LONDON'AND'NEW YORK'
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COLLEGIUM BOSTONIENSE
i.
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THE COMPLEAT ANGLER
/
ZA^i': w/iMvK
THE
COMPLEAT ANGLER
BY
IZAAK WALTON
AND
CHARLES COTTON
■^
Edited with an Introduction by RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
Illustrated by EDMUND H. NEW
JOHN LANE
The Bodley Head
LONDON &f NEW YORK
MDCCCXC-VII
0)7/ V 33
1^ \J lij iJ) \J ^
Printed by Ballantyne, Hanson Sf Co. At the Ballantyne Press
^mESTNlJT HIT..!,. MASS.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
ROBERT OFFLEY ASHBURTON
EARL OF CREWE
OF MADELEY MANOR, IN THE COUNTY OF
STAFFORD THIS NEW EDITION OF
THE COMPLEAT ANGLER IS
HUMBLY DEDICATED
Lord of the Madeley peace, the quiet grass.
The lilied fond, and muffled sleepy mill;
Lord of each legendary fsh that swims
Deep down and swift beneath that emerald glass ;
While, soft as shadows, round its grassy rims
The patient anglers tnove from east to west.
Patient at morn, at evening patient still —
Peace, if not fish, was theirs, and peace is best :
To you, John Offlef s far-descended son.
What to your grandsire — past computing " great " —
Our Walton gave is here re-dedicate ;
Heirloom of ancient friendship friendly still
In this old book, though all the talk be done.
R. Le G.
_.».«i«^
EDITORIAL NOTE
The text of this edition is a reprint of the fifth (the last to receive Walton's own revision), w^ith which it has been carefully collated. The spelling has been mcdernised. For his introduction the Editor is indebted to the usual authorities, particularly to Sir Harris Nicolas. In compiling the Notes he has followed the example of his forerunners, and attempted little beyond a selection from the Notes of previous editors, whose work is acknowledged by their initials ; though here and there, with Mr. New's aid, he has been able to elucidate a topographical allusion. " N " stands for Sir Harris Nicolas, " E " for Sir Henry Ellis, «H" for Sir John Hawkins, "M" for Major, and " B " for Dr. Bethune, the American editor of Walton, who has brought much out-of-the-way reading to the illustration of Walton, though he is apt occasionally to be careless, and, what is worse, facetious, and apt, too, to append "Am. Ed." to a note which is mainly a pr}cis of the Notes of previous editions.
To Mr. R. H. Shepherd's Waltoniana the Editor is indebted for one or two items in the Appendix, and to Mr. R. B. Marston, the owner of the copyright, for permission to reprint Westwood's Bibliography, as also for kindly aid in bringing it up to date.
CONTENTS
Part I
The First Day
Chap. 'Page
I. Conference betwixt an Angler, a Hunter, and a Falconer ;
each commending his recreation . . . . .21
The Second Day II. Observations of the Otter and Chub ..... 64
The Third Day
III. How to fish for, and to dress, the Chavender or Chub . . 73
IV. Observations of the nature and breeding of the Trout, and
how to fish for him ; and the Milkmaid's Song . 79
V. More directions how to fish for, and how to make for the Trout an Artificial Minnow and Fly ; and some merri- ment .......... 94
The Fourth Day
VI. Observations of the Umber or Grayling ; and directions how
to fish for him . . . . . . . .138
ix
Contents
Chap. T/ige
VII. Observations of the Salmon ; with directions how to fish for
him .......... 142
VIII. Observations of the Luce, or Pike ; with directions how to
fish for him ........ 149
IX. Observations of the Carp ; with directions how to fish for
him . . . . . . . . . .160
X. Observations of the Bream ; and directions to catch him . 169
XI. Observations of the Tench ; and advice how to angle for him 177
XII. Observations of the Pearch ; and directions how to fish for
him 180
XIII. Observations of the Eel, and other Fish that want Scales ;
and how to fish for them . . . . . .185
XIV. Observations of the Barbel ; aud directions how to fish for
him .......... 194
XV. Observations of the Gudgeon, the RufFe, and the Bleak ; and
how to fish for them . . . . . . .199
XVI. Is of Nothing 203
The Fifth Day
XVII. Of Roach and Dace, and how to fish for them ; and of
Cadis . . . . . . . . . .213
XVIII. Of the Minnow or Penk, of the Loach, and of the Bull-Head
or Miller's Thumb ....... 224
XIX. Of several Rivers ; and some Observations of Fish . . 228
XX. Of Fish-Ponds, and how to order them .... 233
XXI. Directions for making of a Line, and for the colouring of both
Rod and Line ........ 236
X
Contents
Part II
Instructions how to Angle for a Trout or
Grayling in a clear Stream
by Charles Cotton
'The First Day
Chap. 'P'^ge
I. Conference betwixt a country Gentleman proficient in the Art of Fly-fishing and a Traveller who becomes his Pupil 269
II. Observations of the principal Rivers in Derbyshire; Viator
lodges at Piscator Junior's House ..... 279
'The Second Day
III. Conference containing an account of Mr. Cotton's fishing-
house -. . 291
IV. Of Angling for Trout or Grayling at the " Top," at the
" Middle," and at the " Bottom " 297
V. Of Fly-fishing and Fly-making ...... 299
VI. A practical Lesson in Fly-fishing for Trout and Grayling . 307
VII. Of artificial Flies for the months of January, February, March, April, and May ; showing also how to dib or dape with the Green-Drake or May-fly, and how to make that famous Fly artificially . . . . . . .317
VIII. Of the Stone-Fly ; also a list of Flies for June, July, August, September, October, November, and December ; with some remarks on the Green-Drake and Stone-Fly and on
Poaching . . . _ -335
xi
Contents
The Third Day
Chap. Tage
IX. A Short Dialogue ; Viator fishes by himself. . . . 343
X. Directions how to dress a Trout or Grayling . . . 345
XI. Of AngUng at the Bottom for Trout or Grayling . . 347
XII. Of Angling at the Middle for Trout or Grayling : Farewell
of Viator with Piscator Junior ..... 353
Appendix .......... 359
Notes .......... 394
The Anglers' Calendar, by Hi Regan .... 429
xu
!H^te to the Illustrations
The primary aim of the Artist has been to illustrate " The Compleat Jngler" as thoroughly as possible from a topographical point of view. The majority of the engravings illustrate the routes described by Walton^ from Tottenham to Ware, and by Cotton, from Brailsford to his seat at Beresford Hall; and places connected with the lives of the Authors. Jldaps are also given for the better understanding of the routes.
Many of the scenes, especially those nearer the Metropolis, have changed sadly, and several buildings of interest have disappeared or been altered beyond recognition. In these cases the drawings have been made from old pictures or prints, and their origin is given in the List of Illustrations.
Wherever possihle, the drawings have been made on the spot, hut in several instances the Artist has made use of photographs, and wishes to acknowledge his indebtedness to Messrs. R. Bull [Ashbourne), Griffin [Weybridge), Poulton, Salmon [Winchester), Valentine, and Wilson.
He is also indebted to Messrs. C. A. and C. P. Christie, Dr. Horley, Messrs. E. Marsh, P. Norman, f. Tydeman, f. F. Wardle, and others for their kind and courteous assistance.
As for the fish, they have been studied alive and dead; alive, in their element, for there alone can their varied motions be learnt ; and dead, that their form might be more correctly given.
The decorative headings and initials speak for themselves ; they will all be seen to have a connection, more or less obvious, with the context.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Full Page
Tage
Izaak Walton [Photogravure) ...... To face tide
From the portrait by Jacob Huystnafi in the National Gallery.
Charles Cotton [Photogravure) . . . . .To face page Ixxi
From the Portrait by Sir Peter Lely in the possession of Stapleton Martin, Esq.
Statue of Izaak Walton on the Great Screen at Winchester Cathedral xxvii
Greengate Street, Stafford ........ xxviii
Walton was said to have been born in the tifnber house on the left.
The Corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet Street, showing house once
occupied by Walton ......... xli
From an engraving in the British Museum.
Prior Silksteed's Chapel in the South Transept of Winchester Cathedral xlvii
Walton lies buried just inside the open door. To the left lie his daughter and son-in-lazv ^ Dr. and Mrs. William Hawkins.
On the " Shawford Brook " near Walton's Cottage Farnham Castle ......
The Fishing House, Beresford Dale Entrance to the Fishing House
XV
. Ixiii
. Ixvii
Ixxv
Ixxxiii
List of Illustrations
-Page Ixxxvi
20
23
Madeley Church .........
Here John Offley lies buried.
Madeley Manor ..........
From the engraving in Plot's History of Staffordshire.
Map of the River Lea from Waltham to Tottenham ....
Tottenham High Cross .........
From an engraving by Rawle after an original drawing by Drutmnotid published in 1804.
Tottenham High Cross ......... 27
Bruce Castle, Tottenham .......
From an ancient picture at Bruce Castle.
Ashmole's House in Ship Yard .......
Frojn an engraving in the British Museum.
Waltham Cross .........
After an engraving by G. J. Parkins from a drawing by T. Under- zuood, published in 1791 ; in the possession off. Tydeman, Esq.
Waltham Cross .......
An " Eleanor" cross, built in 1294.
The " Four Swans " Inn and Sign, Waltham Cross . This Inn is said to date fro?n the end of the \'^th century.
Map of the River Lea from Ware to Cheshunt .
The " Four Swans," Waltham Cross
The Abbey Gate and Church Tower of Waltham Abbey
Theobald's Park, from the New River
The seat of Sir Henry B. Meux, Bart.
The "Bulls Head" Inn, Turnford ....
Shawford Brook . . . . .
Behind Walton's Cottage at Shallow ford.
32 47 53
57 61
66
83
89
100
108 126
XVI
List of Illustrations
Rawdon House, Hoddesdon
Built in 1622 by Sir Marmaduke Rawdon,
At Hoddesdon .....
The Great Bed of Ware ....
This bed is said to have been made in 1463, and is mentioned by Shake- speare in " Twelfth Night." It is now kept at the Rye House Inn.
At Hoddesdon .......
Showing the Bull Hotel and Clock Tower.
The " Red Lion " and Baesh's School, Stanstead Abbots
The Old Church, Stanstead Abbots
The Ruins of Netherhall
The ancient seat of the Colt family
Amwell Church from above
View at Ware from the river bridge
Summer-houses on the Lea at Ware
Baldock Street, Ware
On the Lea at Ware
Beresford Hall (now demolished) The seat of Charles Cotton.
Map of the road from Brailsford to Ashbourne
Ashbourne Church from the South West ....
Ashbourne .........
The main street, from the Church, showing the Grammar School on
The " Green Man and Black's Head," Ashbourne
Map of the Dove from Hartington to Thorpe .
xvii
the left
Tage
163
173 187 197
209
221 229 241
260
268 271
285
290
List of Illustrations
Thorpe Cloud .......
^rissington Hall .......
The seat of the FitzHerbert family.
Bridge over the Dove at Milldale ; below Hanson Toot
Alstonfield Church from the East
Interior of Alston field Church .
The Pike Pool in Beresford Dale
The Fishing House (front view)
Charles Cotton's Pew in Alstonfield Church
In Beresford Dale (looking up)
■Page 293 301
309
313 32 J
325 329 339 355
Vignettes, &c.
The Fishing House ........
Arms of Dr. Hawkins ........
Walton's son-in-law, from the tomb at Winchester.
St. Mary's Church, Stafford
In this church Walton was baptized.
House at Stafford (now demolished) ......
Walton's probable birth-place.
The Royal Exchange in Walton's time .....
Izaak Walton's Marriage Chest ......
In the possession of the Right Honourable the Earl of Warwick, The inscription runs as follows :
IZAAK WALTON. RACHEL FLOUD.
Joyned Together In Ye Holie Sonde Of Wedlocke On Ye z-]th Daie Of Decembere. A. 1626 D.
WE ONCE WERE TWO, WE TWO MADE ONE WE NO MORE TWO, THROUGH LIFE BEE ONE.
xviii
Title Page . xxvi
XXIX
xxxn
. XXXV
xxxvii
List of Illustrations
St. Dunstan's in the West
Walto?i's Parish church.
ch, Stafford.
Stafford, from the Sow ......
Temple Bar before the Fire .....
Walton's Cottage at Shallowford, near Stafford .
Bishop Morley's Palace, Winchester
A corner in Walton's cottage at Shallowford
Remains of Hall, Fenny Bentley ....
A seat of the Beresford family.
Tomb of Sir Thomas Beresford in Fenny Bentley church
An ancestor of Charles Cotton.
Charles Cotton's cave, Beresford Dale
Izaak Walton
Fro7n the bust in St. Mary's Chu,
Coltsfoot ....
Arms of John Offley, Esq.
From his tomb in Madeley Church.
Ruins of Madeley Manor Sallow Willow Old House at Madeley Madeley Church from the East Primroses .... Heading, " First Day " .
Standon Manor
Compiled from engravings in Chauncy's and Clutterbuck's Histories of Hertfordshire, and a drawing by Samuel Ireland in the British Museum.
xix
Tage xlix
liv
lix
Ixi
Ixvi
Ixx
Ixxi
Ixxix
, Ixxxv Ixxxvii
I 3
5 6
7
9 II
21
24
List of Illustrations
Tage Tottenham Hill and Cross ........ 3a
Tottenham Church from the N.E. . . 1 34
" Cook's Ferry " 37
Formerly an inn of this name ; at one time known as Bleak Hall.
Almshouses in Edmonton Churchyard ...... 41
John Tradescant .......... 45
After the engraving in the " Musaum Tradescantianum."
Tradescant's House at Lambeth (now demolished) .... 46
Elias Ashmole .......... 49
After the engraving in the " Theatrum chemicum 'Britannicum."
Edmonton Church from the S.W. . . . . . . .51
Toll Bridge, Flanders Weir Fishery ...... 55
Chingford Church from the S.E 58
The " Old Thatched House " Inn, Hoddesdon . . . . -63
Now the offices of Messrs. Christie, brewers.
Heading, "Second Day" .64
Heading, " Third Day " 68
Harold's Bridge, Waltham . • T^
Chub 73
At Waltham Abbey 77
Marsh marigolds .......... 78
Trout . . . .... . . . . . -79
At Waltham Abbey 81
Interior of Waltham Abbey ........ 86
Cottages on the road near " Theobalds " 88
XX
List of Illustrations
Tage Hawthorn Blossom .......... 90
Primroses . . . . . . . . . . -91
Theobald's Lane, near the site of the Palace ..... 94
Amwell Magna Fishery ; part of the river Lea, below Amwell . . 98
Salmon Trout ........... 102
Heading, " Fourth Day " 103
Theobald's Palace . . . . . . . . . .105
From the engraving in the Vetusta Monumenta after the picture in the FitzWilliam Museum, Cambridge.
Interior of Theobald's Palace ........ 107
From an engraving in the 'British Museum.
House on the site of Theobald's Palace, showing ancient windows . 1 1 1
Back of the " Cock " Inn, Waltham, lately rebuilt . . . • 115
From a photograph in the possession of C. A. Christie, Esq., Hoddesdon.
Cheshunt Church . . . . . . . . . .117
Interior of Cheshunt Great House . . . . . . .120
This was the manor-house of St. Andrews-le-Mote which was given by Henry VIII. to Cardinal Wolsey, and in the next century belonged to the Dennys and Dacres {Murray).
GoiFs Oak 121
This oak is said to have been planted in 1066, by Sir Theodore Godfrey.
Rose . . . . . . . . . . . .123
Heading " The Angler's Song " ....... 127
Bridge over the Shawford Brook ....... 128
Cheshunt Great House ......... 133
The Lea at Broxbourne ......... 137
Grayling . 138
xxi
List of Illustrations
Tage Broxbourne Church from the river . . . . . . -141
Salmon . . . . . . . . . ' . . • 14^
Ancient Market Hall, Hoddesdon (now demolished) . . . .145 From a?i engraving in the possession of Dr. Horky, Hoddesdon.
