INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 21 



quire : with that genuine, philosophical spirit which is worthy 

 of universal imitation, he sought his beloved independence in 

 the limitation of his wants, rather than by aiming at the ac- 

 quirement of large possessions ; his book, as he himself tells us, 

 is a picture of his own mind, and had that book been called 

 " The Divine Art of Contentment," or " The True Christian 

 Philosopher," its principal contents would have justified either 

 of those titles, equally with that in which his modesty dic- 

 tated its setting forth. 



Thus has this delightful work, notwithstanding its unassum- 

 ing title, excited from the first a most commanding attention ; 

 and may be said to have risen in public estimation, even to 

 this very hour. 



The selection of a few passages from his various editors and 

 disinterested eulogists will best prove the assertion ; a slight 

 glance, however, at the earliest English work on Angling, 

 seems to be first necessary, for the sake of those of our readers 

 who may have been, hitherto, totally unacquainted with Wal- 

 tonian lore. We allude to a tract, written by Dame Juliana 

 Barnes, Prioress of the Nunnery of Sopewell, near St. Alban's, 

 and entitled The Treatyse of Fysshinge with an Angle, being 

 part of a book "known to the curious in typographical antiq- 

 uities by the title of the Book of St. Alban's. Enprented at 

 Westmestre by Wynkyn de Worde, in 1496, in small Folio ; the 

 book consists of a treatise on Hawking, another on Hunting, 

 which is all in verse ; a book wherein is determined the Lyg- 

 nage of Cote Ar mures, the above-mentioned treatise of Fishing, 

 and the method of Blasynge of Armes." 



The work is now of the most extreme rarity, yet it was 

 doubtless well known to Walton, some of whose descriptions 

 may be considered as paraphrastic of the following beautiful 

 passage, setting forth those incidental pleasures of the angler 

 which exist quite independently of his taking fish, he having, 

 " Atte the leest his holsoni walke, and mery at his ease, a 

 swete ayre of the swete savoure of the mee.de floures that 



