xviii INTRODUCTION. 



that Dr. Johnson, the Delphic-oracular, ever fulminated. 

 ]Jut one of the principal delights afforded by a few writers, 

 by Charles Lamb and Robert Louis Stevenson among the 

 number, is the revelation of the writer's personality, of 

 his particular likings and opinions apart from what the 

 generality of men may hold, of private or national pre- 

 judices, of little bits of autobiographical experience. Thus 

 theTnan who writes comes to be more or less completely 

 represented by his writings. The CompJeat Angkr is one of 

 thjs representative kind of books, indicative of the author's 

 habitual thoughts and of his character, a picture, indeed, of 

 his own disposition, as he himself calls it. 



There are certain writers, not a great many, whom we 

 can read at all times and in any place, and that they should 

 be of the greatest magnitude is not a postulate: Homer in 

 the Odyssey^ Shakespeare in the Plays, Stevenson, again, in 

 the Essays, and some others, might be mentioned. But 

 although The Compleat Angler is a book for which we have 

 an affection as well as admiration, it cannot be sure to 

 charm us in all circumstances, for it is necessary that one's 

 mood and surroundings should be d propos. I have tried 

 to read it beside a large river nearing the sea, and the book 

 and its thoughts were dwarfed; I have tried it also on one 

 of the bare islands of the Hebrides, and there seemed to 

 be something incongruous in the situation it was as though 

 all the beauty had departed; and I have heard of similar 

 misfortunes among the hill-streams of upper Tweed. Jjj^is 

 in the wooded inland valleys, where the waters run quietly, 

 where the sunshine falls upon leaf and grass, and where 

 there is a willow tree under which we may sit and read, 

 that it pleases us most. 



Now it would ill become any one to say that Walton's 

 book is complete where the science of fishing is concerned. 