Young Salmon . . . . . . . . . .148
Pike 149
Pike rising after small fish . . . , . . . -159
Carp . . . . . . . . . . . .160
Water Frog . . . . . . . . . . .166
The " Rye House" Inn, on the Banks of the Lea . . . .168
Bream . . . . . . . . . . . .169
Hoddesdon Clock Tower . . . . . . . .171
From an old print in the British (Museum.
Pike chasing small fishes . . . . . . . . .175
Tench . . . . . . . . . . . .177
The Rye-House . . . . . . . . . • ^79
From a water-colour drawing made by J. Buckler in 1826, in the British (Museum.
Perch . 180
DafFodils 182
Amwell Church from the river . . . . . . .184
Eels _ 185
Great Amwell . . . .189
From an engraving by W. Watts, after a drawing by F. Feary in " The Poetical Works of John Scott," 2nd Edition, 1795. xxii
List of Illustrations
Tage Amwell Magna Fishery ; part of the Lea, below Amwell . . . igi
Charr . . . . . . . . . . . .192
Guiniad . . . . . . . . . . . .193
Barbel 194
Gudgeon . . . . . . . . . . .199
RufFe or Pope ........... 200
Sir Henry Wotton .......... 201
Bleak 202
Amwell from the Lea Valley ........ 203
Water Lilies . . . . . . ' . . . . . 206
Heading "Fifth Day" 211
The " George the Fourth " Inn, Amwell, formerly The " Quart Pot " 212
Roach 213
Dace 217
Amwell Church from the Lea valley . . . . . . .219
Sketch at Ware from the river ........ 223
Minnows ........... 224
Loach ............ 225
Bull-head or Miller's Thumb . 227
Stickleback ........... 228
View on the Avon at Evesham . . . . . . . . 232
An old Fishpond .......... 233
Ware . . . . . . , . . . . . 236
xxiii
List of Illustrations
Amwell Church and the New River , The " Cock " Inn, Ware . The " George " Inn, Ware The "Bull's Head," Ware Kingfisher . . . . . Meadowsweet . . . . , Bream ......
Arrowhead
Inscription and monogram over the door of Charles Cotton's Fishing House ...........
Charles Cotton's Arms .....
From his pezv in Ahtonjield Church.
Beresford Hall ......
From an engraving after a drawing by Stothard.
The Beresford Arms .....
For?nerly over the entrance of Bentley Hall ; now in Fenny Bentley Church.
Heading " First Day "
View at Brailsford ......
Bridge over Brailsford Brook ....
Spittle Hill from the Bridge over Henmore Brook
Spittle Hill
The " Peacock " at Rowsley ....
Ashbourne from the S.E. .....
"Smith's Yard," Ashbourne ....
xxiv
'Page 237 244 247 250 251 252 257 259
261 263
265
267
269
273 277
279
281
283
284
287
List of Illustrations
Heading "Second Day," the Fishing House
" The Channel," Ashbourne
Okeover Hall and Church, near Ashbourne
Thorpe Cloud from the Village.
Dovedale from the foot of Thorpe Cloud
Ashbourne Church, from the West .
In the Dove Valley, under Thorpe Cloud
Well at Tissington ....
Dovedale ; looking towards Thorpe Cloud
Dovedale and Hanson Toot from Reynard's Cave
Hanson Grange .....
Alstonfield Manor House
Hanson Toot from near Alstonfield .
Beresford Hall .....
From an engraving after Slot hard.
Fireplace in the Fishing House
Remains of Beresford Hall
The Pike Pool (from above)
Butterbur Leaves on the Banks of the Dove
Hartington Hall .....
Walton's Chamber, Beresford Hall .
From " A Series of Views" . . . " intended to i//ustrate Charles Cotton's Work^' edited by Frederick (Manning, 1866.
Heading "Third Day," on the Dove belov/ the Pike Pool .
XXV
Page 291
295 296 297 298 299
307 3" 315 317 319 323 327
328
331 333 334 335 342
343
List of Illustrations
Page
Old Stone Table in the grounds of Beresford Hall .... 344
The Hall, Beresford Hall . . . . . . . . . 345
From " A Series of Fiews" etc. {see note to illustration on p. 342).
The Fishing House and river . . . . . . . . 347
Remains at Beresford Hall ........ 353
Tailpiece, Tadpoles ......... 357
XXVI
^Waitayt',
INTRODUCTION
I. Outlines of Walton's Life
IN his address to the reader of the first collected edition of his Lives, Walton says : " And now I wish, that as that learned Jew, Josephus, and others, so these men had also writ their own lives ; but since it is not the fashion of these times, I wish their relations or friends would do it for them, before delays make it too difficult." It was but natural that so good a biographer should desire to establish biography as a family duty, or at all events as one of those duteous " courtesies that are done to the dead," to borrow a phrase of the younger Donne's. Had Walton lived to our day, as there seemed some possibility of his doing, he would no doubt have been somewhat more than satisfied with the activity of biographers ; and perhaps have noted for particular remark the biographic conscientiousness of the modern interviewer, eager to catch and record every minute of a great man's life as it flies. Perhaps it is a little strange that his friend Cotton, or his son the Canon, did not remember Walton's words, and note for us some of the ways and talk
xxix
Introduction
of a man who must have been as good a subject for, as he was an artist in, biography. No doubt. Cotton, who was to survive his master but four years, dying amid debts and difficulties, had more instant demands upon his faculties ; but Canon Izaak Walton, in his long quiet life in Salisbury Close, might surely have written some notes of a father to whose biographical faculty, and consequent acceptability with bishops, he owed his canonry.
Later on Dr. Johnson talked of writing Walton's life, but his well-known admiration for the "Lives " found no other expression than possibly a certain influence on the form of his own " Lives of the Poets," and his suggestion to Moses Browne that he should reprint " The Compleat Angler," then somewhat fallen into neglect. Browne published his edition in 1750, having weeded the text of what he was pleased to regard as certain " redundancies," " super- fluities," and "absurdities," an editorial proceeding to which we owe the first authoritative life of our author, as it prompted Sir John Hawkins to publish his edition (1760), in which the text was restored to its original integrity, and to which were for the first time prefixed "The Lives of the Authors." Browne had supplied what Westwood calls " some loose biographical litter," but the honour of being Walton's first serious biographer belongs to Sir John Hawkins, on whose biography all subsequent biographies have been founded. According to Mr. R. B. Marston, however, this is an honour which he should from the beginning have shared with the famous antiquary William Oldys, to whose collections he owed most of his Walton material, and by whom entirely was written the life of Cotton. Dr. Thomas Zouch was Walton's next original biographer, his life being prefixed to his edition of the "Lives" in 1796 ; and then in 1836 came Sir Harris Nicolas, who, if Sir John Hawkins was the first, may almost be said to be the first and last of Walton's biographers. For the scientific thoroughness of his research has left hardly a single stone unturned for subsequent editors, and, compared with his elaborately minute narrative, every fact reinforced by a phalanx of notes, Sir John Hawkins's work seems a mere outline, with the occasional vagueness of myth.
Thus, for later editors there is little left to be done anew with
XXX
Introduction
the life of Izaak Walton, either in the way of fact or reflection. Sir Harris Nicolas has recorded nearly all the facts, and Dr. Zouch and Mr. R. B. Marston have made all the appropriate reflections. In the following resetting of the old narrative, so far as our common nature permits, I shall limit myself to facts, or the conjectures of facts, remembering Walton's admonition that " the mind of man is best satisfied by the knowledge of events."
Izaak Walton was born at Stafibrd, in the parish of St. Mary, on August 9, 1593. Till recently two houses competed for the honour of being his birthplace, one a noble old Elizabethan house in Green- gate Street, and the other a humble little house in East Gate Street, pulled down within the last seven or eight years. Tradition and probability were most strongly in favour of the latter. Of his father, Jervis Walton, nothing is known beyond the fact that he died in February, 1596-7, of his mother nothing at all, not even her name, though Dr. Zouch makes out that she was a daughter of Edmund Cranmer, Archdeacon of Canterbury, a statement which seems entirely without foundation, and which probably arose from some traditional confusion due to Walton's own marriage into the Cranmer family.
A conjectural pedigree of Walton's father is to be found in Sir Harris Nicolas's Life, by which it would appear that he was the son of George Walton, bailiff, of Yoxall, who may have been related to Richard Walton of Hanbury, whose will was dated, 31 October 1557 — the earliest date in Waltonian genealogy.
From his baptism (which is thus recorded in the register of St. Mary's: "1593 Septemb. Baptiz. fuit Isaac FiUus Jervis Walton 21° die mensis et anni prasdict.") till we find him a London apprentice probably at the age of sixteen, and for many years after that, and for occasional long periods all through his life, his history is mainly conjecture. That he was educated at the Grammar School of his native town seems likely. What that education amounted to we can only judge from his- writings. Lowell has been somewhat scornful of his poor attainments. Walton " could never have been taught even the rudiments of Latin," he says, with startling erudition, " for he spells the third person singular of the perfect tense of obire^
xxxi
Introduction
obiet ; separate, seperate ; and divided, devided " / * Sir Harris Nicolas is more hopeful of poor Walton's Latin. " It is not probable," he thinks, "that he received a regular classical education; but although translations existed of nearly all the Latin works which he quotes, it is nevertheless certain that he had some knowledge of that language. His reading in English literature was various and extensive, particularly in divinity." However, apart from the fact
* Lowell might have instanced a much better known example of strange Wal- tonian Latin in the " piscatoribys " for "piscatoribus " in the well-known inscription on the Dovedale fishing-house. But then that is probably stonemason Latin, unless Cotton, the author of the "Virgil Travestie," was responsible for it.
xxxii
Introduction
that the printer, of whom Walton had frequent occasion to complain, might easily account for that eccentric conjugation of obire, and the bad spelling, it is of small consequence how much or little Latin, or other technical learning, Walton possessed. It is only important to realise that he was sufficiently familiar with such models of good and beautiful style in literature, as to have written English with classic dignity and distinction (such as Lowell, in the rather common essay from which I quote is far from attaining), not to speak of an immortalising charm, which even a more correct conjugation of Latin verbs could hardly have increased.
That Walton was devoted to literature at quite an early age, and that among his youthful friends he was a marked man because of that devotion, are among the first facts that we become aware of after his baptism. In 1619 was published a short poem, entitled 'The Loves of Amos and Laura, by S.P. (conjectured to be Samuel Purchas, author of the famous Pilgrimage), and this was dedicated to Walton in the following poem :
To My Approved and Much Respected Friend, Iz. Wa.
To thee, thou more than thrice beloved friend,
I too unworthy of so great a bliss ; These harsh-tun'd lines I here to thee commend.
Thou being cause It Is now as It Is : For hadst thou held thy tongue, by silence might These have been burled In oblivious night.
If they were pleasing, 1 would call thein thine.
And disavow my title to the verse : But being bad, I needs must call them mine.
No III thing can be clothed In thy verse. Accept them then, and where I have offended. Rase thou It out, and let It be amended.
S.P.
This dedication does not occur in the only known copy of the first edition (16 13), which, however, is imperfect, and from which it may have been lost, but Sir Harris Nicolas points out that, as the
xxxiii c
Introduction
text is precisely the same in both editions, any obligations to Walton acknowledged by "S.P.," in 1619, must have been equally due in 1613 ; from which he further deduces that, "as Walton was only twenty years of age in 16 13, the love of literature, which never deserted him, must have commenced at a very early period of his life."
The date of Walton's first coming to London, and the business in which he became engaged, have been matters of much speculation and research. The usual statement has been that at about the age of twenty he was apprenticed to a kinsman of his, Henry Walton, a Whitechapel haberdasher. The only authority I can find for this statement is Sir Harris Nicolas's elaborate genealogical guess. There was a Henry Walton, haberdasher, in Whitechapel about this time, whom we come at through the will of a cousin Samuel Walton, of St. Mary's Cray, in Kent, and whose connection with Staffordshire is further deduced from the same document. Henry Walton may have been a kinsman of \x'Sl2lK. Walton, and Izaak Walton may have been his apprentice, and there are other mays and mights still more conjectural. One fact against the haberdasher or "sempster" theory is that the records of the Haberdashers' Company do not contain the names of Henry or Izaak Walton, between 1600 and 1630, whereas it has been discovered that the records of the Ironmongers Company for 1 6 1 8 do contain the name of \L2L2k..* Still more conclusive is the fact dwelt upon by Mr. Marston, that in his marriage licence with Rachel Floud, dated December 27, 1626, he is described as of the " Cittie of London, Ironmonger." Why a man who was a haberdasher should describe himself as an ironmonger in his marriage licence is certainly difficult to determine — except on the unlikely theory that Rachel Floud had a partiality for ironmongers.
Sir John Hawkins had supposed that Walton first settled in London as a shopkeeper in the Royal Exchange, under the patronage of Sir Thomas Gresham, but this seems to be a fable. Haberdasher, sempster, " wholesale linen draper, or Hamburg merchant," these
* " 1618. I2th November. Isaac Walton, late apprentice to Thomas Grinsell, was now admitted and sworne a free brother of this companie, and paid for his admittance xiij*, and for default of presentm' and enrollment X^"
xxxiv
Introduction
have been the traditional descriptions of Walton's business ; but I fear that these graceful and fanciful professions must cease to claim him, and that in future he must be written down an ironmonger. " Let no one," to quote the impassioned words of Dr. Zouch, who, along with one or two other editors, seems to have been uncomfort- able because Walton was a tradesman, " however elevated in rank or station, however accomplished with learning, or exalted in genius," esteem him the less for that.
Well, if Walton became " apprentice of Thomas Grinsell " at the usual age, he would have commenced his life in London at the age of sixteen, in the year 1611. So conjectures Mr. Marston, and so we can leave the matter.
Though Walton's manner of business be still uncertain, the place of it has long been known, and Walton's residence in Chancery
XXXV
Introduction
Lane and Fleet Street a matter of familiar tradition. Sir John Hawkins states that in 1624, "Walton dwelt on the north side of Fleet Street in a house two doors west of the end of Chancery Lane, and abutting on a messuage known by the sign of the Harrow, and that this house was then in the joint occupation of himself and a hosier called John Mason." " Half a shop was sufficient for the business of Walton," comments one of his old editors. From 1628 to 1644 he seems to have lived in Chancery Lane itself, in " about the seventh house on the left-hand side," but Sir Harris Nicolas points out that in the parish-books of Saint Dunstan's his house is not, like the others, described as a shop. From the same parish records it has been unearthed that during the years from 1632 to 1640, Walton fulfilled the ordinary civic duties of a householder, as scavenger, juryman, constable, grand juryman, overseer of the poor, sidesman and vestryman — facts of humble biographical importance.
But long before Walton filled any of these posts of public useful- ness, his residence in the parish of St. Dunstan's had brought him into acquaintance and life-long friendship with its famous vicar. Dr. John Donne, a friendship of the first importance in Walton's life, as to it he probably owed his introduction to that literary and ecclesiastical society, in which, haberdasher or ironmonger as he might be, he was so evidently persona grata. That this should be so has not unnaturally been a matter of surprise to his editors, and Dr. Johnson remarked that " it was wonderful that Walton, who was in a very low station in life, should have been familiarly received by so many great men, and that at a time when the ranks of society were kept more separate than they are now." Johnson suggests as explanation that he was no longer a tradesman but had become a professional author, but actually his retirement from business did not take place till 1643. After all, the circumstance need not have so greatly surprised a man who similarly owed his position to his own personality and talents.
However it be, we find him, while still living in Fleet Street, on terms of intimacy and affection with such men as Sir Henry Wotton, Dr. Henry King (son of the Bishop of London), John Hales of Eton,
xxxvi
Introduction
l^mAZJai^^n^^M/^^
■iHa^m^i
and certain eminent divines — for Walton, as Lowell has said, had " a special genius for bishops."
