26 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



verses expressing this idea. The last stanza 

 runs : — 



" The first men that our Saviour dear 

 Did choose to wait upon Him here, 

 Bless'd fishers were, and fish the last 

 Food was that He on earth did taste : 

 I therefore strive to follow those 

 Whom He to follow Him hath chose." 



Walton informs us very minutely hovr to fish 

 with frogs for pike, yet to use the reptile "as 

 though you loved him." It was, I presume, on 

 account of these directions he incurred the censure 

 of Byron, who wrote : — 



"And angling too, that solitary vice, 

 Whatever Izaak Walton sings or says : 

 The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet 

 Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it." 



Don Juan. 



He also called Walton '* a sentimental savage," 

 and said of angling that it was "the cursedest, 

 coldest, and the stupidest of sports." 



As if to resent the term "carnifex" being 

 applied to him, Walton says of himself: ''I am not 

 of a cruel nature, I love to kill nothing but fish." 



Eichard Franck (1624-1708) '—of whom the 

 reader will read more later on — quieted his own 

 qualms about taking life in sport, by quoting the 

 command: "Arise, Peter, kill and eat!" I here 

 remark that no good sportsman glories in the 



1 Sir Harris Nicolas calls him Robert Frank, and Jesse calls him 

 Richard Franks, in their editions of The Complete Angler. 



