REMARKS PRELIMINARY. 



It seems to have been an early practice with 

 anglers, which is yet much followed in books written 

 on the Art of Angling, to face up the subject with 

 pretensions of its being an amusement above all 

 others conducive to religious contemplation. This 

 is silly, either as a notion or a pretence ; and on the 

 other hand it is equally pitiful to read the frivolous 

 sarcasms by which this pursuit is in turn assailed. 



Dr Johnson and Lord Byron, these famed fond- 

 lings of their age, have said some smart things to 

 render angling ridiculous as a pastime. Having 

 acquired no taste for it themselves, they wished to 

 make believe that they stigmatized it from a moral 

 sentiment ; and this, not so much perhaps from an 

 inclination to 



" Compound for sins they were inclined to 

 By damning those they had no mind to," 



as from an opposition to the whimsicalities of early 

 writers on the subject ; such as old Isaac Walton, 