Was it this episcopal bias that led him on December 27, 1626, to take to wife Rachel Floud, of Canterbury, closely connected by descent with the Cranmers, including the famous Archbishop? Through his wife's family Walton probably still further widened his episcopal connection. With Rachel Walton lived, apparently in an entirely happy union, for nearly fourteen years, during which, how- ever, he suffered severe domestic affliction in the loss of no less than seven children. His wife's mother had also died during their residence in Chancery Lane, and on the loth July, 1640, his wife was to die too, having survived only six weeks the birth of another daughter. But death seems to have come merely as a solemn incident of life to Walton's serene, unimpassioned, and devoutly religious spirit. A literal, undoubting faith such as his, and a preoccupation in little hobbies, must afford a great shelter from the keenness of life's tragedy and pathos.
xxxvii
Introduction
Six years after this Walton was to marry again, to be again bereaved in April 1662. His second wife, like his first, was found among the bishops, being Anne Ken, of the Kens of Somersetshire, and half-sister to that Bishop Ken whose name has become a synonym for piety. She bore him one daughter Ann, married to Dr. Hawkins, of Winchester, and two sons, one of whom died in infancy, and one Isaac, the Canon, who survived him. She was buried in Worcester Cathedral, Walton himself writing for her the following epitaph.
Ex terris
Here lyeth buryed soe much as could dye, of ANNE the wife of
IZAAK WALTON
who was
a woman of remarkable prudence, and of the Pritnitive Piety; her great and generall knowledge being adorned with such true humility, and blest with soe much Christian meehiesse, as made her worthy of a more memorable Monument.
She dyed {Alas that she is dead!) the 17th of Aprill 1662 aged 52
Study to he like her.
In his life of Hooker, Walton speaks of " a secret sacred wheel of Providence — most visible in marriages — guided by His hand that ' allows not the race to the swift,' nor 'bread to the wise,' nor good wives to good men,^' his view apparently being that bad wives are allotted to good men to exercise their virtues. It would seem, how- ever, that the remark had no reference to his own matrimonial experience.
xxxviii
Introduction
Walton had left Chancery Lane in August 1644, finding It " dangerous for honest men to be there," and for some years his place of residence is doubtful. Some have surmised that he retired to Stafford, to pass long days by Shawford brook, but Sir Harris Nicolas is of opinion that, except for occasional visits to Stafford, he did not leave London till after the Restoration.
In 1650 he was probably living in Clerkenwell, and in 1651, soon after the battle of Worcester, his pacific contemplative life comes for a moment in contact with the danger and trouble of the time. The King's baggage had fallen into Cromwell's hands, but a certain Colonel Blague had managed to save one of Charles's rings, known as " the lesser George." Having taken shelter at Blore Pipe House, near Eccleshall, Blague had handed it to his host Mr. George Barlow, who passed it on to one Robert Milward, who again gave it into the " trusty hands " of Mr. Izaak Walton. Blague was mean- while a prisoner in the Tower, but, effecting his escape, he received the ring again from Walton, and succeeded in restoring it to the King over the water. This is Walton's first and only appearance as a man of action, so we must make the most of it.
In 1655 we catch a glimpse of him once again in the more con- genial society of the clergy, that famous glimpse of him talking with Bishop Sanderson in Little Britain, a meeting which he has thus described with so much charm :
About the time of his printing this excellent preface, I met him accidentally 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 corner under a penthouse (for it began to rain), and immediately the wind rose, and the wind increased so much, that both became so incon- venient, as to force us into a cleanly house, where we had bread, cheese, ale, and a fire for our ready money. The rain and wind were so obliging to me, as to force our stay here for at least an hour, to my great content and advantage ; for in that time he made to me many useful observations of the present times with much clearness and conscientious freedom.
Fuller's Church History was published in 1655, and it was soon
xxxix
Introduction
after its publication that we get another similar glimpse of Walton in conversation with its author :
Walton being asked by Fuller, who was aware of his being intimate with several bishops and other eminent clergymen, what he thought of that work himself, and what opinions he had heard his friends express of it, Walton replied " he thought it should be acceptable to all tempers, because there were shades in it for the warm, and sunshine for those of a cold constitution, that with youthful readers, the facetious parts would be profitable to make the serious more palatable ; while some reverend old readers might fancy themselves in his History of the Church, as in a flower-garden or one full of evergreens." " And why not," said Fuller, "the Church History so decked as well as the Church itself at a most holy season, on the Tabernacle of old at the feast of boughs." " That was but for a season," said Walton ; " in your feast of boughs they may conceive we are so overshowed throughout, that the parson is more seen than the congregation, and this, sometimes invisible to his own acquaint- ance, who may wander in the search, till they are lost in the labyrinth." " Oh," said Fuller, " the very children of our Israel may find their way out of this wilderness." "True," replied Walton, "as, indeed, they have here such a Moses to conduct them."
In the December of 1662, the year in which his wife died, Walton obtained from Gilbert Sheldon, Bishop of London (still another episcopal friend), a forty years' lease of a new building, adjoining a house called the " Cross Keys," in Paternoster Row. This building was burnt down in the Great Fire, and on July i, 1670, Walton presented a petition to the Court of Judicature, asking for extension of lease on condition of his rebuilding it ; which petition was granted. On this occasion Walton was described as " Isaac Walton, gentle- man."
Of one of Walton's closest friends mention has yet to be made. This was Dr. George Morley, whom Walton first knew as a canon of Christchurch, Oxford. He was, however, expelled from his canonry somewhere about 1648, for refusing to take the covenant. There was a story that he took shelter with Walton at his Stafford- shire cottage from April 1648 to IVIay 1649 5 ^ut for this there is no authority. He was one of Ben Jonson's twelve adopted "sons," and wrote some commendatory verses prefixed to the T^he Compkat Angler. His friendship with Walton was destined to be life-long.
xl
hitroductio?i
On the Restoration he was made Dean of Christchurch, and pre- sently Bishop of Worcester, and it was during a visit to him at Worcester that Walton's second wife is supposed to have died. Very shortly after her death Morley was made Bishop of Winchester, and invited Walton to make his home with him. The invitation was accepted, and Walton continued to live with him at Winchester, with occasional visits to London and to Morley's episcopal residence of Farnham Castle, till the end of his life. That he spent the Christ- mas of 1678 at Farnham Castle seems likely from the following inscription in a copy of the fifth edition of The Compleat Angler given to his friend, Mrs. Wallop :
For Mrs. Wallop,
I think I did some years past, send you a boolce ot Angling : This is printed since, and I think better ; and, because nothing that I can pretend a tytell too, can be too good for you : pray accept of this also, from me that am really,
Madam, yo' most affectionate ffriend ;
and most humble servant.
IZAAK WALTON.
Farnham Castell,
Decern''. 19°, 167?
It was under one of Bishop Morley's roofs, and at his suggestion, that he wrote the lives of Hooker, Herbert, and Sanderson ; and it is likely that the Hooker — and possibly the Herbert — were written at Morley's house at Chelsea.
On May 26, 1683, we find him again at Farnham Castle ; but this seems to have been his last journey, for there is no record of his again leaving Winchester.
On August 9, in the same year, he was ninety years old, and on that day he commenced to make his will. It was finished on the 1 6th and executed on the 24th, and is written throughout in his own hand, with several erasures. Not the least characteristic of his writ- ings, it ran as follows :
xlii
Introduction
August the 9°, 1683.
In tf)£ i^aim of CJoil, Amen. I, Izaak Walton, the elder, of Winchester, being this present day in the neintyeth yeare of my age, and in perfect memory, for wich praysed be God : but Considering how sodainly I may be deprived of boeth, doe therfore make this my last will and testament as foUoweth. And first, I doe [declare]* my beliefe to be, that their is only one God, who hath made the whole world, and me and all mankinde ; to whome I shall give an acount of all my actions, which are not to be justified, but I hope pardoned, for the merits of my saviour Jesus. — And because [the profession of] Cristianity does, at this time, seime to be subdevided into papist and protestant, I take it to be at least convenient to declare my beleife to be, in all poynts of faith, as the Church of England now professeth. And this I doe the rather because of a very long and very trew friendship with some of the Roman Church.
And for my worldly estate (which I have nether got by falshood or flattery, or the extreme crewelty of the law of this nation), I doe hereby give and be- queth it as followeth : First, I give my son-in-law. Doc' Hawkins, and to his Wife, to them I give all my tytell and right of or in a part of a howse and shop in Pater-noster-rowe, in London, which I hold by lease from the Lord Bishop of London for about 50 years to come, and I doe also give to them all my right and tytell of or to a howse in Chancery-lane, London, where in Mrs. Greinwood now dwelleth, in which is now about 16 years to come. I give these two leases to them, they saving my executor from all damage concerning the same.
[[And I doe also give to my saide dafter all my books this day at Win- chester and Droxford : and what ever ells I can call mine their, except a trunk of linen w^'' I give my son Izaak Walton, but if he doe not marry, or use the saide linen himselfe, then I give the same to my grand-doughter Anne Hawkins.]]
And I give to my son Izaak all my right and tytell to a lease of Noring- ton farme, which I hold from the lord B" of Winton : And I doe also give him all my right and tytell to a farme or land nere to Stafford, which I bought of Mr. Walter Noell ; I say, I give it to him and [his] heares for ever ; but upon the condition following, namely : if my sone shall not marry before he shall be of the age of forty and one yeare, or, being marryed, shall dye before the saide age, and leve noe son to inherit the saide farme or land, or if his son [or sonns] shall not live to ataine the age of twentie and one yeare, to dispose otherwayes of it, then I give the saide farme or land to the
* The words and sentences in square brackets were interlineations, and a passage in double square brackets was erased because "twice repeated."
xliii
Introduction
towne or corperation of Stafford, (in which I was borne), for the good and benifit of some of the saide towne, as I shall direct, and as followeth (but first note, that it is at this present time rented for 21 lO"" a yeare, (and is like to hold the said rent, if care be taken to keipe the barne and bowsing in repaire). And I wood have and doe give ten pownd of the saide rent to binde out yearely two boyes, the sons of honest and pore parents, to be apprentises to some tradesmen or handycraft-men, to the intent the saide boyes [may] the better afterward get their owne living. And I doe also give five pownd yearly out of the said rent, to be given to some meade-servant that hath attain'd the age of twenty and [one] yeare, (not les), and dwelt long in one servis, or to some honest pore man's daughter that hath attain'd to that age, to [be] paide her at or on the day of her marriage. And this being done, my will is, that what rent shall remaine of the saide farme or land, shall be disposed of as followeth :
First, I doe give twenty shillings yearely, to be spent by the maior of Staf- ford, and those that shall colect the said rent and dispose of it as I have and shall hereafter direct ; and that what mony or rent shall remaine undisposed offe, shall be imployed to buie coles for some pore people, that shall most neide them, in the said towne ; the said coles to be delivered the last weike in Janewary, or in every first weike in Febrewary ; I say then, because I take that time to be the hardest and most pinching times with pore people ; and God reward those that shall doe this with out partialitie, and with honestie and a good contience.
And if the saide maior and others of the saide towne of Stafford shall prove so necligent, or dishonest, as not to imploy the rent by me given as in- tended and exprest in this my will, which God forbid, then I give the saide rents and profits of the saide farme or land to the towne and chiefe mages- trats or governers of Ecles-hall, to be disposed by them in such maner as I have ordered the disposall of it by the towne of Stafford, the said Farme or land being nere the towne of Ecles-hall.
And I give to my son-in-law, Doctor Hawkins, whome I love as my owne son ; and to my dafter, his wife ; and my son Izaak ; to each of them a ring, with these words or motto: "Love my memory. I. W., obiet ; " to the Lord B^ of Winton a ring, with this motto : " A mite for a million. L W., obiet ; " and to the freinds hearafter named, I give to each of them a ring, with this motto : " A friends farewell. L W., obiet." And my will is, the said rings be deliverd within fortie dayes after my deth ; and that the price or valew of all the saide rings shall be 13'' 4"^ a peice.
I give to Doctor Hawkins Docto' Donns Sermons, which I have hear'd preacht and read with much content. To my son Izaak I give Doc' Sibbs his " Soules Conflict ; " and to my doughter his " Brewsed Reide ; " desiring
xliv
Introduction
them to reade them so as to be well acquanted with them. And I also give to her all my bookes at Winchester and Droxford, and what ever in those two places are or I can call mine, except a trunk of linen, which I give to my son Izaak ; but if he doe not live to [marry or] make use of it, then I give the same to my grand-dafter, Anne Hawkins. And I give my dafter Doc' Halls Works, which be now at Farnham.
To my son Izaak I give all my books, not yet given, at Farnham Castell ; and a deske of prints and pickters ; also a cabinet nere my beds head, in w"* are som iittell things that he will valew, tho of noe greate worth.
And my will and desyre is, that he will be kinde to his Ante Beacham, and his ant Rose Ken, by alowing the first about fiftie shilling a yeare, in or for bacon and cheise, not more, and paying 4 a yeare toward the bordin of her son's dyut to Mr. John Whitehead : for his Ante Ken, I desyre him to be kinde to her acording to her necessitie and his owne abillitie ; and I comend one of her children, to breide up as I have saide I intend to doe, if he shall be able to doe it, as I know he will ; for they be good folke.
I give to Mr. John Darbishire the Sermons of Mr. Antony Far- ingdon or of do' Sanderson, which my executor thinks fit. To my servant, Thomas Edghill, I give five pownd in mony, and all my clothes, linen and wollen, — except one sute of clothes, which I give to Mr. Holinshed and forty shiling, — if the saide Thomas be my servant at my deth ; if not, my cloths only.
And I give my old friend, Mr. Richard Marriot, ten pownd in mony, to be paid him within 3 months after my deth ; and I desyre my son to shew kindenes to him if he shall neide, and my son can spare it.
And I doe hereby will and declare my son Izaak to be my sole executo' of this my last will and testament ; and Do'. Hawkins to see that he performs it, which I doubt not but he will.
I desyre my buriall may be nere the place of my deth, and free from any ostentation or charg, but privately. This I make to be my last will (to which I shall only add the codicell for rings), this 16. day of August, 1683.
Witnes to this will. Izaak Walton.
The rings I give are as on the other side.
To my brother Jon Ken. to my brother Beacham.
to my sister his wife. to my sister his wife,
to my brother Doc''. Ken. to the lady Anne How.
to my sister Pye. to Mrs. King Do'' Philips wife.
to Mr. Francis Morley. to Mr. Valantine Harecourt.
to S'' George Vernon. to Mrs. Elyza Johnson,
to his wife. to Mrs. Mary Rogers.
xlv
Introduction
to his 3 dafters.
to Mrs. Nelson.
to Mr. Rich. Walton.
to Mr. Palmer.
to Mr. Taylor.
to Mr. Tho. Garrard.
to the Lord B' of Sarum.
to Mr. Rede his servant.
to my Coz. Dorothy Kenrick.
to my Coz. Lewin.
to Mr. Walter Higgs.
to Mr. Cha. Cotton.
to Mr. Rich. Marryot.
to Mrs. Elyza Milward. to Mrs. Doro. Wallop, to Mr. Will. Milward, of Christ- church, Oxford, to Mr. John Darbeshire. to Mrs. Vuedvill. to Mrs. Rock, to Mr. Peter White, to Mr. John Lloyde. to my cozen Greinsells widow.
1 6 Mrs. Dalbin must not be gotten.
for-
22
Note that severall lines are blotted cut of" this will for they were twice repeted : And, that this will is now signed and sealed, this twenty and fourth day of October 1683 in the presence of us :
IzAAK Walton.
Witnes : Abra. Markland. Jos. Taylor. Thomas Crawley.
Probatum apud London, &c. Coram venli et egregio viro d'no Thoma Exton Milite Legum D'core surro &c., quarto die mensis, Februarii Anno D'ni (stylo Angliae) 1683 juramento Isaaci Walton jun"^ filii d'ci dePti et Extoris &c., cui &c., de bene &c. Jurat.
