xvi The Complete Angler 



ma'am, I believe him to be an honest man at the 

 bottom ; but, to be sure, he is penurious, and he is 

 mean, and it must be owned he has a degree of 

 brutality, and a tendency to savageness, that cannot 

 easily be defended ". 



This was hardly the editor for Izaak ! However, 

 Hawkins, probably by aid of Oldys the antiquary 

 (as Mr. Marston shows), laid a good foundation for 

 a biography of Walton. Errors he made, but Sir 

 Harris Nicolas has corrected them. Johnson him- 

 self reckoned Waltori^JLtves as ''jone^-his most 

 favouritejbo>ks ". v TTe^preferfe^ the life of Donne, 

 and justly complained that Walton's stor^of Donne's 

 visjon-e-his absent >yife had been left out of a 

 modern edition. He explained Walton's friendship 

 with persons of higher rank by his being " a great 

 panegyrist ". 



The eighteenth century, we see, came back to 

 Walton, as the nineteenth has done. He was pre- 

 cisely the author to suit Charles Lamb. He was re- 

 printed again and again, and illustrated by Stoddart 

 and others. Among his best editors are Major 

 (1839), " Ephemera" (1853), Nicolas (1836, 1860), 

 and Mr. Marston (1888). 



The only contemporary criticism known to me 

 is that of Richard Franck, who had served with 

 Cromwell in Scotland, and, not liking the aspect of 

 changing times, returned to the north, and fished 

 from the Esk to Strathnaver. In 1658 he wrote 

 his Northern Memoirs, an itinerary of sport, heavily 

 cumbered by dull reflections and pedantic style 

 Franck, however, was a practical angler, especially 

 for salmon, a fish of which Walton knew nothing : he 

 also appreciated the character of the great Montrose. 

 He went to America, wrote a wild cosmogonic work, 

 and The Admirable and Indefatigable Adventures 

 of the Nine Pious Pilgrims (one pilgrim catches a 



