i8 9 5- 

 XXIII. IZAAK WALTON, AND IQTH CENTURY ANGLING. 



AA R. Hopper is getting ancient he is years older than 

 / V when he first commenced to pen his angling notes 

 but the scythe-bearer has not diminished Mr. Hopper's 

 eagerness to make a brief sojourn by the waterside where 



" Sweet fields beyond the swelling flood 

 Are clad in living green ; " 



and when he can snatch a day or part of a day from his desk 

 he is not slow to do so. Mr. Hopper has now written his 

 angling notes for a goodly number of years, and he cannot 

 therefore introduce his 1895 notes with " Here begginyth the 

 treatyse of fysshynge with an Angle," which Mr. Hopper 

 believes was the heading of the first contribution to angling 

 literature. One is apt to wonder somewhat at the spelling, but 

 Board Schools did not exist in the I5th century, when Dame 

 Juliana Berners, Prioress of Sopwell, first treated the subject of 

 angling in the " Boke of St. Albans," published by Wynkyn de 

 Worde in A.D. 1486, which was a period within a decade of 

 Caxton's first printed book in England. "The Compleat 

 Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation," by Izaak 

 Walton, was not published until 1653, but that angling was a 

 favourite recreation and pursuit even in those far-off days is 

 attested by the fact that during his lifetime five editions of his 

 book were published. Between the appearance of the " Boke of 

 St. Albans" in 1486 and "The Compleat Angler" in 1653, the 

 only other book on " fysshynge," of note that Mr. Hopper knows 

 of is Leonard Mascall's " Booke of Fishing with Hooke and 

 Line," which made its appearance about 1590. Good old Izaak 

 undoubtedly used to fill his creel pretty easily and frequently 

 during his earthly pilgrimage, but Mr. Hopper feels tolerably sure 

 that if the venerable old gentleman were to revisit the river-sides, 

 lakes, and ponds in this latter part of the igth century, he 

 would find not only the angling art greatly perfected since his 

 time, and all the implements of destruction used in the gentle 



