Ixii LIFE OF IZAAK WALTON. " [1655, 



fished salmon but with three hairs at hook, whose collections and experi- 

 ments were lost with himself. , 



" Theophilus. That was pity. " » 



From thfs splenetic attack, Walton has been generously defended 

 by the greatest literary genius of the present age, whose remarks 

 show his admiration both of " The Complete Angler " and its 

 author. " Probably no readers," says Sir Walter Scott, " while 

 he reads the disparaging passages in which the venerable Izaac 

 Walton is introduced, can forbear wishing that the good old man, 

 who had so true an eye for Nature, so simple a taste for her most 

 innocent pleasures, and withal, so sound a judgment, both con- 

 cerning men and things, had made this northern tour instead of 

 Franck; and had detailed in the beautiful simplicity of his Arcadian 

 language, his observations on the scenery and manners of Scotland. 

 Yet we must do our author the justice to state, that he is as much 

 superior to the excellent patriarch Izaac Walton, in the mystery of 

 fly-fishing, as inferior to him in taste, feeling, and common sense. 

 Franck's contests with salmon are painted to the life, and his 

 directions to the angler are generally given with great judgment. 

 Walton's practice was entirely confined to bait-fishing, and even 

 Cotton, his disciple and follower, though accustomed to fish trout 

 in the Dove, with artificial fly, would have been puzzled by a fish 

 (for so the salmon is called par excellence, in most parts of Scot- 

 land) of twenty pounds weight ; both being alike strangers to that 

 noble branch of the art, which exceeds all other uses of the angling- 

 rod, as much as fox-hunting exceeds hare-hunting." ^ 



Walton was certainly in London, and was probably still resident 

 there, when the second edition of the Angler was published. In 

 his Life of Bishop Sanderson he states, that about the time when 

 that prelate first printed the " large, bold, and excellent " preface 

 to his twenty sermons, which, he says, was " in the dangerous 

 year 1655," he met Sanderson in the metropolis. His account of 

 the interview is told in his own peculiar manner, and with so much 

 effect that it would be improper to relate it in any other words : — ■ 



"About the time of his printing this excellent preface, I met him acci- 

 dentally in London, in sad-coloured clothes, and, God knows, far from 

 being costly. The place of our meeting was near to Little Britain, where 

 he had been to buy a book which he then had in his hand. We had no 

 inclination to part presently, and therefore turned to stand in a comer under 

 a penthouse (for it began to rain), and immediately the wind rose, and the 

 wind increased so much, that both became so inconvenient, as to force us 



9 Ed. 1821, pp. 17S-177. 1 Ibid. pp. V. vi. 



