LIFE OF WALTON. 27 



on the bank of the little river Dove, "which divides the 

 counties of Stafford and Derby. 



Mr. Cotton's book is a judicious supplement to Wal- 

 ton's ; for it must not be concealed, that Walton, though 

 he was so expert an angler, knew but little of fly-fishing ; 

 and indeed he is so ingenuous as to confess, that the 

 greater part of what he has said on that subject, was 

 communicated to him by Mr. Thomas Barker * 9 and 

 not the result of his own experience. This Mr. Barker 

 was a good-humoured gossiping old man, and seems 

 to have been a cook ; for he says, " he had been ad- 

 " mitted into the most ambassadors' kitchens, that 

 " had come to England for forty years, and drest fish 

 " for them ;" for which, he says, " he was duly paid 

 " by the lord protector t." He spent a great deal of 

 time, and, it seems, money too, in fishing ; and in the 

 latter part of his life, dwelt in an almshouse near the 

 Gatehouse, Westminster. In 1651, two years before the 

 first publication of Walton's work, he published a book 

 in 12mo. called tbedrt of Angling^ to which he affixed 

 his name J : he published in 1653, a second edition, in 

 4to. under the same title/but without his name : and in 

 J669 he published the third edition of it, under the en- 

 larged title of Marker's Delight*), or the Art of Angling. 



Vide infra. 



f Barker t Delifit, Page 20. 



| To this, Walton, in his first edition, page 108, thus acknowledges hit 

 obligations : " I will tell you freely, I find Mr. Thomas Barker, a gen- 

 tleman that has spent much time and money in angling, deal so judici- 

 " ously and freely in a little book of his of angling, and especially of 

 " making and angling with a fly for a trout, that I will give you his 

 ' very directious without much variation, which shall follow." In his 

 fifth edition, he continues to mention the use which he had made of 

 Barker's Book, but in different words : " I shall give some other direc- 

 " tions for fly-fishing, .such as are given by Mr. Thomas Barker, a gen- 

 " tleman that hath spent much time in fishing, but I shall do it with a 

 " little variation." 



Sir John Hawkins composed this part of his account, as well as the 

 text arid notes ante, pa. 14, under an impression that Barker's book was 

 published subsequently to Walton's ; and his fourth edition of Walton 

 had come out, before he was aware that Barker's first edition was dated as 

 early as 1651. Though he did not formally correct the passages tinctured 

 with this misconception, yet as a hasty note in his copy shews that to 

 have been his intention had he lived to prepare another edition for the 

 press, the present Editor has altered the language in both places, so as 

 to make it correspond with the fact- 



