BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. Ixi 



Venator (though in the course of the work, others, brother 

 Peter and Coridon, are introduced) ; and he makes apo- 

 logies for errors, omitted in subsequent imjiressions, when 

 the work had been revised and enlarged. It was illustrat- 

 ed by an engraved title-page, elegantly designed, showing 

 dolphins grouped with shells and strings of fish, and by 

 " pictures of the Trout, and other fish: which," Walton says, 

 with great truth : " I may commend, because they concern 

 not myself." Sir John Hawkins (in the preface to hisfourlh 

 edition) pronounces the cuts " exquisite ;" and adds, " the 

 artist who engraved them has been so modest as to conceal 

 his name, but there is great reason to suppose that they 

 are the work of Lombart (who is mentioned in the Sculp- 

 tura of Mr. Evelyn), and also that the plates were of 

 steel.'' Sir Harris Nicholas ascribes them to " Lombart, 

 Faithorne, or Vaughan ;" but the credit is generally given 

 to Peter Lombart, the eminent French engraver, who 

 came to England before the Revolution, and gained high 

 reputation by his emblematical and historical pieces, but 

 especially by his portraits, which are after the manner of 

 Van Dyke. The same title-page and plates were used for 

 five editions of the Complete Angler, and five of Venables's 

 work. The original advertisements of the Complete 

 Angler, in the newspapers of the day (May, 1653), set it 

 forth " as a book newly extant at 18c?. price." 



The second edition was published in 1655, and shows 

 that the author, pleased with the success of his book, had 

 taken much willing pains to revise and enlarge it. The 

 title is enlarged to include with Fish and Fishing, " Rivers, 

 and Fish-Ponds," and he says, in his Address to the Reader, 

 that, " in this second impression, there are many enlarge- 

 ments, gathered both by my own observation and the 

 communication of friends." The Complimentary Verses 

 from some friends were now prefixed, though the date to 

 Powel's lines was added in the third, and that to Weaver's 

 in the fifth edition. The body of the work is increased 



