BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PREFACE. Ixvii 



cannot be said that all the additions were improvements. 

 The Complimentary Verses by Duport were prefixed, and 

 twenty pages of new matter inserted. 



Sir Harris Nicholas says : " It is questionable whether 

 the additions then made to it have increased its interest. 

 The garrulity and sentiments of an octogenarian are very 

 apparent in some of the alterations, and the subdued color- 

 ing of religious feeling which prevails throughout the 

 former editions, and forms one of the charms of the piece, 

 is in this impression so much heightened as to become 

 almost obtrusive. For example, the interpolation in the 

 last chapter, following Piscator's recipe for coloring rods 

 (p. 236), is in fact a religious essay, filled with trite 

 reflections and Scriptural quotations, whilst the digression 

 on Monsters (first chap.) and the introduction of the milk- 

 maid's second song (fourth chap., p. 73) which contains 

 the only objectionable allusions in the book, are not in 

 Walton's usual good taste." From this criticism the reader 

 will, I hope, agree with me in dissenting. The passage on 

 Monsters does certainly savor of credulity, and the milk- 

 maid's song may shock modern ears, though not against the 

 taste of the times ; but the religious essay, filled with 

 (what Sir Harris calls) "trite reflections and Scriptural 

 quotations," though somewhat less condensed than it 

 might be, is a delightful specimen of our pious author's 

 quaint morality, which few could read without being made 

 the better for it. If I mistake not, it is the passage which 

 would be selected by the best readers ; and the excellent 

 Bishop Home quotes from it in his Commentary on the 

 xxxviith Psalm v., 5 : " The meek shall inherit the earth, 

 and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." 



It seems, from the letters which the reader will find 

 prefixed to the second part of the Complete Angler, that 

 Walton, conscious of his inability to treat of fly-fishing 

 sufliciently well, had some time before applied to Charles 

 Cotton, of Beresford Hall whom, in the love of anglers, 



