viii Preface. 



usefulness ; for it is to those who have more instant 

 demands to satisfy with their hundred-pound notes that 

 this facsimile is designed to bring consolation. If it 

 is not the rose itself, it is a photographic reflection of 

 it, and it will undoubtedly give its possessor a suffi- 

 ciently faithful idea of its original. 



But, apart from the satisfaction of such curiosity 

 the facsimile has a literary value, in that it differs 

 very materially from succeeding editions. The text 

 by which " The Compleat Angler " is generally known 

 is that of the fifth edition, published in 1676, the last 

 which Walton corrected and finally revised, seven 

 years before his death. But in the second edition 

 (1655) the book was already very near to its final 

 shape, for Walton had enlarged it by about a third, 

 and the dialogue was now sustained by three persons, 

 Piscator, Venator and Auceps, instead of two the 

 original " Viator " also having changed his name to 

 " Venator." Those interested in tracing the changes 

 will find them all laboriously noted in Sir Harris 

 Nicolas 1 s great edition. Of the further additions 

 made in the fifth edition, Sir Harris Nicolas makes 

 this just criticism : " // is questionable" he says, 

 " whether the additions which he then made to it have 

 increased its interest. The garrulity and sentiments 

 of an octogenarian are very apparent in some of the 

 alterations ; and the subdued colouring of religious 

 feeling which prevails throughout the former editions, 

 and forms one of the charms of the piece, is, in this 

 impression, so much heightened as to become almost 

 obtrusive" 



There is a third raison d'etre for this facsimile, 

 which to name with approbation will no doubt seem 



