the * Compleat Angler. 1 



23 



feded by another and more permanent one, that of Mr. John 

 Hawkins, in 1760, and the announcement of which in the 

 prints of the day gave rife, as we have juft faid, to fundry 

 fkirmifhes and paffages of arms between the rival editors. 



We hardly know whether the triumph of the ' Compleat 

 Angler,' on its firft advent, in the thick of the great Roundhead 

 and Cavalier druggie, was an incident more paradoxical in its 

 kind, than the re-eftablifhment of the paftoral as an Englifh 

 claffic in 



" The tea-cup times of hood and hoop, 

 And when the patch was worn." 



Perhaps we may infer from the fact, that the tide of affectation 

 and falfe graces in literature was already beginning to ebb, and 

 that the public tafte was returning to a founder and faner clafs 

 of appreciations. 



At all events, in this new edition, the original text was 

 reftored to its primitive purity ; the pruning- knife was laid 

 afide ; all poetical tinkering repudiated, and old Izaak's " re- 

 dundancies," " fuperfluities," and " abfurdities," brought back 

 to light, and left to ftand or fall on their own merits or demerits. 



It was a gage thrown down to Vandalifm, whereat Van- 

 dalifm, in guife of Mofes Browne, was no doubt mightily 

 aftonifhed. 



Browne's recriminations, and the charges he brings againft 

 Hawkins of plagiarifm and appropriation, feem to us quite 

 unfounded. That Wale, in Hawkins' reprint, adopted the 

 fame feries of fubjeds for his illuftrations as Browne's defigner, 

 is a fad, but thefe fubjeds rather forced themfelves on the 



