xviii INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 



learned angler had seen some better treatise of this 

 art, a treatise that might have proved worthy his 

 perusal, which, though some have undertaken, I 

 could never yet see in English." 



Here again our modest author finds an excuse for 

 the undertaking of a work, of which it seems almost 

 too weak a praise to say, that its parallel could 

 scarcely have been hoped for, even from the elegant 

 mind of Sir Henry Wotton himself. 



Our author, who was born at Stafford in 1593, 

 but who lived the greatest part of his time in Lon- 

 don, published the first edition of this celebrated 

 work in 1653, and lived to see it go through no 

 less than five editions; the last of which, in 1676, 

 was accompanied by a Second Part, written by his 

 intimate friend, and adopted son, Charles Cotton, 

 of Beresford Hall, in the County of Stafford, Esq. 

 This Second Part, in which Mr. Cotton, from his 

 local opportunities, was enabled to treat more at 

 large on Fly-fishiny, than Walton had proposed to 

 do, forms an important part of the work, in more 

 than one point of view ; but, chiefly, as conveying 

 the fullest evidence of that reverence, and almost 

 homage, which its accomplished author entertained 

 for the character of Walton. 



The Fishing-house on the banks of the Dove, 

 seems to have been built expressly to perpetuate 

 the memory of their friendship ; the motto over its 

 door was " Piscatoribus sacrum," with the initials of 

 Walton and Cotton interwoven in a cypher upon 



