x Preface. 



While " The Compleat Angler " was regarded 

 mainly as a text-book for practical anglers, one can 

 understand its publisher wishing to make it as com- 

 plete as possible by the addition of such technical 

 appendices; but now, when it has so long been elevated 

 above such literary drudgery, there is no further 

 need for their perpetuation. For I imagine that the 

 men to-day who really catch fish, as distinguished from 

 the men who write sentimentally about angling, would 

 as soon think of consulting Izaak Walton as they would 

 Dame Juliana Berners. But anyone can catch fish 

 can he, do you say ? the thing is to have so written 

 about catching them that your book is a pastoral, 

 the freshness of which a hundred editions have left 

 unexhausted, a book in which the grass is for ever 

 green, and the shining brooks do indeed go on for 

 ever. 



RICHARD LE GALLIENNE. 