His will was thus endorsed by himself:
"Izaak Walton's last will, octo,, 1683."
On December 15th Walton was dead. His death seems to have taken place at the house of his son-in-law, Dr. Hawkins, a preben- dary of Winchester.
He was buried in Winchester Cathedral, in a chapel in the south transept, called Prior Silkstead's Chapel. A large black marble slab bears the following inscription :
xlvi
Introduction
Here resteth the Body of MR. ISAAC WALTON
Who dyed the 15" of December
1683
Alas he's gone before. Gone to returne no more! Our panting Breasts aspire After their aged Stre, JVhose well spent life did last^ Full ninety yeares and past^ But now he hath begun That which will ne're he done Crown d with eternall blisse : We wish our Souls with his.
VOTIS MODESTIS SIC FLERUNT LIBERI.
And now we may pass on to the record of his literary life, and to a fuller account of his relations with those friends whom so far we have but mentioned.
xlviii
Introduction
tH-N
II. Walton s Literary Life and Friendships
IF Walton had a " special genius for bishops," he had an even rarer genius for friendship. His literary life may be said to have been begotten of two particularly interesting friendships, for his first appearance in print was in the form of an elegy upon Donne,* prefixed to the 1633 edition of Donne's poems, of which it is probable he was the editor ; and when later, in 1 640, he prefixed his life of Donne to a volume of Donne's sermons, it was because Sir Henry Wotton had died in 1639, without fulfilling his intention of himself writing the life of the great dean. Walton had been busy, at Wotton's request, collecting materials for that life, and had on one occasion jogged his memory about the matter. Wotton's reply, preserved in the Reliquiae IVottonian^, can hardly be spared here,
* See Appendix.
xlix d
Introduction
for the Illustration it affords of the familiar intercourse between the two men :
[Date, probably early part of 1639.] My Worthy Friend,
I am not able to yield any reason ; no, not so much as may satisfy myself, why a most ingenious letter of yours hath lain so long by me (as it were in lavender) without an answer, save this only, the pleasure I have taken in your style and conceptions, together with a meditation of the subject you propound, may seem to have cast me into a gentle slumber. But being now awaked, I do herein return you most hearty thanks for the kind prosecution of your first motion, touching a just office due to the memory of our ever memorable friend, to whose good fame, though it be needless to add anything (and my age considered, almost hopeless from my pen ;) yet I will endeavour to perform my promise, if it were but even for this cause, that in saying somewhat of the life of so deserving a man, I may perchance over-live mine own. That which you add of Dr. King (now made Dean of Rochester, and by that translated into my native soil) is a great spur unto me : with whom I hope shortly to confer about it in my passage towards Boughton Malherb, which was my genial air, and invite him to a friendship with that family where his predecessor was familiarly acquainted. I shall write to you at large by the next messenger (being at present a little in business), and then I shall set down certain general heads, wherein I desire information by your loving diligence ; hoping shortly to enjoy your own ever welcome company in this approaching time of the Fly and the Cork. And so I rest.
Your very hearty poor friend to serve you,
H. WOTTON,
In addition to the Elegy, Walton had meanwhile written some lines for the portrait of Donne in the second edition of Donne's poems (1635),* and had also contributed complimentary verses to ne Merchants Map of Commerce, 1638 ;* but it is with his life of Donne that his literary work really commences. It appears to have won immediate and unanimous praise. Charles I. spoke of it with approbation ; John Hales told Dr. King that " he had not seen a life
* See Appendix. 1
Introduction
written with more advantage to the subject, or more reputation to the writer than that of Dr. Donne." A letter from Donne's son, expressing his gratitude, is to be found in Nicholas's "Life," and, long after. Dr. Johnson gave it as his opinion that Walton was " a great panegyrist," and that Donne's was the best life he had written.
Of the closeness of Walton's friendship with Donne, the fact that Walton was among the three or four friends gathered round his death-bed is evidence, and also that Donne left him the quaint memorial seal which he ever afterwards used, and which will be found engraved at the foot of his will.
For the next ten years, Walton's literary work is confined to stray verses and prefaces. In 1642 he is supposed to have published a letter by George Cranmer to Hooker, concerning " the new' Church discipline ; " in 1643 he wrote some lines on the death of his friend, the poet William Cartwright, first published in the 1651 edition of Cartwright's poems ;* in 1646 there is little doubt that he contri- buted the charming address " To the Reader " (so much in his own pretty style) in Francis Quarles's Shepherd's Eclogues * its signature, " John Marriott," being probably an innocent literary deception ; for the year 1650 his literary output was a couplet found written in his copy of Dr. Richard Sibbes's ^he Returning Backslider, preserved at Salisbury.* But in 1651 he published another of bis incompar- able biographies, the charming life of Sir Henry Wotton prefixed to the Reliquia Wottoniana, of which also he was the editor.
Sir Henry Wotton is one of the most fascinating figures of the seventeenth century, and his " Reliquis " are curiously illustrative of his wandering life and his sensitive many-sided character ; for never was such a quaint jumble of materials — notes on Italian archi- tecture, " characters " of contemporary statesmen, reminiscences of diplomatic missions to Venice, " meditations " upon Christmas day, and the twenty-second chapter of Genesis, delightful gay letters to familiar friends, grave letters of business to " my Lord Zouch," and in the midst, like a little bunch of myrrh, a handful of lyrics of a rare meditative sweetness. In one of these, prettily entitled " On a
* See Appendix.
li
Introduction
Bank as I sat a-Fishing," he very likely refers to Walton, for he is doubtless the " friend " of these lines :
The jealous Trout^ that low did lie. Rose at a well dissembled fly : There stood my friend, with patient skill Attending of his trembling quill.
Probably a reminiscence of one of the many fishing excursions Walton and his friend used to make together along the Thames near Eton, where Wotton had a fishing-house. The " Reliquiae " contain two letters to " Iz. Wa." One has already been quoted. The other ran as follows :
My Worthy Friend.
Since I last saw you I have been confined to my chamber by a quotidian fever, I thank God, of more contumacy than malignity. It had once left me, as I thought, but it was only to fetch more com- pany, returning with a surcrew of those splenetic vapours, that are called hypochondriacal ; of which most say the cure is good company ; and I desire no better physician than yourself. I have in one of those fits endeavoured to make it more easy by composing a short Hymn ; and since I have apparelled my best thoughts so lightly as in verse, I hope I shall be pardoned a second vanity, if I communicate it with such a friend as yourself ; to whom I wish a cheerful spirit, and a thankful heart to value it, as one of the greatest blessings of our good God, in whose dear love I leave you, remaining.
Your poor friend to serve you,
H. WOTTON.
Oh thou great Power ! in whom I move.
For whom I live, to whom I die.
Behold me through thy beams of love,
IVhilst on this couch of tears I lie;
And cleanse my sordid soul within, By thy Christ's blood, the hath of sin.
No hallowed oils, no grains I need. No rags of saints, no purging fire. One rosy drop fro?n David'' s seed, Was worlds of seas to quench thine ire.
Oh precious Ransom ! which once paid
That Consummatum est was said. lii
Introduction
And said by him, that said no more. But seaPd it with his sacred breath ; Thou then that has despung'd my score. And dying wast the death of death.
Be to me now, on thee I call.
My life, my strength, my joy, my all.
H. worroN.
In 1652 Walton seems to have contributed an address to the Reader to " The Heroe of Lorenzo, or The way to Eminencie and Perfection. A piece of serious Spanish wit Originally in that language written, and in English. By Sir John SkefEngton, Kt. and Barronet ; " * and in the same year he contributed some com- mendatory verses to the " Scintillula Altaris " of his " worthy friend," Edward Sparke.*
With the year 1653 came the charming classic, which in the present volume is published for the hundred and twenty-first time. It was a troublous year in which this " contemplative man's recreation " was born. For us, looking back, it seems hard to realise that quiet men might go a-angling by tranquil rivers, and that there should be a sale, and a ready one, for so peaceful a book ; but one remembers Sir Thomas Browne meditating in a like quietude at Norwich ; one thinks, too, to take an example from a later time, of Theophile Gautier bringing out a new edition of his poems during the siege of Paris, and it is healing to reflect that even in such troublous times there is always peace somewhere in the world for peaceable men.
I shall deal more particularly with "The Compleat Angler later on. Meanwhile let us proceed with Walton's quiet history.
In 1654 appeared an enlarged second edition of the Reliquia Wottoniana, in 1655 an enlarged second edition of The Compleat Angler, and in 1658 a second edition of The Life of Donne, also revised and enlarged. In 1660 Walton's satisfaction at the Restora- tion was expressed in a " humble eclogue," addressed to " my ingenious friend, Mr. Brome, on his various and excellent poems," "written the 29 of May 1660," and first published in the first
* See Appendix. liii
Introduction
edition of Alexander Brome's Songs and Other Poems, 1661.* In 1 66 1 came a third edition of Tlie Compleat Angler, and in that year Walton also contributed some verses to the fourth edition of a religious poem, entitled 'The Synagogue, by the Rev. Christopher Harvie, who had paid Walton a similar compliment in the second edition of '■The Compleat Angler. In 1665 appeared The Life of Mr. Richard Hooker, which Walton had written during the first two
* See Appendix. liv
Introduction
years of his residence with Bishop Morley at Winchester. To the Life was prefixed that delightful letter from Dr. King, Bishop of Chichester, from which one of Walton's many soubriquets of affection is borrowed. " Honest Izaak," it began :
Though a familiarity of more than forty years continuance, and the constant experience of your love, even in the worst of the late sad times, be sufficient to endear our friendship, yet, I must confess my affection much improved, not only by evidences of private respect to many that know and love you, but by your new demonstration of a public spirit, testified in a diligent, true and useful collection of so many material passages as you have now afforded me in the life of venerable Mr. Hooker ; of which, since desired by such a friend as yourself, I shall not deny to give the testimony of what I know concerning him and his learned books; but shall first here take a fair occasion to tell you, that you have been happy in choosing to write the lives of three such persons as posterity hath just cause to honour ; which they will do the more for the true relation of them by your happy pen ; of all which I shall give you my unfeigned censure.
Walton's preface is particularly interesting from the allusion he makes to some other friendships. The friend who had persuaded him to the task, " a friend whom I reverence, and ought to obey," was, of course, Bishop Morley. He goes on to speak of his long " happy affinity with William Cranmer — now with God — a grand- nephew unto the great Archbishop of that name," and " I had also," he continues, " a friendship with the Reverend Dr. Usher, the late learned Archbishop of Armagh ; and with Dr. Morton, the late learned and charitable Bishop of Durham ; as also the learned John Hales, of Eton College ; and with them also — who loved the very name of Mr. Hooker — I have had many discourses concerning
him "
The year 1668 is marked by a fourth edition of The Compleat Angler, and in 1670 appeared The Life of Mr. George Herbert. This year also appeared the first collected edition of the Lives, dedicated to Bishop Morley. In 1673 appeared a third edition of the Reliquia JVottoniana, and from a letter to his publisher, Marriott,* it appears that Walton was then collecting materials for a life of John Hales.
* See Appendix. Iv
Introduction
In 1674 appeared an edition of Herbert's Temple, with Walton's Life prefixed, and in 1675 appeared the second collected edition of the Lives, on which occasion Cotton addressed a long and affec- tionate poem to Walton, which he had written apparently on January 17, 1672—3.*
In 1676 appeared the fifth and finally revised edition of l!he Corn- pleat Angler, to which further reference will be made.
In 1678 Walton published his Life of Robert Sanderson, Bishop of Lincoln, being then in his eighty-fifth year, but as vigorous mentally as ever. This Life Is of particular interest for the personal glimpses which it gives us of Walton, and his attitude to the movements of his own day. I have already quoted the charming picture of Walton and Sanderson meeting in Little Britain in " that dangerous year, 1655," but this charming valedictory reference to his own length of years, as he finishes telling of Sanderson's dying, should not be omitted : " Thus this pattern of meekness and primitive innocence changed this for a better life. 'Tis now too late to wish that my life may be like his ; for I am in the eighty-fifth year of my age ; but I humbly beseech Almighty God that my death may ; and do as earnestly beg of every reader to say Amen. ' Blessed is the man in whose spirit there is no guile.' Ps. xxxii. 2."
Two or three quotations from 'The Life of Sanderson and other Lives, illustrative of Walton's politics and religious opinions, will be better placed in the Appendix.
In 1680 was published a pamphlet entitled " Love and Truth : in two modest and peacable Letters, concerning the distempers of the Present Times : written from a quiet and conformable Citizen of London to Two Busie and Factious Shopkeepers in Coventry." These letters have been attributed to Walton (confidently by Zouch) and there has been much controversy on the matter. Their style certainly recalls Walton, and Sir Harris Nicolas hesitates to decide. William Pickering, in an interesting MS. note to his copy now in the British Museum, decides unhesitatingly against Walton's author- ship, and the balance of opinion seems to be that way. Space
* See Appendix. Ivi
Introduction
forbids our discussing the pros and cons here, the more so as the matter is of no great importance, for even if the letters were proved to be Walton's, the fact could hardly persuade one that they are exciting to read.
In 1680, however, it is certain that Walton did no great service to the memory of Ben Jonson by sending the following data, or rather gossip, to his friend Aubrey, the antiquary, who it would appear, had applied to him for the information.
FFOR Y" FfRIENDS Q™ THIS.
I only knew Ben Jonson : But my Lord of Winton knew him very well ; and says, he was in the 6°, that is, the uppermost fForme in West- minster scole, at which time his father dyed, and his mother married a bricklayer, who made him (much against his will) help him in his trade; but in a short time, his scolemaister, Mr. Camden, got him a better imployment, which was to attend or accompany a son of Sir Walter Rauley's on his travills. Within a short time after their return, they parted (I think not in cole bloud) and with a love sutable to what they had in their travilles (not to be commended). And then Ben began to set up for himself in the trade by which he got his subsistance and fame, of which I need not give any account. He got in time to have a lOOj^ a yeare from the King, also a pension from the cittie, and the like from many of the nobihtie and some of the gentry, w^h was well pay'd, for love or fere of his railing in verse, or prose, or boeth. My lord told me, he told him he was (in his long retyrement and sickness, when he saw him, which was often) much afflickted, that he had profained the Scripture in his playes, and lamented it with horror : yet that, at that time of his long retyrement, his pension (so much as came in) was giuen to a woman that gouern'd him (with whome he liv'd and dyed near the Abie in Westminster) ; and that nether he nor she tooke too much care for next weike : and wood be sure not to want wine, of w<^h he usually tooke too much before he went to bed, if not oftener and soner. My Lord tells me, he knowes not, but thinks he was born in Westminster. The question may be put to Mr. Wood very easily upon what grounds he is positive as to his being born their ; he is a friendly man, and will resolve it. So much for braue Ben. You will not think the rest so tedyous as I doe this
I. W.
Nqu''. 22, 80.
Ivii
Introduction
GifFord's criticism upon this is justifiably severe. " Izaak Walton," he writes, " cannot be mentioned without respect ; but his letter was written nearly half a century after Jonson's death, and when the writer was in his eighty-seventh year. It is made up of the common stories of the time, and a it^N anecdotes procured, while he was writing, from the Bishop of Winchester, who must himself, at the date of Izaak's letter, have been verging on ninety. It is not easy to discover what was the Bishop's and what was Walton's, but on these Wood constructed his Life of Jonson. He brings little of his own but a few dates."
In 1683 Walton had reached the advanced age of ninety, and if the theory which makes himself the real author of " Thealma and Clearchus, a Pastoral History, in smooth and easie verse," which he published this year, be true, it may well be an example of that second childhood's tenderness towards their early verses which is often observed to overcome the aging prose-writer. However, Walton declared the poem to have been " written long since, by John Chalk- hill Esqre ; an Acquaint and Friend of Edmund Spencer," and as there were more than one John Chalkhill among his second wife's connections, and as even so innocent a dissimulation would probably have been repugnant to Walton, there seems no good ground for doubting his statement. Sir Harris Nicolas will not hear of Walton being the author, but Lowell, on the other hand, is of opinion that Walton very much tinkered his friend's poem and that it is " mainly Walton's as it now stands."
