BIBLIOGRAPHICAL PRE PACE. Ixxvii 



divine, some other Poems, and a translation of Zimmer- 

 man's work on the Excellency of the Knowledge of Christ. 

 He died at the age of eighty — another instance of anglers' 

 lonc^evitv. 



We cannot say much in favor of his editorial execution, 

 though it is impossible not to be prepossessed in favor of 

 one who devotes himself to such a work so much con 

 amove. He was, notwithstanding, guilty of such bad taste 

 as to apply his pruning knife to our author's sentences, 

 though he excuses himself as having meddled only with 

 " some inaccuracies and redundancies." The omitted 

 passages he v*'as obliged to restore in his third edition, 

 " except a few that were objected to for their absurdity, 

 and were not Mr. Walton's, but quotations from Pliny, 

 Dubravius, and other credulous Writers, as his easy good- 

 Nature, at that yielding Age of eighty-three, made him 

 submit to the letting be injudiciously inserted, in con- 

 descension to some of his friends." This is the best 

 apology I have seen for that unfortunate passage about 

 monsters. 



His second edition, in 1759, he announces on the title as 

 very much amended and improved, and his third, in 1772, 

 has twenty pages additional matter, with " several very 

 useful notes and directions," and ''the Songs, that are 

 Simple and Natural, wrote with Humor and Character, he 

 had endeavored to make still more Agreeable, by indulg- 

 ing himself in an Inclination he found of setting each of 

 them to Music, as they now for the first Time appear, and 

 are his only public, and perhaps his last, attempt in this 

 way." These editions are illustrated with rather rude 

 engravings of the fish, copied from the plates of Walton, 

 and of the several more striking scenes in the book ; as, 

 the meeting in the beginning, the otter chase, the milk- 

 maid singing, a fancy sketch of Cotton's fishing-house, and 

 of Walton and Cotton fishing near the Peak. 



In 1760, John Hawkins, having been preparing his iirst 



