Ixii BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. 



by a hundred pages of new matter, and the dialogue is 

 mainly carried on by three persons, a huntsman, a falconer, 

 and an angler, Venator (who takes the place of Viator), 

 Auceps, and Piscator. The arrangement is also changed, 

 much for the better. The first form was simply divided 

 into thirteen chapters without headings; which insufficiency 

 he himself felt, for he prefixes a table of contents, " be- 

 cause," as he says, " in this discourse of Fish and Fishing I 

 have not observed a method, which (though the discourse 

 be not long) may be of some inconvenience to the Reader" 

 in " his finding out of some particular things which are 

 spoken of." In this second edition there are twenty-one 

 chapters, with headings giving the substance of each. 



The third edition came out in 1661 (some titles are 

 dated 1664, but clearly of the same impression, as there is 

 no other variation). The Postscript on the Laws of 

 Angling, written by some friend of the author, was now 

 first added. Some few alterations may be detected, but 

 they are too slight to need particular notice here, except 

 in the Address to the Reader, w^hich he re-wrote, adding 

 to the clause where he speaks of possible "censure:" "which 

 if it prove too severe, as I have liberty, so I am resolved 

 to use it, and neglect all sour censures." From this we 

 may infer that he had been censured for the style, or the 

 skill, with which he had written, and suppose (though 

 other editors have overlooked the coincidence) that he 

 alludes to a conversation which Richard Franck says 

 that he held with him in Staffc)rdshire some time before 

 1658. 



This Richard Franck wrote in that year (though it was 

 not published until 1694) a work entitled, ''Northern Me- 

 moirs, Calculated for the Meridian of Scotland, (^c, to 

 which is added The Contemplative and Practical Angler : 

 Writ in the year 1658, by Richard* Franck, Philanthropus. 



* Sir Harris Nicholas, by a slip of memory, calls him Robert Franck ; 



