IZAAK WALTON. 599 



ably compare with the editions of Shakespeare, Bunyan, 

 and the Christian Year. 



An admirable facsimile reprint of the first edition of the 

 Complete Angler was executed by Mr. Elliot Stock, of 

 Paternoster Row, in 1876, the very tint and texture of the 

 antique paper being reproduced, with the small pages of 

 " fat " type and its long s's ; while the art of photography 

 revived the Delphinic title-page, the quaint head-pieces, and 

 the " cuts " of the terrible fish. But like the original first 

 edition, it is now very scarce. 



The Complete Angler was well received by Walton's 

 contemporaries, of whom " Delightful " Barker was one ; 

 and to him Walton in the "Fourth Day" acknowledges 

 himself indebted for his "directions for fly-fishing," which 

 he, through the medium of Piscator, proceeds to give " with 

 a little variation." Richard Franck, however, a Cromwellian 

 trooper, an Independent of the sour Puritan type, and a 

 stupendously pretentious writer, but an angler of some expe- 

 rience, was the exception. In his Northern Memoirs (in 

 which he gives an account of fly-fishing in Scotland), 

 published in 1694, though (as he says on his title-page) 

 "writ in 1658," does not hesitate to charge full tilt against 

 Walton on this wise 



" However, Izaak Walton (late author of the Compleat Angler) 

 has imposed upon the world this monthly novelty, which he under- 

 stood not himself; but stuffs his books with morals from Dubravius 

 and others, not giving us one precedent of his own practical 

 experiments, except otherwise where he prefers the trencher before 

 the trolling-rod ; who lays the stress of his arguments upon other 

 men's observations, wherewith he stuffs his indigested octavo ; so 

 brings himself under the angler's censure, and the common 

 calamity of a plagiary, to be pitied (poor man) for his loss of 

 time, in scribbling and transcribing other men's notions. These 

 are the drones that rob the hive, yet flatter the bees they bring 

 them honev." 



