2 SPORTING IN BOTH HEMISPHERES. 



youthful days was* spent on the banks of the Dove, it would 

 have been wonderful indeed if I had escaped its piscatory 

 temptations in the first instance, and had not sympathised 

 with all its romantic and poetical associations at a later 

 period of life. Such, indeed, was the case. I believe nature 

 intended me for a bad poet and a good fisherman, and I 

 seconded her impulses by every means in my power, and 

 particularly by neglecting more useful tasks for an in- 

 dulgence in this enchanting pursuit, dating from catching 

 my first minnow with a crooked pin, to landing my first 

 salmon with a single gut. Indeed, the first objects of in- 

 terest that my memory recurs to, were connected with the 

 finny tribe, and an ardent admiration for the professors of 

 the gentle art, whose positions in the social scale were of 

 indifference to me, provided they possessed the science of 

 inveigling the inhabitants of the waters. 



This unconquerable attachment to the society of characters, 



and the growing difficulties of a family, we find him turning author by 

 profession, and acquiring considerable credit, particularly by his trans- 

 lations, although, perhaps, with but little emolument. 



Angling having long been Cotton's favourite recreation, we cannot but 

 suppose that the congenial attachment for the same pursuit, so pre- 

 eminently displayed by Walton in his Complete Angler, excited in the 

 former a desire to become acquainted with the author. Certain it is that 

 before 1676 they were united by the closest ties of friendship. Walton, as 

 also his son, were frequent visitors to Cotton at Beresford, whose residence 

 was singularly advantageous for ripening such friendship, being situated 

 near the Dove, then the finest trout stream in the kingdom ; and Cotton, 

 no less for their accommodation than his own, erected a fishing- house on 

 its banks, with a stone in the front thereof, containing a cypher, which, 

 incorporating the initials of their names, has blended them in an indis- 

 soluble tie, which entitles them to respect for ever. 



These circumstances, and the formal adoption by Walton of Cotton for 

 his son, were probably the inducements with the latter to the writing a 

 second part of the Complete Angler, and therein to explain more fully 

 the art of angling, either with a natural or artificial fly, as also the various 

 methods of making the latter. Life of Walton, by T. Zouch, D.D. 1823. 



