TO MY MOST WORTHY FATHER* AND 

 FRIEND/ MR IZAAK WALTON THE 

 ELDER. 



SIR, Being you were pleased, some years past, to grant me your 

 free leave to do what I have here attempted, and observing you 

 never retract any promise when made in favour even of your 

 meanest friends ; I accordingly expect to see these following par- 

 ticular Directions for the taking of a Trout, to wait upon your 

 better and more general Rules for all sorts of Angling. And, 

 though mine be neither so perfect, so well digested, nor indeed so 

 handsomely couched, as they might have been, in so long a time as 

 since your leave was granted, yet I dare affirm them to be gener- 

 ally true : and they had appeared too in something a neater dress, 

 but that I was surprised with the sudden news of a sudden new 

 edition of your COMPLETE ANGLER ; so that, having but a little 

 more than ten days' time to turn me in, and rub up my memory 

 (for, in truth, I have not, in all this long time, though I have often 

 thought on't, and almost as often resolved to go presently about 

 it), I was forced, upon the instant, to scribble what I here present 

 you : which I have also endeavoured to accommodate to your 

 own method. And, if mine be clear enough for the honest 

 Brothers of the Angle readily to understand (which is the only 

 thing I aim at), then I have my end ; and shall need to make no 

 further apology ; a writing of this kind not requiring (if I were 

 master of any such thing) any eloquence to set it off, or recom- 

 mend it ; so that if you, in your better judgment, or kindness 

 rather, can allow it passable, for a thing of this nature, you will 

 then do me honour if the Cipher fixt and carved in the front of 



* It was a practice with the pretended masters of the Hermetic science, to adopt 

 favourite persons for their sons, to whom they imparted their secrets. Ashmoie, in his 

 Diary, p. 25, says, " Mr Backhouse told me, I must now needs be his son, because he 

 had communicated so many secrets to me." And a little after, p. 27, " My father Back- 

 house, lying sick in Fleet Street, told me, in syllables, the true matter of the philosopher's 

 stone, which he bequeathed to me a< a legacy." See more of this practice, and of the 

 tremendous solemnities with which the secret was communicated, in Ashmole's Theat. 

 Client. Brit. p. 440. 



In a similar manner, Ben Jonson adopted several persons as his sons, to the number 

 of twelve or fourteen ; among whom \v<-re Cartwright, Randolph, and Alexander Brome. 

 And it should seem, by the text, that Walton followed the above-mentioned examples, by 

 adopting Cotton for his sou. 



