the c Compleat Angler. 5 



coated fraternity of the angle wending, one by one, through 

 the crowd of four-faced Puritans, up the great thoroughfare of 

 Fleet Street, to purchafe at Matter Richard Marriot's the new 

 treatife on a fport that had found few chroniclers 1 hitherto, 

 but which was deftined to date its royalty from that very epoch 

 and that very publication. 



Gipfee, never till now publifhed. Both printed for Richard Marriot, to be 

 fold at his fhop in St. Dunftans Church-yard, Fleet Street." 



In the " Mercurius Politicus'' (Lond. 4to. p. 24.70), from Thurfday, May 

 12th, to Thurfday, May 19th, 1653 : — " There is newly extant a Book of 

 18^. price, called the Compleat Angler," &c. &c. 



1 Not fo kw, however, as is Hated by Hawkins, who, in his hi-fi reprints, 

 limits the number of antecedent angling works to four, and eventually to five, 

 viz., " The Treatyfe of Fyfsfhynge wyth an Angle," forming part of the Book 

 of St. Albans, 1496. Leonard Mafcall's " Booke of filhing with Hooke and 

 Line," 1590. Taverner's " Certaine Experiments concerning Fifh and 

 Frvite," 1600. Dennys' " Secrets of Angling," 1613, and Barker's "Art 

 of Angling," 165 I. 



To thefe may be added Gryndall's " Hawking, Hunting, Fouling and 

 Filhing, with the true Meafures of Blowing," 1596. Dubravius's " Neue 

 Booke of good Hufbandry," 1599. "La Maifon Ruftique," 1600. The 

 " Briefe Treatife of Fifhing, with the Art of Angling," included in the 

 "Jewell for Gentrie," 1614, and Markham's "Young Sportfman's Inftrudtor," 

 circa 1652. 



But it muft be borne in mind that of the above, the tracts, both of Mafcall 

 and Gryndall, and the " Briefe Treatife of Fifhing," are but re-iffues, with 

 variations, of portions of the Book of St. Albans, and that Taverner and 

 Dubravius limit their inflruftions to the treatment of fifh in ponds. 



That there may have been other treatifes on the fport, fince loft to the 

 world, feems probable from the fafl that Walton, in his letter to Venables, 

 given in the " Experienc'd Angler" (1662), fpeaks of having " read and prac- 

 tifed by many books of this kind before made public;" and in the 'Compleat 

 Angler' (Chap, xii., p. 228, firft edition), quotes what he calls " an old Rhime 



