94 ANCIENT ANGLING AUTHORS 



an earnest request to peruse it ; she was afterwards 

 pleas'd to tell me (with a Condescension strangely 

 engaging) "That I had really deceived her into a 

 Disappointment she never should have expected from 

 me ; for that contrary to all she had conceived of it 

 by the Title, she had never read a more entertaining 

 Book than the Compleat Angler, nor could I have 

 made her a more pleasing Present." It was im- 

 possible for her fine Discernment and Genius not to 

 have made this Discovery ; and it is no more than a 

 just and Candid Criticism must allow to the Merit of 

 this little accomplished Piece. 1 



One of the most marked features of the style of the 

 Compleat Angler is the vividness with which the 

 personality of the author is portrayed ; it is interest- 

 ing to note how this point has struck different 

 editors. In 1759 Moses Browne exclaims : " I think 

 there are hardly any Writings ever shewed more 

 the Features and Limbs, the very Spirit and Heart 

 of an Author;" and Mr Andrew Lang in 1896 

 writes : 



There are authors whose living voices, if we knew 

 them in the flesh, we seem to hear in our ears as we 

 peruse their works. Of such a kind was Mr Benjamin 

 Jowett, sometime Master of Balliol College, a good 

 man, now with God. It has ever occurred to me 

 that friends of Walton must have heard his voice 

 as they read him, and that it reaches us too, though 

 faintly. 



1 Moses Browne was a country parson with a small living 

 and a large family of thirteen children ; the Duchess of 

 Somerset was his former patroness : the sycophancy of his 

 allusion to her is thus explained. 