The publication of Thealma and Clearchus brings Walton's literary life to an end, and here I may take the opportunity of remarking that Walton's poetry, which the reader may study for himself in the appendix, has perhaps been a little unduly depreciated. It is often no doubt little more than versified prose, but " poetry " of this order shares the advantage of the necessity imposed upon prose of having something, however prosaic, to say. Moreover, the same downright sincerity of feeling, which so often makes poetry of his prose, comes to the rescue of his verse also, verse which seldom lacks the prose excellence of apt and pithy phrase. On the other hand, in Lowell's opinion, Walton's prose, like that of many another prose-
Iviii
Introduction
writer, owes no little to the secret practice of verse. "I think," he says, " that Walton's prose owes much of its charm to the poetic sentiment in him which was denied a refuge in verse, and that his practice in metres may have given to his happier periods a measure and a music they would otherwise have wanted."
Lowell's own success and failure were so parallel to this that his judgment is the more authoritative. His remarks on Walton's Elegy upon Donne are equally worth noting. " The versification of this," he says, " if sometimes rather stiff, is for the most part firm and
lix
Introduction
not inharmonious. It is easier in its gait than that of Donne in his Satires, and shows the manly influence of Jonson. Walton, at any rate, in course of time, attained, at least in prose, to some- thing which, if it may not be called style, was a very charming way of writing, all the more so that he has an innocent air of not knowing how it is done. Natural endowment and pre-disposition may count for nine in ten of the chances of success in this com- petition ; but no man ever achieved, as Walton sometimes did, a simplicity which leaves criticism helpless, by the even light of nature alone."
To the number of Walton's friends before mentioned must be added the poet Drayton, of whom he twice speaks with affection in "The Compleat Angler, once as his " honest old friend," and again as " his old deceased friend ; " also Walter, Lord Aston, to whom he presented a copy of his collected Lives, still preserved, with this note beneath Walton's inscription :
" Izake Walton gift to me, June y° 14, 1 670, w* I most thankfully for his memmory off mee acknowledge a greate kindnesse.
WALTER ASTON."
Ix
Introduction
_. -^/f^W^
Walton's cottage ' *;^,V; ShillowfoTcl "".-.
///. T/ie Compleat Angler
^ I ""HE history of 'The Compleat Angler is a romance in itself, and I it has been written once and for all by Thomas Westv/ood, -ft- in his Chronicle of the Compleat Angler , a model of what one might call devotional bilsliography. From that I have ventured to appropriate the skeleton bibliography printed in the Appendix, and to that I must refer readers who would read the story in its fulness.
That so restful a pastoral should have been published in so turbulent a time has already been commented upon. Some have suggested that that very paradox may have accounted for its immediate success, so welcome was such a note of peace. Certainly its quietist message was one pertinent to the moment, and it had the rare fortune to be heard. The sale of the first edition seems to have been immediate, and the second speedily called for. This second is
Ixi
Introduction
really the first of the book as we know it to-day, and that perhaps accounts for its greater rarity, for Walton had increased its length by at least a third, and made many changes and additions. In the first edition the interlocutors had been but two, " Piscator " and " Viator," and in the second they are three, as we know them, "Venator" taking the place of "Viator," whom, however. Cotton resuscitates in his second part. In some respects Walton would have done well to allow his book to remain in the form it had now attained, for I must agree with Sir Harris Nicolas that the changes and additions made in the fifth edition (the third and fourth having practically been reprints of the second) were somewhat short of improvements. " The garrulity and sentiments," says Nicolas, " of an octogenarian are very apparent in some of the alterations ; and the subdued colouring of religious feeling which prevails throughout the former editions, and forms one of the charms of the piece, is, in this impression, so much heightened as to become almost obtrusive;" and he gives as an example the homiletical passage in the last chapter, immediately after Venator's recipe for colouring rods, which, he says truly, is in fact a religious essay. In this fifth edition also he made the artistic mistake of inviting Cotton to write an unnecessary second part, but it was so he decreed that his book should take its final shape, and it is on this fifth edition that all subsequent editions have been based. To some copies of this edition still a third part was added, namely "The E'x.perienc' d Angler, or Angling Improved, by Colonel Richard Venables, a letter from Walton to whom will be found in the Appendix. When including this third part, the book is entitled The Universal Angler, but Venables's portion was not retained in later editions. Of these the most impor- tant have been those of Moses Browne, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Harris Nicolas, John Major, Dr. Bethune, and Mr. R. B. Marston. Sir Harris Nicolas's is the most complete, and will probably remain the authoritative edition, John Major's is the daintiest (but greatly marred by its shopkeeper's preface), and Dr. Bethune's is the most learned.
Perhaps no English book except The Pilgrim's "Progress and Robinson Crusoe has been so beloved. Generation after generation
Ixii
tsf-
':)")'
V -
'ir ' I)
mCc/na/ifozj/orcf
Introduction
has brought to it its young affections, and there seems every reason to suppose that the average of something like a new edition for every two and a half years, which so far The Compleat Angler has maintained, will even be surpassed in the future.
This veneration for Walton is one of the curious phenomena of literature. Perhaps Dr. Johnson set the fashion by saying that he considered " the preservation and elucidation of Walton " " a pious work." He himself has become the god of a similar idolatry, and Lamb perhaps is the only other writer who has inspired quite the same kind of devotion. For it is not mere hero-worship, it is an actually religious sentiment on the part of the Waltonian. In his loving imagination Saint Izaak is as truly a saint as any in the Calendar. We can observe the same process of canonisation going on in the case of Lamb.
Lamb's question to Coleridge, "Among all your quaint readings, did you ever light upon Walton's Complete Angler? ... it breathes the very spirit of innocence, purity, and simplicity of heart ; there are many choice old verses interspersed in it ; it would sweeten a man's temper at any time to read it ; it would Christianise every discordant angry passion : pray make yourself acquainted with it " — and his many references to Walton in his essays have no doubt swelled his fame even more than the pontifical praise of Johnson. Then he has had Scott for his panegyrist and Wordsworth for his sonneteer. Nor should we forget the poet Bowles.
All his admirers have not written so wisely or so well as these. Like Burns, Walton has suffered from maudlin devotees, he has been slapped on the back by the robustious, cooed to in the voice of the sucking dove by the sentimental, some have written in the " man and a brother," grand lodge " masonic " vein, others as though he were a sort of aged pet lamb ; but that was inevitable — fame is no fame without the plebs, and the paths of glory must often pass beneath triumphal arches not always in the best taste. Besides, how- ever absurd the form it may take, this devotion to the memory of a lovely soul is surely far from absurd. For, after all, Walton is a sentiment, at least as an angler ; for I understand that the ordinary Philistine angler, to whom all that pretty warbling talk of birds and
ixiv
Ijttroductio7t
honey-suckle hedges has no appeal in comparison with a creel full of speckled trout, thinks but small beer of poor Izaak's antiquated angling methods. It is probably among those who have never cast a line (like the present editor), or, like Washington Irving, have but fished " to satisfy the sentiment," that the majority of Waltonians are to be found.
As a practical guide to angling. The Compleat Angler was exploded even in its own day. Robert Franck belonged to the order of Philistine, as distinct from that of contemplative, anglers, and naturally he had little patience with Walton's unpractical digressions. He vents his spleen in a curious book, entitled Northern Memoirs, written in dialogue between Theophilus and Arnoldus, published in 1694, and re-edited by Sir Walter Scott, in 1 82 1. Arnoldus complains that Walton " stuiFs his book with morals from Dubravius and others, not giving us one precedent of his own practical experiments." Theophilus loftily rejoins : " I remember the book, but you inculcate his errata ; however, it may pass muster among common muddlers." But Arnoldus thinks not, " for," he continues, " I remember in Stafford, I urged his own argu- ment upon him, that pickerel weed of itself breeds pickerel. Which question was no sooner stated, but he transmits himself to his authority, viz., Gesner, Dubravius, and Aldrovandus, which I readily opposed, and offered my reasons to prove the contrary." Arnoldus finally relates how the Compleat Angler, getting the worst of the argument, dropped it, " and leaves Gesner to defend it," and " so huffed away."
Of course, from his point of view Franck was perfectly justified. For one might as well consult a fifteenth-century pharmacopoeia on Russian influenza as consult "Honest Izaak " on any of the higher branches of his art. But who minds that ? Angling was simply an excuse for Walton's artless garrulity, a peg on which to hang his ever-fragrant discourse of stream and meadow. He followed angling, as indeed any such sport is most intelligently followed, as a pretext for a day or two in the fields, not so much to fill his basket as to refresh his spirit, and store his memory with the sweetness of country sights and sounds. The angler
Ixv e
Introductioii
who merely angles for the sake of what he can catch is not so much an angler as a fishmonger. The truer angler is more often like Scott and Mr. Lang, " no fisher, but a well-wisher to the game," such a one as Mr. Bridges describes in one of his prettiest verses: —
Sometimes an angler comes, and drops his hook
Within its hidden depths, and Against a tree Leaning his rod, reads in some pleasant hook. Forgetting soon his pride of fishery ; And dreams, or falls asleep. While curious fishes peep About his nibbled bait, or scornfully Dart off and rise and leap. Ixvi
Introduction
How much better to be this angler who only dreams, to have one's creel empty indeed, but one's head sweetly giddy with the shining "ghosts of fish" — the angler who fishes for the sake of doing something else, to " some incognisable end," which certainly is not trout.
It is curious to note that that fantastic natural history, which was the scorn of the fierce scientific Franck, is one of the features of 'The Compleat Angler which most attracts us to-day. Aldrovandus, ^lianus, Dubravius, Rondeletius — what names had the scientists of those days ! Names monstrous to the eye as the monsters they celebrate. It is hard sometimes to make up one's mind whether Walton's solemn deference to these extinct naturalists of the extinct is not a form of humour with him, as indeed one sometimes wonders too of his no less fantastic piety. Take, for instance, his familiar argument in favour of anglers that four of Christ's disciples were fishermen, and " first, that He never reproved these for their employment or calling, as He did scribes and the money-changers. And secondly, He found that the hearts of such men by nature were fitted for con- templation and quietness ; men of mild, and sweet and peaceable spirits, as indeed most anglers are . . . And it is observable, that it was our Saviour's will, that these our four Fishermen should have a priority of nomination in the catalogue of His Twelve Apostles, Matt. X. 2-4, Acts i. 13, as namely, first St. Peter, St. Andrew, St. James, and St. John, and then the rest in their order."
It is difficult for us to realise that Walton probably meant all this quite seriously, so hard is it by any stretch of imagination to transport oneself into that atmosphere of primitive innocence in which the childlike soul of Walton breathed. But to doubt Walton's absolute seriousness in such a passage is to miss one of the essential conditions of his temperament, its complete, unquestioning reliance upon authority. He was entirely the product of the old order. We see in him an exquisite example of that perfection of character which that old order not infrequently developed. He is perhaps more the ideal Churchman than the ideal Christian, a respecter of castes and an unquestioning supporter of the powers that be. He is the type of man who grows obediently as he is trained, and gives God the glory.
Ixviii
Introduction
It is inevitable that such a type has its limitations. It Is apt to be hard on merely human feelings, and one encounters Walton's limita- tions when he comes to deal with such a matter as Donne's beautiful passionate love-story. Donne's wife married him against the open hostility of her family, and their life together to the very end (even when she had become the mother of twelve children) was an idyl of devoted love — yet Walton declares their marriage to have been " the remarkable error " of Donne's life, and even goes so far as to say, " a marriage, too, without the allowance of those friends, whose approbation always was, and ever will be, necessary, to make even a virtuous love become lawful " ! One would have expected the gentle fisherman to have treated so charming a love-story more tenderly, but I am afraid " Honest Izaak's " view of woman was much like that of Mr. Coventry Patmore, and his respect for social usage and dividing-lines as inexorable.
But a saint Is, of necessity, somewhat Inhuman, and Izaak, being a true saint, he was not, doubtless, without saintly drawbacks — though they are hard to discover. To adapt Wordsworth's sonnet, he was a saint who wrote with a quill "dropt from an angel's wing." One can hardly think of one so innocent-minded writing so well. There always seems a spice of the devil In any form of skill, and we don't readily think of the good man being clever as well. It seems a sort of wickedness in him, somehow. But perhaps Walton was not quite so artless in this matter as he seemed. No artist can be really artless. Take, for instance, that apparently simple sentence in the life of Herbert, where, speaking of certain of Donne's hymns, he says, "These hymns are now lost to us ; but doubtless they were such as they two now sing In heaven." How touchlngly quaint, we say, how primitive in Its old-world Innocency ! And yet Lowell has pointed out, that on the Inside of his Eusebius, preserved at Salisbury, Walton has written three attempts at this sentence, each of them very far from the concise beauty to which he at last constrained himself. In his prayer-book are to be found his studies for his wife's epitaph, and his account of the death of Hooker and the Lives generally received considerable retouching. We have seen him working at T^he Compleat Angler till the last ; and if It was
Ixix
Introduction
artlessness that planned his pastoral, managed his dialogues, and in- troduced his variations from his chosen theme, it was that artlessness which is one with art. So much nature was never got into a book without a corresponding outlay of art — and has any one else brought the singing of birds, the fragrance of meadows, the meditative peace of the riverside, into a book, with so undying a freshness as he? And how well he knew daintily to set a sprig of " old-fashioned poetry, but choicely good," here and there among his pages, poetry thus immortalised by the association — for no other writer so hallows his quotations.
But it is in vain we strive by critical reagents to analyse the un- fading charm of this old book ; is it not simply that the soul of a good man still breathes through its pages like lavender .''
yVaCtbn's. Cottage
ixx
fUyyiip ( ,/t
i^frcmi
Introduction
IV. Charles Cotton
1HAVE elsewhere ventured to express the opinion that Cotton's so-called "second part " of "fhe Compleat Angler, whatever the literary skill with which the style of Walton is imitated, not to say parodied, whatever its illustrative and associative value, or its im- portance as a contribution to the art and science of fly-fishing, is nevertheless — printed as an integral part of that charming classic — an impertinence. Its proper place is an appendix, whither I should have relegated it in this edition, had not tradition been too strong to be gainsaid. Whom fame has joined together let no man put asunder. Yet, as I have said, I cannot be " the only reader of the book for whom it ends with that gentle benediction : ' And upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in his providence, and be quiet, and
Ixxi
Introduction
go a Angling ' ; and that sweet exhortation from i Thess. iv. 1 1 , ' Study to be quiet.'
" After the exquisite quietism of this farewell, it is distracting to come precipitately upon the fine gentleman with the great wig and the Frenchified airs."
But I resent the arbitrary wedlock for Cotton, too. It has caused him to be preached at for years by sententiously pious editors, who, it is plain, feel him no fit company for Walton, and only tolerate him at all because Walton's affection " pleads against oblivion for his name."
Dr. Bethune's sanctimonious horror on the matter is so delicious that I cannot forbear quoting him :
The friendship which our venerated Walton had for Cotton, besides his being the author of the following amusing and excellent treatise, will naturally lead the reader to desire a better knowledge of him ; but, it must be confessed, that the duty thus laid upon the editor is by no means so pleasant as he could wish. The character of the adopted son differs so widely from that of his pure-minded father, as to make it a mystery how even a common taste for angling could have made the friend of Wotton bear with the habits of the younger man. Perhaps the friendship Walton had for Cotton's father was affectionately entailed upon the offspring ; perhaps similarity of poHtical opinions may have biased even the very sober judgment ; perhaps a charitable hope to do the reckless wit good by a close association made the merciful heart more tolerant ; no doubt the venerable presence restrained the tongue from the licence of the pen which the burlesque poet made a second nature ; but however it came about, an affectionate intercourse was maintained between them, as the reader already knows, and will soon know further. Let us hope that Walton's serious occupations and inter- course with pious men of learning kept him happily away from com- panions where loose writings would be named ; and that, ignorant of Cotton's vicious folly, he judged him rather by the truly beautiful sentiments breathed through the " Stanzes Irreguliers."
