thing, any eloquence to set 

 it off, and recommend it ; so that if you, in your better 

 judgment, or kindness rather, can allow it passable for 

 a thing of this nature, you will then do me the honour 

 if the cypher fixed and carved in the front of my little 

 fishing-house, may be here explained : and to permit 

 me to attend you in public, who, in private, have ever 

 been, am, and ever resolve to be, 



Sir, 

 Your most affectionate son and servant, 



CHARLES COTTON. 



BERESFORD, 

 10//1 of March, 1675-6. 



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