LIFE OF WALTON. 11 



in 8vo : with, a dedication to the above Bishop of Winchester : 

 and a preface, containing the motives for writing them : this 

 preface is followed by a copy of verses, by his intimate friend 

 and adopted son, Charles Cotton, of Beresford in Staffordshire, 

 Esq., the author of the second part of the " Complete Angler," 

 and by the letter from Bishop King, so often referred to in the 

 course of this life. 



The " Complete Angler " having, in the space of twenty-three 

 years, gone through four editions, Walton in the year 1666, 

 and in the eighty-third of his age, was preparing a fifth, 

 with additions, for the press ; when Mr. Cotton wrote his second 

 part. It seems Mr. Cotton submitted the manuscript to 

 Walton's perusal, who returned it with his approbation, and a 

 few marginal strictures : and in that year they were published 

 together. Mr. Cotton's book had the title of the "Complete 

 Angler ; being Instructions how to angle for a Trout or Grayling 

 in a clear Stream ; Part ii.," and it has ever since been received 

 as a second part of Walton's book. In the title-page is a cypher 

 composed of the initial letters of both their names ; which cypher, 

 Mr. Cotton tells us, he had caused to be cut in stone, and set up 

 over a fishing-house that he had erected near his dwelling on the 

 bank of the little river, Dove, which divides the counties of 

 Stafford and Derby. 



Mr. Cotton's book is a judicious supplement to Walton's ; for 

 Walton, though he was so expert an angler, knew but little of 

 fly-fishing ; and indeed acknowledges that the greater part of 

 what he has said on that subject was communicated to him by 

 Mr. Thomas Barker, and not the result of his own experience. 

 This Mr. Barker was a good-humoured gossiping old man, and 

 seems to have been a cook ; for he says, " he had been admitted 

 into the most ambassadors' kitchens, that had come to England 

 for forty years, and drest fish for them ; " for which, he says, " he 

 was duly paid by the lord protector." He spent a great deal of 

 time, and, it seems, money too, in fishing ; and in the latter part 

 of his life, dwelt in an almshouse near the Gatehouse, West- 

 minster. In 1651, two years before the first publication of 

 Walton's work, he published a book in 12mo. called the " Art 

 of Angling," to which he affixed his name : 1 he published, in 



1 To this, "Walton, in his first edition, page 108, thus acknowledges his 

 obligations : " I will tell you freely, I find Mr. Thomas Barker a gentleman 

 that has spent much time and money in angling, deal so judiciously and 

 freely in a little book of his of angling, and especially of making and 

 angling with a fly for a trout, that I will give you his very directions with- 

 out much variation, which shall follow." In his fifth edition, he continues 

 to mention the use which be had made of Barker's book, but in different 