One would like to hear " hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton's " laughter — and remarks — on this passage.
The incongruity of the friendship is obvious, and we may be sure, with Lowell, that " there must have been delicately understood and mutually respectful conventions of silence in an intimacy between
Ixxii
Introduction
the placidly believing author of the Lives and the translator of him who created the essay."
But saint and sinner have been friends before and after Walton and Cotton, and the likeableness of a friend is more important to a friendship than his opinions, or even his morals. Besides, if Walton was a saint, he had plainly not forgotten the good gospel advice given to unpractical children of light, and Lowell no doubt indicates one bond between him and Cotton, when he says that " Walton loved a gentleman of the blood as honestly as Johnson did, and was, I am sure, as sturdily independent withal .... himself of obscurest lineage, there was nothing he relished more keenly than the long pedigrees of other people." When that gentleman of the blood was an angler, with one of the best trout streams in England rippling through his lands, a man of taste, a staunch cavalier, a loyal Churchman, and a kind, hearty, good-natured young man, reverent to age and respectful towards sanctities, if perhaps a thought too gay and giddy in his life and poems, as young men will be — well, why shouldn't even the Bishop of Chichester's " Honest Izaak," take him for his friend .''
For Cotton Walton probably had that charm of antithesis which is so attractive to men of the world, who by a sort of intellectual urbanity often understand and interpret goodness and purity better than the good and pure themselves. Probably he had the man of the world's delight in character for its own sake, independent of the particular type's likeness or unlikeness to himself. There must have been times when, mentally, Walton made him yawn tremendously ; times when he would smother his smiles at the old man's prudishness ; times even when he may have been tempted to " damn " his sententiousness. The same happens with Walton's readers to this day, but they go on loving him all the same ; and so it was, no doubt, with Cotton.
Besides, it must not be forgotten that Walton had been a friend of the father before the son,* a father so closely repeated in the son,
* In Cotton's poem to Walton quoted in the appendix, he says, a propos of the lives of Donne and Wotton :
How happy was my father, then, to see Those men he lov'd, by him he lov'd, to be Rescued from frailties and mortality. Ixxiii
Introduction
that the same description will almost literally serve for both — though, of the two, the father seems to have been the more brilliant man. That description, stately yet almost tender, is supplied by Lord Clarendon in the following passage, quoted from his autobiography : Charles Cotton was a gentleman born to a competent fortune, and so qualified in his person and education, that for many years he continued the greatest ornament of the town, in the esteem of those who had been best bred. His natural parts were very great, his wit flowing in all the parts of conversation ; the superstructure of learning not raised to a considerable height : but having passed some years in Cambridge, and then in France, and conversing always with learned men, his expressions were ever proper and significant, and gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argument ; so that he was thought by those who were not intimate with him, to have been much better acquainted with books than he was. He had all those qualities which in youth raise men to the reputation of being fine gentlemen ; such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delightfulness in conversation, that no man, in court or out of it, appeared a more accomplished person : all these extraordinary quali- fications being supported by as extraordinary a clearness of courage and fearlessness of spirit, of which he gave too often manifestation. Some unhappy suits in law, and waste of his fortune in those suits, made some impression on his mind which, being impaired by domestic afflictions, and those indulgences to himself which naturally attend those afflictions, rendered his age less reverenced than his youth had been, and gave his best friends cause to have wished that he had not lived so long.
The fortunate son of this delightful father, and by him and his mother, Olive Stanhope, sprung from some of the noblest Derby- shire and Staffordshire families, Charles Cotton was born at Beres- ford, April 28, 1630. Particulars of his youth are almost as vague as particulars of the youth of Walton ; but in his case, on account of his birth, they are more safely conjecturable. That he was sent to Cambridge is likely, though not definitely known ; it being sur- mised, however, from his affection for his tutor, Ralph Rawson, as expressed in a dedication to a translation of an ode by Joannes Secundus, included in his Poems on Several Occasions (1689). It seems certain, however, that he took no degree; but, like many who have done the same, his acquaintance with and love for literature at an early age seems to have been none the less. His
Ixxiv
lllCVi',',//!//;"" .
; \
rr^'i
-//.i'l'i/
E K NT-
Introduction
classical attainments and his knowledge of French and Italian, combined with the usual polite accomplishments of his time, appear to have been considerable ; and he seems to have written poetry from his youth, though little of it was published till after the Restoration. He boasted two poets among his family connections — Colonel Richard Lovelace, a friend of his father's, and Sir Aston Cockayne, a cousin of his mother's. Lovelace, who had written an elegy on his aunt Cassandra Cotton, and had likewise addressed an ode on " The Grasshopper " to his father, later on inscribed "The Triumphs of Philamore and Amoret, to the noblest of our youth and best of friends, Charles Cotton, Esquire, being at Beresford, at his house in Staffordshire, from London." Cotton is supposed to have befriended him in his poverty, and he wrote an elegy to his memory, which was printed at the end of Lucasta and Posthume Poems in 1659.
Sir Aston Cockayne, if but a very minor poet, had a pretty gift for flattering his friends. He seems from the first to have taken the praise of Cotton for his mission in life, and his poem, "To my most honoured cousin, Mr. Charles Cotton the Younger, upon his excellent Poems," is a by no means despicable piece of hyperbole. I quote the greater part of it for its references to Cotton's beauty and accomplishments, but also for its own intrinsic curiosity :
To iny Most Honoured Cousin, Mr. Charles Cotton, the Younger, upon his Excellent Poems.
Bear back, you crowd of wits, that have so long Been the prime glory of the English tongue, And roofn for our arch-poet make, and follow His steps, as you would do your great Apollo. Nor is he his inferior, for see His picture, and you'll say that this is he ; So young and handsome both, so tress' d alike. That curious Lilly, or most skilPd Vandyke, Would prefer neither, only here's the odds. This gives us better verse, than that the Gods. Beware, you poets, that {at distance) you The reverence afford him that is due
Ixxvi
Introductio7j
Unto his mighty merit^ and not dare
Tour puny threads with his lines to compare ....
The Greek and Latin language he commands^
So all that then was "writ in both these lands ;
The French and the Italian he hath gain'd
And all the wit that in them is contained.
So, if he pleases to translate a piece
From France or Italy, old Rome or Greece,
The understanding reader soon will find.
It is the best of any of that kind ;
But when he lets his own rare fancy loose,
There is no flight so noble as his muse.
Treats he of war ? Bellona doth advance.
And leads his march with her refulgent lance.
Sings he of love ? Cupid about him lurks.
And Venus in her chariot draws his works.
Whaie'er his subject be, he'll make it fit
To live hereafter emperor of wit.
He is the Muses' darling, all the nine
Phoebus disclaim, and term him ?nore divine.
The wondrous Tasso, that so long hath borne
The sacred laurel, shall remain forlorn.
Alonso de Ercilla, that in strong
And mighty lines hath Araucana sung.
And Sallust, that the ancient Hebrew: story
Hath poetiz'd, submit unto your glory.
So the chief swans of Tagus, Arne, and Seine,
Must yield to Thames, and veil unto your strain.
Hail, generous maga'zine of wit, you bright
Planet of learning, dissipate the night
Of dulness, wherein us this age involves.
And [from our ignorance) redee?n our souls.
A word at parting. Sir, I could not choose
Thus to congratulate your happy muse ;
And {though I vilify your worth) my zeal
[And so in mercy think) intended well.
The world will find your lines are great and strong.
The nihil ultra of the English tongue.
Cotton's young manhood seems to have been spent like the manhood of other young men of his class and time ; college, foreign
ixxvii
Introduction
travel and the town, with a touch of such graver interests as angling, gardening and planting. (He wrote an admirable Planters' Manual in
'^75-)
In 1656 he married his cousin Isabella, daughter of Sir Thomas
Hutchinson, and in 1658 his father died.
On the Restoration he began his public career as author by a prose panegyric of the king, and in 1664 he published his Scarronides, or the First Book of Virgil Travestie, a burlesque, neither brighter nor duller than the average wit of his day, but which, however, enjoyed great popularity (going through no less than fourteen editions), possibly on account of its indecencies. In these, however, it cannot be said to have been singular in that liberal age.
B'rom this time onwards. Cotton became a fairly busy literary man. He seems to have been driven to translating as a means of enlivening the " vacancy of a country life," of which he frequently complains, rather than from any profit it brought him. A list of his writings will be found at the end of this note.
In 1670 his wife died, leaving him with three sons and five daughters, and in 1675 we find him married again, his second wife being Mary, daughter of Sir William Russell, and widow of the Earl of Ardglass. Like his father before him, his life seems to have been much harassed by the narrowness of his means. On two occasions he found it necessary to petition Parliament to sanction the sale of portions of his estate, and there is a cave near where Beresford Hall stood, in which, according to local tradition, he used to hide from his creditors ; a story generally discredited by his biographers, but somewhat borne out by this passage from a poem addressed to Alexander Brome, complaining of his country exile, with no company —
But such, as I still pray, I may not see. Such craggy rough-hewn rogues, as do not fit. Sharpen and set, but blunt the edge of wit ; Any of which {^and fear has a quick eye) If through a perspective I chance to spy. Though a mile off, I take the alarm and run As if I saw the devil, or a dun ; Ixxviii
Introduction
1 Uoinlf ^
And in the neighbouring rocks take sanctuary^ Praying the hills to fall and cover me ; So that my solace lies amongst my grounds^ And my best company'' s my horse and hounds.
Another story represents him scribbling the following not very- brilliant quatrain on the walls of a debtor's prison in London :
A prison is a place of cure
Wherein no one can thrive; A touchstone sure to try a friend^
A grave for men alive.
Cotton's friendship with Walton, as we have seen, probably dated from his boyhood, and had found poetical expression before, preparing a fifth edition of his pastoral, Walton had invited him to
Ixxix
Introdiictio?i
contribute those " Instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream," which Cotton, he himself tells us, wrote in about ten days, and sent back to his friend. In the same year in which the joint Compleat Angler appeared. Cotton had finished building the little fishing-house which still stands among its trees, in a bend of the Dove, sacred to anglers and ancient friendship. Mr. New's illustrations make unnecessary any more modern description than Cotton's own (Part II., Chap. III.) and indeed the place is to this day so pleasant that one may still say of it in Walton's words that " the pleasantness of the river, mountains and meadows about it, cannot be described ; unless Sir Philip Sidney, or Mr. Cotton's father were alive again to do it."
Cotton survived his old friend but four years, dying of a fever on some date uncertain during 1687, but said to be February 13.
He is entirely remembered to-day by his association with Walton, and his translation of Montaigne, which have carried down to us the tradition of his handsome person and courtly manners, but which have hardly won due recognition for his poetry. Without declaring it, with Sir Aston Cockayne, "the nihil ultra oi the English tongue," we may still feel that it has charms and excellencies, real if modest, which make forgetfulness of it unjust, and which justify Cotton's long-neglected claim to a recognised place among English poets, a claim which a new edition of his poems might establish ; though it is to be feared, that he would shine best in a judicious selection. His bane was fluency, and not seldom we have to plod through deserts of mediocre verse before we reach any poetry worth while. But the poetry is there, and when with Cotton the moment of literary projection did come, the product had a charming inevitability, and is marked by a rare excellence of simplicity, to which Coleridge has paid a tribute in the Biographia Literaria. The following verses from the " Contentation," one of the several poems " directed " to Walton, may be taken as an example :
'27j contentation that alone
Can make us happy here belovo^ And when this little life is gone^
IVill lift us up to heav'n too. Ixxx
Introduction
A very little satisfies
An honest and a grateful heart; And who would more than will suffice^
Does covet more than is his part.
That man is happy in his share^
Who is warm clad, and cleanly fed ;
Whose necessaries bound his care. And honest labour makes his bed.
Who free from debt, and clear from crimes. Honours those laws that others fear ;
Who ill of princes, in worst times. Will neither speak himself nor hear.
Who from the busy world retires
To be more useful to it still. And to no greater good aspires.
But only the eschewing ill.
Who with his angle and his books Can think the longest day well spent.
And praises God when back he looks. And finds that all was innocent.
This man is happier far than he.
Whom public business oft betrays. Through labyrinths of policy
To crooked and forbidden ways.
The world is full of beaten roads.
But yet so slippery withall. That where one walks secure, 'tis odds
A hundred and a hundred fall.
Untrodden paths are then the best.
Where the frequented are unsure. And he comes soonest to his rest.
Whose journey has been most secure.
It is content alone that makes
Our pilgrimage a pleasure here. And who buys sorrow cheapest, takes
An ill commodity too dear,
Ixxxi f
Introduction
Nor was Cotton's muse always so mild, as this manly rebuke of Waller, censure so well-deserved, will show :
To Poet E. W., occasioned for his writing a Panegyric on Oliver Cromwell
From whence^ vile Poet^ didst thou glean the wit.,
And words for such a vitious poem fit ?
Where couldst thou paper find was not too white.,
Or ink that could be black enough to write ?
What servile devil tempted thee to be
A flatterer of thine own slavery ?
To kiss thy bondage and extol the deed.
At once that made thy prince and country bleed?
I wonder much thy false heart did not dread.
And shame to write what all men blush to read;
Thus with a base ingratitude to rear
Trophies unto thy master's murtherer ?
Who called thee coward — much mistook
The characters of thy pedantic look ;
Thou hast at once abused thyself and us,
lie's stout that dares to flatter a tyranne thus.
Put up thy pen and ink, muzzle thy muse. Adulterate hag fit for the common stews. No good ?nan's library ; writ thou hast. Treason in rhyme, has all thy works defaced ; Such is thy fault, that when I think to find A punishment of the severest kind For thy offence, my malice cannot name A greater, than once to commit the same.
Where was thy reason then, when thou began To write against the sense of God and man ? Within thy guilty breast despair took place. Thou wouldst despairing die despite of grace. At once thou^rt judge and malefactor shown. Each sentence in thy poem is thine own. Then what thou hast pronounced go execute. Hang up thyself, and say I bid thee do it , Fear not thy memory, that cannot die. This panegyric is thy elegy. Which shall be when or wheresoever read, A living poem to upbraid the dead. Ixxxii
Introduction
Cotton's Literary Work
[This list is reprinted from Mr. R. B. Marston's " Lea and Dove " edition]
1649 An Elegy upon the Death of Henry, Lord Hastings.
1651 Verses prefixed to Edmund Prestwich's translation to the Hippolitus
of Seneca. 1 65 1 Verses on the Execution of James, Earl of Derby. 1654 Verses in which he castigates Waller for writing a panegyric on the
Protector. 1664 Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie, being the first book of Virgil's /Ends,
in English burlesque. 8vo. 1667 A Translation of The Moral Thilosophy of the Stoics, fiom the French
of Du Vaix. Some verses on the Poems of his friend, Alexander Brome.
1670 Scarronides, second edition.
Translation of Gerard's History of the Life of the Duke of Espernon, dedicated to Dr. Gilbert Sheldon, Archbishop of Canterbury.
1671 A Translation of Corneille's Tragedy, Les Horaces. Voyage to Ireland, in Burlesque.
1670 Translation of the Commentaries of Blaise de Montluc, Marshal of -74 France.
The Compleat Gamester. (Attributed to him.)
The Fair One of Tunis, a novel, translated from the French.
1675 Burlesque upon Burlesque ; or the Scoffer Scoffed.
The Planter's Manual, being instructions for cultivating all sorts of fruit trees. 8vo.
1676 The Second Part of The Compleat Angler ,• Being Instructions how to
Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a clear Stream.
1681 The Wonders of the Peak. A description in verse of the natural wonders of the Peak District in Derbyshire.
1685 Translation of the Essays of Montaigne.
1687 Was engaged in translating the Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis at the time of his death, in February 1687. This work was published in 1694, by his son, Beresford Cotton. In 1689 Poems on Several Occasions, a collection of some of his poems, was published.
