Introduction 



has brought to it its young affections, and there seems every reason 

 to suppose that the average of something like a new edition for 

 every two and a half years, which so far The Compleat Angler has 

 maintained, will even be surpassed in the future. 



This veneration for Walton is one of the curious phenomena of 

 literature. Perhaps Dr. Johnson set the fashion by saying that he 

 considered " the preservation and elucidation of Walton " " a pious 

 work." He himself has become the god of a similar idolatry, and 

 Lamb perhaps is the only other writer who has inspired quite the 

 same kind of devotion. For it is not mere hero-worship, it is an 

 actually religious sentiment on the part of the Waltonian. In his 

 loving imagination Saint Izaak is as truly a saint as any in the 

 Calendar. We can observe the same process of canonisation going 

 on in the case of Lamb. 



Lamb's question to Coleridge, "Among all your quaint readings, 

 did you ever light upon Walton's Complete Angler? ... it breathes 

 the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of heart ; there 

 are many choice old verses interspersed in it ; it would sweeten a 

 man's temper at any time to read it ; it would Christianise every 

 discordant angry passion : pray make yourself acquainted with it " 

 and his many references to Walton in his essays have no doubt 

 swelled his fame even more than the pontifical praise of Johnson. 

 Then he has had Scott for his panegyrist and Wordsworth for his 

 sonneteer. Nor should we forget the poet Bowles. 



All his admirers have not written so wisely or so well as these. 

 Like Burns, Walton has suffered from maudlin devotees, he has been 

 slapped on the back by the robustious, cooed to in the voice of the 

 sucking dove by the sentimental, some have written in the " man 

 and a brother," grand lodge " masonic " vein, others as though he 

 were a sort of aged pet lamb ; but that was inevitable fame is no 

 fame without the plebs, and the paths of glory must often pass 

 beneath triumphal arches not always in the best taste. Besides, how- 

 ever absurd the form it may take, this devotion to the memory of a 

 lovely soul is surely far from absurd. For, after all, Walton is a 

 sentiment, at least as an angler ; for I understand that the ordinary 

 Philistine angler, to whom all that pretty warbling talk of birds and 



Ixiv 



