62 FLY FISHING FOE TROUT. 



both for its qualities and for its influence. A 

 historian must always regard a work of this 

 character from two points of view, for he must 

 assess the value of the book itself and also the 

 effect it had on subsequent writers, and it may 

 be that he will reach different conclusions in the 

 two cases. So it is with Walton. His Comfleat 

 Angler itself it is difficult to praise too highly; 

 but a critical judgment of its influence is a 

 much more complex matter. Walton stands high 

 as a writer, and possibly would stand higher 

 were it not for the laudation to which he has 

 been subjected. He has suffered sadly at the 

 hands of his admirers and of his disciples : his 

 admirers have indulged in unbalanced and 

 indeed intemperate panegyric, which has de- 

 tracted from his real merit : whilst his disciples 

 have either assiduously copied his weaknesses, 

 or, if they have attempted his excellencies, have 

 only succeeded in producing a caricature. His 

 book has been an obsession to subsequent 

 writers, which has lasted to the present day, 

 and has been an influence by no means entirely 

 for good. For this he is not to blame : but no one 

 who has waded through the many books in dia- 

 logue form which strew the two hundred years 

 following him — books in which the dialogue, 

 measured by that in the Compleat Angler, is as 

 a dull and lifeless canal running between 

 straight banks compared with the winding 

 reaches of some shining river — ^but must have 

 wished irreverently that the master had chosen 