Ixxxiv
The Compleat Angler
Or the Contemplative Man's Recreation
Part I
1=^ -— ^,
Being a Discourse of Rivers, Fishponds, Fish, and Fishing
Written by
Izaak Walton
:;:<V""?i
--^^-
TO THE RIGHT WORSHIPFUL
JOHN OFFLEY
OF MADELEY MANOR, IN THE COUNTY OF STAFFORD, ESQ. MY MOST HONOURED FRIEND.
jIR, — I have made so ill use of your former favours, as by them to be encouraged to entreat, that they may be enlarged to the fatronage and protection of this book : and I have put on a modest confidence, that I shall not be denied, because it is a discourse of fish and fishings which you know so well, and both love and practise so much.
3
The Compleat Angler
You are assured (though there be ignorant men of another belief) that angling is an art : and you know that art better than others ; and that this truth is demonstrated by the fruits of that pleasant labour which you enjoy, when you purpose to give rest to your mind, and divest yourself of your more serious business, and (which is often) dedicate a day or two to this recreation.
At which time, if common Anglers should attend you, and be eye-witnesses of the success, not of your fortune but your skill, it would doubtless beget in them an emulation to be like you, and that emulation might beget an industrious diligence to be so ; but I know it is not attainable by common capacities. And there be now many men of great wisdom, learning, and experience, which love and practise this art, that know I speak the truth.
Sir, this pleasant curiosity of fish and fishing (of which you are so great a master) has been thought worthy the pens and practices of divers in other nations, that have been reputed men of great learning and wisdom : and amongst those of this nation, I remember Sir Henry Wotton (a dear lover of this art) has told me, that his intentions were to write a discourse of the art, and in praise of angling ; and doubtless he had done so, if death had not prevented him ; the remembrance of which hath often made me sorry ; for if he had lived to do it, then the unlearned angler had seen some better treatise of this art, a treatise that might have proved worthy his perusal, which (though some have undertaken) I could never yet see in English.
But mine may be thought as weak, and as unworthy of common view ; and I do here freely confess, that I should rather excuse myself, than censure others, my own discourse being liable to so many exceptions ; against which you, sir, might make this one, that
4
The Compleat Angler
it can contribute nothing to your knowledge. And lest a longer epistle may diminish your pleasure, I shall make this no longer than to add this following truth, that I am really.
Sir,
Your most affectionate friend.
And most humble servant,
Iz. Wa.
^^P '
ro "THE READER OF THIS DISCOURSE,
BUT ESPECIALLY
TO THE HONEST ANGLER.
THINK Jit to tell thee these following truths, that 1 did neither undertake, nor write, nor publish, and much less own, this Discourse to please myself ; and, having been too easily drawn to do all to please others, as I proposed not the gaining of credit by this undertaking, so I would not willingly lose any part of that to which I had a just title before I began it, and do therefore desire and hope, if I deserve not commenda- tions, yet I may obtain pardon.
And though this Discourse may be liable to some exceptions, yet I cannot doubt but that most readers may receive so much pleasure or profit by it, as may make it worthy the time of their perusal, if they be not too grave or too busy men. And this is all the confidence that I can put on, concerning the merit of what is here offered to their con- sideration and censure ; and if the last prove too severe, as I have a liberty, so I am resolved to use it, and neglect all sour censures.
And I wish the reader also to take notice, that in writing of it I have made myself a recreation of a recreation ; and that it might prove so to him, and not read dull and tediously, / have in several
7
The Compleat ^Angler
places mixed, not any scurrility, but some innocent, harmless mirth, of which, if thou be a severe, sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow thee to be a competent judge ; for divines say, there are offences given, and offences not given but taken.
j^nd I am the willinger to justify the pleasant part of it, because, though it is known, I can be serious at seasonable times, yet the whole Discourse is, or rather was, a picture of my own disposition, espe- cially in such days and times as I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing with honest Nat. and R. Roe ; but they are gone, and with them most of my pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away and returns not.
And next, let me add this, that he that likes not the book, should like the excellent picture of the trout, and some of the other fish ; which I may take a liberty to commend, because they concern not myself.
Next, let me tell the reader, that in that which is the more useful part of this Discourse, that is to say, the observations of the nature, and breeding, and seasons, and catching of fish, / am not so simple as not to know that a captious reader may find exceptions against something said of some of these ; and therefore, I must entreat him to consider that experience teaches us to know that several countries alter the time, and I think almost the manner of fishes' breeding, but doubtless of their being in season ; as may appear by three rivers in Monmouthshire, namely, Severn, Wye, and Usk, where Camden (British Fishes, 633) observes, that in the river Wye, salmon are in season from September to April ; and we are certain that in Thames and Trent, and in most other rivers, they be in season the six hotter months.
Now for the art of catching fish, that is to say, how to make a man — that was none — to be an angler by a book ; he that undertakes it shall undertake a harder task than Mr. Hales {a most valiant and excellent fencer) who, in a printed book called A Private School of Defence, undertook to teach that art or science, and was laughed at for his labour. Not but that many useful things might be learnt by that book, but he was laughed at because that art was not to be taught by words, but practice ; and so must angling. And note also, that in this Discourse, I do not undertake to say all that is known, or may be said of it, but I undertake to acquaint the reader with many things that are
The Compleat tAngler
not usually known to every angler ; and I shall leave gleanings and obser- vations enough to be made out of the experience of all that love and practise this recreation, to which I shall encour- age them. For angling may be said to be so like the mathematics, that it can never he fully learnt ; at least not so fully, but that there will still be more new experiments left for the trial of other men that succeed us.
But I think all that love this game may here learn something that may be worth their money, if they be not poor and needy men ; and in case they be, I then wish them to forbear to buy it, for 1 write, not to get money, hut for pleasure, and this Discourse boasts of no more ; for I hate to promise much and deceive the reader.
And however it proves to him, yet I am sure I have found a high content in the search and conference of what is here offered to the reader s view and censure ; I wish him as much in the perusal of it, and so I might here take my leave ; but will stay a little and tell him, that whereas it is said by many that in fly-fishing for a trout the angler must observe his twelve several flies for the twelve months of the year : I say, he that follows that rule shall be as sure to catch fish, and be as wise, as he that makes hay by the fair days in an almanac, and no surer ; for those very flies that used to appear about and
9
The Compleat Angler
on the water in one month of the year, may the following year come almost a month sooner or later, as the same year proves colder or hotter; and yet, in the following Discourse, I have set down the twelve flies that are in reputation with many anglers, and they may serve to give him some observations concerning them. And he may note, that there are in Wales and other countries, peculiar flies, proper to the particular place or country ; and doubtless unless a man makes a fly to counterfeit that very fly in that place, he is like to lose his labour, or much of it ; hut for the generality, three or four flies, neat and rightly made, and not too big, serve for a trout in most rivers all the summer. And for winter fly-fishing — it is as useful as an almanac out of date ! And of these {^because as no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler") I thought fit to give thee this notice.
When I have told the reader that in this fifth impression there are many enlargements, gathered both by my own observation and the com- munication with friends, I shall stay him no longer than to wish him a rainy evening to read this following Discourse ; and that {if he be an honest angler") the east wind may never blow when he goes a-fishing.
I. W.
lO
To my dear Brother, Mr. Isaac Walton, upon his Compleat Angler.
Erasmus in his learned Colloquies, Has mixt some toys, that by varieties He might entice all readers : for in him Each child may wade, or tallest giant swim. And such is this discourse : there" s none so low Or highly learn d, to whom hence may not flow Pleasure and information : both which are Taught us with so much art, that I might swear Safely, the choicest critic cannot tell. Whether your matchless judgment most excel ,
In angling or its praise : where commendation First charms, then makes an art a recreation.
^Twas so to me : who saw the cheerful Spring Pictured in every meadow, heard birds sing Sonnets in every grove, saw fishes play In cool crystal streams, like lambs in May : And they may play, till anglers read this book ; But after, 'tis a wise fish 'scapes a hook.
lo. Floud, Mr. of Arts.
II
The Compleat ^Angler
'To the Reader of The Compleat Angler.
First mark the title well ; my friend that gave it Has made it good ; this book deserves to have it. For he that views it with judicious looks. Shall find it full of art, baits, lines, and hooks.
The -world the river is ; both you and I,
And all mankind, are either fish or fry :
If we pretend to reason, first or last
His baits will tempt us, and his hooks hold fast.
Pleasure or profit, either prose or rhyme.
If not at first, will doubtless take in time.
He sits in secret blest theology. Waited upon by grave philosophy. Both natural and moral ; history, DecFd and adorn d with flowers of poetry ; The matter and expression striving which Shall most excel in worth, yet not seem rich. There is no danger in his baits ; that hook Will prove the safest that is surest took.
Nor are we caught alone, but {which is best)
We shall wholesome, and be toothsome, drest :
Brest to be fed, not to be fed upon ;
And danger of a surfeit here is none.
The solid food of serious contemplation
Is sauc d, here, with such harmless recreation.
That an ingenuous and religious mind
Cannot enquire for more than it may find
Ready at once prepared either f excite
Or satisfy a curious appetite.
More praise is due ; for 'tis both positive And truth, which once was interrogative,
12
The Compleat ^Angler
And utter' d by the poet then in jest,
Et piscatorem piscis amare potest.
Ch. Harvie, Mr. of Arts.
To my dear friend, Mr. Iz. Walton, in praise of Angling, which we both love.
Down by this smooth stream's wand'ring side.
Adorn d and perfum d with the pride
Of Flora s wardrobe, where the shrill
Aerial choir express their skill.
First in alternate melody.
And then in chorus all agree.
Whilst the charm' d fish, as extasy'd
With sounds, to his own throat deny'd.
Scorns his dull element, and springs
r tK air, as if his fins were wings.
'Tis here that the pleasures sweet and high Prostrate to our embraces lie. Such as a body, soul, or frame Create no sickness, sin, or shame. Roses not fenc'd with pricks grow here. No sting to th' honey -bag is near. But {what's perhaps their prejudice) 1'he difficulty, want and price.
An obvious rod, a twist of hair. With hook hid in an insect, are Engines of sport, would fit the wish O' th' epicure, and fill his dish.
In this clear stream let fall a grub ; And straight take up a dace or chub.
13
The Compleat ^Afigier
r tJi mud your worm provokes a snig.
Which being fast^ if it prove big
The Gotham folly will be found
Discreet^ ere tden she must be drown d.
The tench {physician of the brook)
In yon dead hole expects your hook^
Which having first your pastime been.
Serves then for meat or medicine.
Ambush' d behind that root doth stay
A pike, to catch and be a prey.
The treacherous quill in this slow stream
Betrays the hunger of a bream.
And at that nimbler ford [no doubt)
Tour false fly cheats a speckled trout.
When you these creatures wisely chuse
To practise on, which to your use
Owe their creation, and when
Fish from your arts do rescue men ;
To plot, delude, and circumvent.
Ensnare and spoil, is innocent.
Here by these crystal streams you may
Preserve a conscience clear as they ;
And when by sullen thoughts you find
Tour harassed, not busied, mind
In sable melancholy clad.
Distemper d, serious, turning sad ;
Hence fetch your cure, cast in your bait.
All anxious thoughts and cares shall straight
Fly with such speed they'll seem to be
Possest with the hydrophobic.
The water s calmness in your breast.
And smoothness on your brow shall rest.
Away with sports of charge and noise. And give me cheap and silent joys ; Such as Actceon s game pursue
14
The Compleat ^Angler
Their fate oft make the tale seem true. The sick or sullen hawk, to-day Flies not ; to-morrow, quite away. Patience and purse to cards and dice Too oft are made a sacrifice : The daughter s dower, th' inheritance O' th" son, depend on one mad chance. The harms and mischiefs which the abuse Of wine doth every day produce. Make good the doctrine of the Turks, That in each grape a devil lurks. And by yon fading, sapless tree, ^"Bout which the ivy twin d you see. His fate 's foretold, who fondly places His bliss in woman's soft embraces. All pleasures, but the angler s, bring, r th' tail, repentance like a sting.
Then on these banks let me sit down.
Free from the toilsome sword and gown.
And pity those that do affect
To conquer nations and protect.
My reed affords such true content.
Delights so sweet and innocent.
As seldom fall into the lot
Of sceptres, though they re justly got.
Tho. Weaver, Mr. of Art!.
^0 the Readers of my most ingenious Friends book, 'The Compleat Angler.
He that both knew and writ the lives of men. Such as were once, but must not be again : Witness is matchless Donne and Wotton, by Whose aid he could their speculations try :
15
The Cofnpleat Angler
He that conversed with angels, such as were Ouldsworth and Featley, each a shining star Showing the way to Bethlem ; each a saint ; {Compar d to whom our zealots, now, but paint"). He that our pious and learn d Morley htew. And from him suck' d wit and devotion too : He that from these such excellencies fetch' d. That he could tell hoiv high and far they reached ; What learning this, what graces tli other had ; And in what several dress each soul was clad.
Reader, this HE, this fisherman comes forth.
And in these fisher s weeds would shroud his worth.
Now his mute harp is on a willow hung,
IVith which when finely toucK d, and fitly strung.
He could friends'" passions for these times allay ;
Or chain his fellow-anglers from their prey.
But now the music of his pen is still.
And he sits by a brook watching a quill :
Where with a fixt eye, and a ready hand.
He studies first to hook, and then to land
Some trout, or perch, or pike ; and having done,
Sits on a bank, and tells how this was won.
And that escaped his hook, which with a wile
Did eat the bait, and fishermen beguile.
Thus whilst some vex they from their lands are thrown.
He joys to think the waters are his own.
And like the Dutch, he gladly can agree
To live at peace now, and have fishing free.
April 2, 1630. Edw. Pozvel, Mr. of Arts.
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The Compleat Angler
To my dear Brother^ Mr. Iz. Walton, on his Compleat Angler.
This book is so like you, and you like it. For harmless mirth, expression, art, and wit, That I protest ingenuously 'tis true, I love this mirth, art, wit, the book and you.
Rob. Floud, C.
Clarissimo amicissimoque ; Fratri, Domino Isaaco Walton Artis Piscatorice peritissimo.
Unicus est medicus reliquorum piscis, et istis Fas quibus est medicum tangere, certa salus Hie typus est sahatoris mirandus Jesu, Liter a mysterium quielibet hujus habet.
Hunc cupio, hunc cupias (bone /rater arundinis) l^Qvv;
Solverit hie pro me debita, teque Deo.
Piscis is est, et piscator {mihi credito) qualena
Vel piscator em piscis amare velit.
Henry Bayley, Artium Maglster.
Ad Virum optimum, et Piscatorem peritissimum Isaacum Waltonum.
Magister artis docte piscatorice, Waltone salve, magne arundinis, Seu tu reductd valle solus ambulas, Praterfluentes interim observans aquas, Seu forte puri stans in amnis margine, Sive in tenaci gramine et ripd sedens,
17 ]
The Compleat <Jtngler
Fallis feritd squameum pecus manu ; O te beatum ! qui procul negotiis, Forique et urbis pulvere et strepitu car ens, Extraque turbam, ad lerie manantes aquas Vagos honestd fraude pisces discipis. Dum ccetera ergo pcerie gens mortalium Aut retia invicem sibi et technas struunt, Donis, ut hamo, aut divites captant senes, Gregi natantum tu interim nectis dolos, Voracem inescas advenam hamo lucium, Avidamve percam parvulo alberno capis, Aut verme ruffo, muscula aut truttam levi, Cautumve cyprinum, et fere indocilem capi Calamoque linoque {ars at hunc superat tud) Medicamve tincam, gobium aut esca trahis, Gratum palate gobium, parvum licet, Pradamve, non acque salubrem barbulum, Etsi ampliorem, et mystace insignem gravi. Ha sunt tibi artes, dum annus et tempus sinunt, Et nulla transit absque linea dies. Nee sola praxis, sed theoria et tibi Nota artis hujus ; unde tu simul bonus Piscator, idem et scrip tor ; et calami potens Utriusque necdum et ictus, et tamen sapis, Ut hamiotam nempe tironem instruas ! Stylo eleganti scribus en Halientica Oppianus alter, artis et methodum tua, et Pracepta promis rite piscatoria, Varias et escas piscium, indolem, et genus. Nee trader e artem sat putas piscariam, {Virtutis est hac et tamen quadam schola P atientiamque et temperantiam docet"), Documenta quin majora das, et regulas Sublimioris artis, et perennia Monimenta morem, vita et exempla optima ; Dum tu profundum scribis Hookerum, et pium
i8
The Compleat ^Angler
Domum ac disertum, sanctum et Herbertum, sacrum
Vatem ; hos videmus nam penicillo tuo
Graphic}, et peritd, Isaace, depictos manu.
