226 THE COMPLETE ANGLER. [part ii. 



upon so short acquaintance ; but how advantageous soever it 

 would be to me, and that my haste, perhaps, is not so great but it 

 might dispense with such a divertisement as I promise myself in 

 your company, yet I cannot, in modesty, accept your offer, and 

 must therefore beg your pardon : I could otherwise, I confess, be 

 glad to wait upon you, if upon no other account but to talk of Mr 

 I. Walton, and to receive those instructions you say you are able 

 to give me for the deceiving a Trout ; in which art I will not deny 

 but that I have an ambition to be one of the greatest deceivers : 

 though I cannot forbear freely to tell you, that I think it hard to 

 say much more than has been read to me upon that subject. 



PiSCATOR. Well, Sir, I grant that too ; but you must know 

 that the variety of rivers require different ways of angling : how- 

 ever, you shall have the best rules I am able to give, and I will tell 

 you nothing I have not made myself as certain of, as any man 

 can be in thirty years' experience (for so long I have been a 

 dabbler in that art); and that, if you please to stay a few days, you 

 shall not, in a very great measure, see made good to you. But 

 of that hereafter ; and now. Sir, if I am not mistaken, I have 

 half overcome you : and that I may wholly conquer that modesty 

 of yours, I will take upon me to be so familiar as to say, you 

 must accept my invitation, which, that you may the more easily 

 be persuaded to do, I will tell you that my house stands upon the 

 margin of one of the finest rivers for Trouts and Grayling in Eng- 

 land ; that I have lately built a little fishing-house upon it, 

 dedicated to anglers, over the door of which you will see the 

 two first letters of my father Walton's name and mine twisted 

 in cipher ; * that you shall lie in the same t bed he has some- 

 times been contented with, and have such country entertainment 

 as my friends sometimes accept, and be as welcome, too, as the 

 best friend of them aU. 



Viator. No doubt, Sir, but my master Walton found good 

 reason to be satisfied with his entertainment in your house ; for 

 you who are so friendly to a mere stranger, who deserves so 

 little, must needs be exceedingly kind and free to him who 

 deserves so much. 



* As in tht title-page [of Part II.]— /z. Wa. 



t Tradition does not point out the room ; but Mr Bagster has, in his edition of Cotton 

 given an engraving of the carved mantelpiece of a bedroom, *' which," he oljserves, 



tiiough it may not be the very room, that Walton slept in, many circumstances unite 

 to lead to that conclusion." In 1825 there were two bedrooms with similar carved 

 mantelpieces existing, which were then used only as lumber or cheese rooms ; and in 

 Alstonefield church is a pew with the back finely carved with the arms of Cotton on the 

 panels. — P. 



