IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 29 



fishing from The Treatyse of Fysshynge wyth an 

 Angle, a fourth part issued in 1496 to a second 

 edition of the Book of St Albans, printed by 

 "Wynkyn de Worde in 1486 in three parts ; the 

 first part being on Hawking, the second in verse 

 on Hunting and the third on Coat Armour. The 

 writer of this Treatyse of Fysshynge has been 

 generally supposed to have been Dame Juliana 

 Barnes or Berners. A few years ago doubts were 

 raised (seemingly on no sufficient authority) as to 

 whether she really wrote or compiled it. A charm- 

 ing facsimile reproduction of The Treatyse was 

 brought out by Elliot Stock in 1880, and I possess 

 another privately printed in Edinburgh in 1885. 

 Walton, all admit, copied from this work, without 

 any acknowledgment, the writer's directions for 

 making flies. His other chief authorities were 

 Androvanus, Dubravius and Gesner, and the 

 reader gets a trifle weary of the mention of their 

 names and especially of the name of the latter. 

 Walton admits that a great deal of information on 

 fly-fishing was derived second - hand from one 

 Thomas Barker, whom he describes in the first 

 edition of The Complete Angler as a gentleman 

 that had spent much time and money in angling. 

 Barker had been "admitted into the most Am- 

 bassadors' kitchens that had come to England for 

 forty years, and drest fish for them." It was 

 probably he who gave Walton instructions of a 



