IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 25 



Walton also fished in Kent, for he says he 

 knew himself of a certain brook there that bred 

 trouts "remarkable alike to their number and 

 smallness," and he says he had seen in the be- 

 ginning of July, "some parts of a river not far 

 from Canterbury covered over with young eels 

 about the thickness of a straw." He writes of 

 himself as a man who is a master of his art, 

 thus cock sure of his knowledge, he says : ''I am 

 sm^e I both can and will tell you more than any 

 common angler yet knows." 



Cotton tells us Walton understood "as much 

 of fish and fishing as any man living," and that he 

 really did believe he understood "as much of it 

 (angling) at least as any man in England," and 

 that it was only because he had from his 

 childhood pursued the recreation of angling in 

 very clear rivers that he presumed to supplement 

 the instructions given by Walton in Part I. of Tlie 

 Complete Angler. There is no life, Walton says, so 

 happy and pleasant as the life of a " well- governed 

 angler ; " it invites to contemplation and quietness ; 

 its lawfulness he justifies by appeal to the 

 Scriptures and to the practice of it by apostles, the 

 saints and primitive Christians. Our Saviour, 

 he says, never reproved the apostles for their 

 employment or calling, and he suggests that Christ 

 found the hearts of such men by nature fitted for 

 contemplation and quietness. He quotes some 



