Introduction xvii 



trout!) (London, 1708). The Northern Memoirs 

 of 1658 were not published till 1694, Sir Walter 

 Scott edited a new issue, in 1821, and defended 

 Izaak from the strictures of the salmon-fisher. 

 Izaak, says Franck, "lays the stress of his argu- 

 ments upon other men's observations, wherewith he 

 stuffs his indigested octavo ; so brings himself under 

 the angler's censure and the common calamity of 

 a plagiary, to be pitied (poor man) for his loss of 

 time, in scribbling and transcribing other men's 

 notions. ... I remember in Stafford, I urged his 

 own argument upon him, that pickerel weed of itself 

 breeds pickerel (pike)." Franck proposed a rational 

 theory, "which my Compleat Angler no sooner 

 deliberated, but dropped his argument, and leaves 

 Gesner to defend it, so huffed away. . . ." "So 

 note, the true character of an industrious angler 

 more deservedly falls upon Merrill and Faulkner, 

 or rather Izaak Ouldham, a man that fished salmon 

 with but three hairs at hook, whose collections and 

 experiments were lost with himself," a matter 

 much to be regretted. It will be observed, of 

 course, that hair was then used, and gut is first 

 mentioned for angling purposes by Mr. Pepys. In- 

 deed, the flies which Scott was hunting for when he 

 found the lost MS. of the first part of Waverley are 

 tied on horse-hairs. They are in the possession of 

 the descendants of Scott's friend, Mr. William Laid- 

 law. The curious angler, consulting Franck, will 

 find that his salmon flies are much like our own, but 

 less variegated. Scott justly remarks that, while 

 Walton was habit and repute a bait-fisher, even 

 Cotton knows nothing of salmon. Scott wished 

 that Walton had made the northern tour, but Izaak 

 would have been sadly to seek, running after a fish 

 down a gorge of the Shin or the Brora, and the dis- 

 comforts of the north would have finished his career. 



