xiv The Complete Angler 



ing to Mr. Westwood, Lamb had " an early copy/' 

 found in a repository of marine stores, but not, 

 even then, to be bought a bargain. Mr. Westwood 

 fears that Lamb's copy was only Hawkins's edition 

 of 1760. The original is extremely scarce. Mr. 

 Locker had a fine copy ; there is another in the 

 library of Dorchester House : both are in their 

 primitive livery of brown sheep, or calf. The book 

 is one which only the wealthy collector can hope, 

 with luck, to call his own. A small octavo, sold at 

 eighteenpence, The Compleat Angler was certain to 

 be thumbed into nothingness, after enduring much 

 from May showers, July suns, and fishy companion- 

 ship. It is almost a wonder that any examples 

 of Walton's and Bunyan's first editions have sur- 

 vived into our day. The little volume was meant to 

 find a place in the bulging pockets of anglers, and 

 was well adapted to that end. The work should be 

 reprinted in a similar format : quarto editions are 

 out of place. 



The fortunes of the book, the fata libelli^ have 

 been traced by Mr. Westwood. There are several 

 misprints (later corrected) in the earliest copies, as 

 (p. 88) Fordig " for " Fordidg," (p. 152) " Pudoch " 

 for "Pudock". The appearance of the work was 

 advertised in The Perfect Diurnal (May 9-16), and 

 in No. 154 of The Mercurius Politicus (May 19-26), 

 also in an almanack for 1654. Izaak, or his pub- 

 lisher Marriott, cunningly brought out the book at a 

 season when men expect the Mayfly. Just a month 

 before, Oliver Cromwell had walked into the House 

 of Commons, in a plain suit of black clothes, with 

 grey stockings. His language, when he spoke, was 

 reckoned unparliamentary (as it undeniably was)/ 

 and he dissolved the Long Parliament. While 

 Marriott was advertising Walton's work, Cromwell 

 was making a Parliament of Saints, " faithful, fearing 



