158 IZAAK WALTON AND ANOTHER 



might as well try and bandy words with a bargee as 

 Walton stand up to Franck.' Yet in this, and many 

 other points in natural history, Franck was right and 

 Izaak was ludicrously wrong. Franck probably was re- 

 prehensively rude to the elder man, for he never cared 

 to conceal the invincible contempt of the fly-fisher for 

 the bait-fisher. It is very doubtful whether Walton ever 

 practised fly-fishing at all. By his own showing, he was 

 close on forty when he first took to angling, and no man 

 can reasonably expect to become an adept in the higher 

 branches of field sport after middle life. Indeed, Walton 

 never made any pretence in the matter. Barker's hand- 

 book was published in 1651, and to him, who was an 

 expert fly-fisher, Walton makes frank acknowledgment 

 in the first edition of The Compleat Angler, published in 

 1653. After dilating upon the virtue of 'a lively, quick, 

 stirring worm,' he proceeds 



'I shall next give you some directions for fly-fishing, such 

 as are given by Mr. Thomas Barker, a gentleman that hath 

 spent much time in fishing; but I shall do it with a little 

 variation.' 



Franck's enjoyment, if he had any, of the literary 

 beauties of The Compleat Angler, was marred by the 

 technical fallacies he detected therein. He, too, would 

 write a book, show up Walton, and preach the true faith. 

 His work should eclipse the other; in the writing of it 

 he applied to Izaak and his theories terms which nobody 

 would be so profane as to use now. 



'The frequent exercise of fly-fishing, though painful, 1 yet 

 it 's delightful, more especially when managed by the methods 



1 i.e. difficult. 



