Ixviii BIBLIOGRArHICAL PREFACE. 



he had adopted as his son, to give him some treatise on 

 that branch of art, which he might append to his own 

 work. This Cotton had promised to do, but procrastinated 

 until the end of February, 1676, when "surprised with the 

 sudden news of a sudden new edition of the Complete 

 Angler, .... having not more than ten days to turn him 

 in and rub up his memory, he was upon the instant forced 

 to scribble what he thus presented" to his "most worthy 

 Father and Friend, Mr. Izaak Walton the Elder," " which 

 he had also endeavored to accommodate to Walton's own 

 method." Walton gratefully received his " very pleasant 

 and useful Discourse of the Art of Flv-Fishini?," and 

 " printed it just as it was sent" him, with some marginal 

 notes, as a second part of The Complete Angler, " being 

 instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear 

 stream ;" and ever since the two treatises have been pub- 

 lished together. Of Mr. Cotton, and his part of our work, 

 we shall have more to say in the prefatory remarks to it ; 

 but here remark that his experience in fishing the beauti- 

 ful Dove, a rapid, clear, winding river, abounding with 

 trout and grayling, well qualified him for the task which 

 his accomplished pen executed so gracefully. 



Marriott, the publisher of Walton, who had also publish- 

 ed Venables's treatise, sometimes bound the three treatises 

 together and sold them under the title of The Universal 

 Angler. 



Having, during the years in which he amused himself 

 with his Angler, published his Lives of Hooker (l(U)t2) and 

 Herbert (1070) besides some minor writings, — showing 

 that a love and practice of angling are by no means hostile 

 to industry, but rather promotive of it, — he finished his bio- 

 graphical labors with the Life of Dr. Robert Sanderson in 

 1678, when in his eighty-fifth year. In the spring of the 

 same year he prepared for the press the pastoral poem of 

 " Thealma and Clearchus, by John Chalkhill," though it 

 was not published until 1083, the year in which he died. 



