xlvi BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



very awkward, and his book of not much interest, except 

 as to the mode of cooking fish at that time. This is his 

 opening : " Reader, I w\\\ complement and put a case to 

 you. I met with a man, and upon our discourse he fell 

 out with me ; this man having a good weapon, having 

 neither wit, stomack, nor skill ; I say, this man may come 

 home by Totnam-high-cross (Weeping-cross in his re- 

 vised copy) and cause the Clark to tole his knell : It is the 

 verv like case with the Gentleman Angler that goeth to 

 the River for his pleasure ; this Angler hath neither judge- 

 ment, knowledge, nor experience : he may come home Hght- 

 laden at his pleasure." He seems, however, to have won 

 some hearts, for to the second publication are prefixed 

 seven commendations in verse, three of which are in Latin, 

 though they all are rather in praise of his cookery. At 

 the close of his second book he tells us that the best hooks 

 of all sorts are to be had of Charles Kirby (so early was 

 that name made immortal) ; and he adds a postscript to 

 tell his patron, Lord Montague, that he had just discovered 

 salmon roe to be what Williamson (a century and a half 

 after him) calls " a most lovely bait for trout and salmon." 

 This is the Barker from whom Walton says (chap, v.) 

 he derived his principal knowledge of fly-fishing, in which 

 he himself was no adept. In the first edition of his Angler 

 (chap, iv.) Walton w^'ites : " I find that Mr. Thomas 

 Barker (a Gentleman who has spent much time and money 

 in angling) deal so judicially and freely in a litele book of 

 his of Angling, and especially of making and angling with 

 a Jlije for trout, that I will give you his very directions 

 without much variation." This, in his fifth edition, he 

 altered thus : " I shall next give you some other directions 

 for flie-fishing, such as are given by Mr. Thomas Barker," 

 &c. Sir John Hawkins strangely overlooked the passage 

 in the first edition, and seems not to have known of 

 Barker's first publication in 1651, but only that of 1659, 

 " a few years after the publication of Walton's book." He 



