42 NOTES ON FISH AND FISHING. 



of editions can almost be counted on the fingers of one 

 hand. I cannot, however, help thinking that this constant 

 multiplication of the Complete Angler is quite unneces- 

 sary. It would be much more reasonable for the 

 majority, at least, of those who feel inspired to write on 

 angling to publish a book of their own, and not to take 

 Walton as a mere text, for the purpose of correcting and 

 overloading with notes. That reprints will be necessary 

 from time to time may be taken for granted, for as far 

 as one can judge, the Complete Angler is likely to 

 remain a standard and popular work among English- 

 speaking people as long as Shakespeare's Plays, Bun- 

 yan's Pilgrim's Pi-ogress, White's Natural History of Sel- 

 borne, Keble's Christian Year, and, if the bathos of the 

 transition be not too painful, Butter's Spelling Booh, 

 i. e. unless the London School Board, by effecting a reform 

 in spelling, causes the last-named work to become 

 obsolete. 



The Complete Angler was well received by Walton's 

 contemporaries, with the exception, it would seem, of one 

 Eichard Franck, who published his Northern Memoirs in 

 1694, (though written, he says, in 1658,) with which is 

 incorporated The Contemplative and Practical Angler, by 

 ivay of Diversion. This is in the form of a dialogue, in 

 which "Arnoldus" thus speaks: — 



" However Izaao "Walton (late author of the Compleat Angler) has 

 imposed upon the world this monthly novelty, which he understood 

 not himself; but stuffs his books with morals from Dubravius and 

 others, not giving us one precedent of his own practical experiments, 

 except otherwise where he prefers the trencher before the trolling-rod ; 

 who lays the stress of his arguments upon other men's observations, 

 wherewith he stuffs his indigested octavo; so brings himself under 

 the angler's censure, and the common calamity of a plagiary, to be 



