22 1kin09 of tbe 1Ro>, IRifle, anfc 6un 



sometime Captain in the Parliamentary Army, and 

 author of a remarkable book, "Northern Memoirs." 

 Now, Franck had a poor opinion of Izaak Walton, and 

 had the audacity to flagellate that venerated " Father 

 of Angling," for which act of sacrilege all writers on 

 the gentle craft have poured the vials of their wrath 

 upon him. But, for all that, though it may sound 

 heresy to say so, Captain Richard Franck was a far 

 better sportsman than the revered author of " The 

 Compleat Angler," and knew far more about the art of 

 angling in its higher branches than either Walton or 

 Cotton. For he was a salmon-fisher, and the first to 

 describe that noble sport in the rivers of Scotland. 

 It was probably in 1658 that he made his tour in the 

 North by Carlisle and Dumfries to Glasgow, thence to 

 Stirling, Perth, Forfar, Loch Ness, and on through 

 Sutherlandshire to Caithness. Sir Walter Scott, in the 

 Preface to a new edition of " Northern Memoirs," makes 

 the following comments on the book and its author : 



"The rage of fine writing had unfortunately seized 

 on Richard Franck, Philanthropes, with inveteracy un- 

 paralleled, unless perhaps in the case of Sir Thomas 

 Urquhart of Cromarty ; and instead of acquainting us 

 with what actually befel him, like a man of this world, 

 he generally renders himself obscure, and sometimes 

 altogether unintelligible, by his affected pedantry and 

 obscurity. Probably no reader, while he reads the 

 disparaging passages in which the venerable Izaak 

 Walton is introduced, can forbear wishing that the good 

 old man, who had so true an eye for nature, so simple 

 a taste for the most innocent pleasures, and withal, so 