Post fata factos hosce per te Virbios.
O qua voluptas est legere in scriptis tuis !
Sic tu libris nos, lineis pisces capis,
Musisque litterisque dum incumbis, licet
Intentus hamo, interque piscandum studes.
Aliud ad Isaacum Waltonum, Vtrum et Pis cat or em Optimum.
Isaace, macte hac arte piscatorid ; Hac arte Petrus principi censum dedit ; Hac arte princeps nee Petro multo prior, I'ranquillus ilk, teste Tranquillo, pater Patria, solebat recreare se lubens Augustus, hamo instructus ac arundine. Tu nunc, amice, proximum clari est decus Post Casarem hami, gentis ac Halientica : Euge 0 professor artis haud ingloria. Doctor cathedra, perlegens piscariam ! Na tu magister, et ego discipulus tuus. Nam candidatum et me ferunt arundinis, Socium hac in arte nobilem nacti sumus. Quid amplius, Waltone, nam did potest ? Ipsi hamiota Dominus en or bis fuit !
laco: Dup. D.D.
19
CheshuTit
WalthATn \Abbey
IbtteTihaTn
Castle
KJ' I
^fl^ ^<^^ -AV-
-n1<^
IFIRSTI JDAYiLlI
sSk
CHAPTER I
Conference betwixt an Angler, a Hunter, and a Falconer ; each commending his Recreation
PISCATOR, VENATOR, AUCEPS
jISCATOR. You are well overtaken, gentlemen ; a good morning to you both ; I have stretched my legs up Tottenham Hill to overtake you, hoping your business may occasion you towards Ware, whither I am going this fine, fresh May morning.
Venator. Sir, I for my part shall almost answer your hopes ; for my purpose is to drink my morning's draught at the Thatched House in Hoddesden, and I think not to rest till I come thither, where I have appointed a friend or two to meet me : but for this gentleman that you see with me, I know not how far he intends his journey ; he came so lately into my company, that I have scarce had time to ask him the question.
AucEPS. Sir, I shall, by your favour, bear you company as far as Theobald's, and there leave you ; for then I turn up to a friend's house who mews a hawk for me, which I now long to see.
21
The Compleat Angler
Ven. Sir, we are all so happy as to have a fine, fresh, cool morning ; and I hope we shall each be the happier in the other's company. And, gentlemen, that I may not lose yours, I shall either abate or amend my pace to enjoy it ; knowing that (as the Italians say) "Good company in a journey makes the way to seem the shorter."
Auc. It may do so, sir, with the help of good discourse, which methinks we may promise from you that both look and speak so cheerfully ; and for my part I promise you, as an invitation to it, that I will be as free and open-hearted as discretion will allow me to be with strangers.
Ven. And, sir, I promise the like.
Pisc. I am right glad to hear your answers, and in confidence you speak the truth, I shall put on a boldness to ask you, sir, whether business or pleasure caused you to be so early up, and walk so fast ; for this other gentleman hath declared that he is going to see a hawk that a friend mews for him.
Ven. Sir, mine is a mixture of both, a little business and more pleasure ; for I intend this day to do all my business, and then bestow another day or two in hunting the Otter, which a friend, that I go to meet, tells me is much pleasanter than any other chase what- soever : howsoever, I mean to try it ; for to-morrow morning we shall meet a pack of Otter-dogs of noble Mr. Sadler's, upon Amwell Hill, who will be there so early that they intend to prevent the sun rising.
Pisc. Sir, my fortune has answered my desires, and my purpose is to bestow a day or two in helping to destroy some of those villanous vermin ; for I hate them perfectly, because they love fish so well, or rather, because they destroy so much ; indeed so much that, in my judgment, all men that keep Otter-dogs ought to have pensions from the king, to encourage them to destroy the very breed of those base Otters, they do so much mischief
Ven. But what say you to the Foxes of the Nation, would not you as willingly have them destroyed } for doubtless they do as much mischief as Otters do.
Pisc. Oh sir, if they do, it is not so much to me and my frater- nity, as those base vermin the Otters do.
22
-^l ?
The Compleat ^Angler
J^andon Jaater
E-H-N-
Auc. Why, sir, I pray, of what fraternity are you, that you are so angry with the poor Otters ?
Pisc. I am, sir, a brother of the Angle, and therefore an enemy to the Otter : for you are to note that we Anglers all love one another, and therefore do I hate the Otter, both for my own and for their sakes who are of my brotherhood.
Ven. And I am a lover of Hounds ; I have followed many a pack of dogs many a mile, and heard many merry huntsmen make sport and scoff at Anglers.
Auc. And I profess myself a Falconer, and have heard many grave serious men pity them, 'tis such a heavy, contemptible, dull, recreation.
Pisc. You know, gentlemen, 'tis an easy thing to scoff at any art or recreation ; a little wit, mixed with ill-nature, confidence, and malice, will do it ; but though they often venture boldly, yet they are often caught, even in their own trap, according to that of Lucian, the father of the family of scoffers.
24
The Compleat ^Angler
" Lucian, well skilPd in scoffing, this hath writ.
Friend, that's your folly, which you think your wit ; This, you vent oft, void both of wit and fear, Afeaning another, when yourself you jeer."
If to this you add what Solomon says of scofFers, that " they are an abomination to mankind," let them that think fit scoff on, and be a scoffer still ; but I account them enemies to me and to all that love virtue and angling.
And for you, that have heard many grave, serious men, pity Anglers ; let me tell you, sir, there be many men that are by others taken to be serious and grave men, which we contemn and pity. Men that are taken to be grave, because nature hath made them of a sour complexion ; money-getting men, men that spend all their time, first in getting, and next in anxious care to keep it ; men that are condemned to be rich, and then always busy or discontented ; for these poor rich men, we Anglers pity them perfectly, and stand in no need to borrow their thought to think ourselves so happy. No, no, sir, we enjoy a contentedness above the reach of such dispositions, and as the learned and ingenuous Montaigne says — like himself, freely, "When my cat and I entertain each other with mutual apish tricks, as playing with a garter, who knows but that I make my cat more sport than she makes me ? Shall I conclude her to be simple, that has her time to begin or refuse to play as freely as I myself have ? Nay, who knows but that it is a defect of my not understanding her language (for doubtless cats talk and reason with one another), that we agree no better ? And who knows but that she pities me for being no wiser than to play with her, and laughs and censures my folly for making sport for her, when we two play together ? "
Thus freely speaks Montaigne concerning cats ; and I hope I may take as great a liberty to blame any man, and laugh at him too, let him be never so grave, that hath not heard what Anglers can say in the justification of their art and recreation ; which I may again tell you is so full of pleasure, that we need not borrow their thoughts to make ourselves happy.
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The Compleat ^Angler
Ven. Sir, you have almost amazed me : for though I am no scofFer, yet I have (I pray Jet me speak it without offence) always looked upon Anglers as more patient and more simple men, than I fear I shall find you to be.
Pisc. Sir, I hope you will not judge my earnestness to be im- patience : and for my simplicity, if by that you mean a harmlessness, or that simplicity which was usually found in the primitive Christians, who were, as most Anglers are, quiet men, and followers of peace ; men that were so simply wise, as not to sell their consciences to buy riches, and with them vexation and a fear to die ; if you mean such simple men as lived in those times when there were fewer lawyers, when men might have had a lordship safely conveyed to them in a piece of parchment no bigger than your hand, though several sheets will not do it safely in this wiser age : I say, sir, if you take us Anglers to be such simple men as I have spoken of, then myself and those of my profession will be glad to be so understood : but if by simplicity you meant to express a general defect in those that profess and practise the excellent art of angling, I hope in time to disabuse you, and make the contrary appear so evidently, that, if you will but have patience to hear me, I shall remove all the anticipations that discourse, or time, or prejudice, have possessed you with against that laudable and ancient art ; for I know it worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.
But, gentlemen, though I be able to do this, I am not so unman- nerly as to engross all the discourse to myself ; and, therefore, you two having declared yourselves, the one to be a lover of hawks, the other of hounds, I shall be most glad to hear what you can say in the commendation of that recreation which each of you love and practise ; and having heard what you can say, I shall be glad to exercise your attention with what I can say concerning my own recreation and art of angling, and by this means we shall make the way to seem the shorter ; and if you like my motion, I would have Mr. Falconer to begin.
Auc. Your motion is consented to with all my heart ; and to testify it, I will begin as you have desired me.
And first, for the element that I use to trade in, which is the air,
26
E>-
EH- NT-
The Compleat 'Angler
an element of more worth than weight, an element that doubtless exceeds both the earth and water ; for though I sometimes deal in both, yet the air is most properly mine, I and my hawks use that most, and it yields us most recreation : it stops not the high soaring of my noble, generous falcon ; in it she ascends to such a height as the dull eyes of beasts and fish are not able to reach to ; their bodies are too gross for such high elevations : in the air my troops of hawks soar up on high, and when they are lost in the sight of men, then they attend upon and converse with the gods ; therefore I think my eagle is so justly styled "Jove's servant in ordinary ;" and that Tery falcon that I am now going to see, deserves no meaner title, for she usually in her flight endangers herself, like the son of Dasdalus, to have her wings scorched by the sun's heat, she flies so near it ; but her mettle makes her careless of danger ; for then she heeds nothing, but makes her nimble pinions cut the fluid air, and so makes her highway over the steepest mountains and deepest rivers, and in her glorious career looks with contempt upon those high steeples and magnificent palaces which we adore and wonder at ; from which height I can make her to descend by a word from my mouth (which she both knows and obeys), to accept of meat from my hand, to own me for her master, to go home with me, and be willing the next day to afford me the like recreation.
And more : this element of air which I" profess to trade in, the worth of it is such, and it is of such necessity, that no creature what- soever, not only those numerous creatures that feed on the face of the earth, but those various creatures that have their dwelling within the waters, every creature that hath life in its nostrils, stands in need of my element. The waters cannot preserve the fish without air, witness the not breaking of ice in an extreme frost : the reason is, for that if the inspiring and expiring organ of an animal be stopped, it suddenly yields to nature, and dies. Thus necessary is air to the existence both of fish and beasts, nay, even to man himself ; the air or breath of life with which God at first inspired mankind, he, if he wants it, dies presently, becomes a sad object to all that loved and beheld him, and in an instant turns to putrefaction.
Nay more, the very birds of the air (those that be not hawks) are
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The Compleat Angler
both so many and so useful and pleasant to mankind, that I must not let them pass without some observations. They both feed and refresh him — feed him with their choice bodies, and refresh him with their heavenly voices. I will not undertake to mention the several kinds of fowl by which this is done ; and his curious palate pleased by day, and which with their very excrements afford him a soft lodging at night. These I will pass by ; but not those little nimble musicians of the air, that warble forth their curious ditties, with which nature hath furnished them to the shame of art.
As, first, the lark, when she means to rejoice, to cheer herself and those that hear her ; she then quits the earth, and sings as she ascends higher into the air, and having ended her heavenly employ- ment, grows then mute and sad, to think she must descend to the dull earth, which she would not touch, but for necessity.
How do the blackbird and thrassel, with their melodious voices, bid welcome to the cheerful spring, and in their fixed months warble forth such ditties as no art or instrument can reach to ^
Nay, the smaller birds also do the like in their particular seasons, as, namely, the leverock, the titlark, the little linnet, and the honest robin, that loves mankind both alive and dead.
But the nightingale (another of my airy creatures) breathes such sweet loud music out of her little instrumental throat, that it might make mankind to think miracles are not ceased. He that at mid- night, when the very labourer sleeps securely, should hear, as I have very often, the clear airs, the sweet descants, the natural rising and falling, the doubling and redoubling of her voice, might well be lifted above earth, and say, " Lord, what music hast Thou pro- vided for the saints in heaven, when Thou affordest bad men such music on earth .'' "
And this makes me the less to wonder at the many aviaries in Italy, or at the great charge of Varro his aviary, the ruins of which are yet to be seen in Rome, and is still so famous there, that it is reckoned for one of those notables which men of foreign nations either record, or lay up in their memories, when they return from travel.
This for the birds of pleasure, of which very much more might be said. My next shall be of birds of political use. I think 'tis-
29
'The Compleat Angler
not to be doubted that swallows have been taught to carry letters betwixt two armies. But 'tis certain, that when the Turks besieged Malta or Rhodes (I now remember not which 'twas), pigeons are then related to carry and recarry letters. And Mr. G. Sandys, in his Travels (fol. 269) relates it to be done betwixt Aleppo and Babylon. But if that be disbelieved, 'tis not to be doubted that the dove was sent out of the ark by Noah, to give him notice of land, when to him all appeared to be sea ; and the dove proved a faithful and comfortable messenger. And for the sacrifices of the law, a pair of turtle-doves or young pigeons were as well accepted as costly bulls and rams. And when God would feed the prophet Elijah (i Kings, xvii.) after a kind of miraculous manner, he did it by ravens, who brought him meat morning and evening. Lastly, the Holy Ghost, when He descended visibly upon our Saviour, did it by assuming the shape of a dove. And to conclude this part of my discourse, pray remember these wonders were done by birds of the air, the element in which they and I take so much pleasure.
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The Compleat ^?tgler
There is also a little contemptible winged creature (an inhabitant of my aerial element), namely, the laborious bee, of whose prudence, policy, and regular government of their own commonwealth I might say much, as also of their several kinds, and how useful their honey and wax are both for meat and medicines to man- kind ; but I will leave them to their sweet labour, without the least disturbance, believing them to be all very busy at this very time amongst the herbs and flowers that we see nature puts forth this May morning.
And now to return to my hawks, from whom I have made too long a digression ; you are to note, that they are usually dis- tinguished into two kinds ; namely, the long-winged and the short- winged hawk : of the first kind, there be chiefly in use amongst us in this nation,
The Gerfalcon and yerkin^
The Falcon and Tassel-gentel,
The Laner and Lanaret,
The Bockerel and Bockeret^
The Saker and Sacaret^
The Aferlin and Jack Merlin^
The Hobby and Jack :
There is the Stelletto of Spain,
The Blood-red Rook from Turkey,
The Waskite from Virginia :
Jnd there is of short-winged hawks.
The Eagle and Iron,
The (joshawk and Tarcel,
The Sparhawk and Musket,
The French Pye, of two sorts.
These are reckoned hawks of note and worth ; but we have also hawks of an inferior rank,
The Stanyel, the Ringtail, The Raven, the Buzzard, The Forked Kite, the Bald Buzzard, The Hen-driver, and others that I forbear to name. 31
'The C ample at Angler
Gentlemen, if I should enlarge my discourse to the observation of the eiries, the brancher, the ramish hawk, the haggard, and the two sorts of lentners, and then treat of their several ayries, their mewings, rare order of casting, and the renovation of their feathers : their reclaiming, dieting, and then come to their rare stories of practice ; I say, if I should enter into these, and many other observa- tions that I could make, it would be much, very much pleasure to me : but lest I should break the rules of civility to you, by taking up more than the proportion of time allotted to me, I will here break oiF, and entreat you, Mr. Venator, to say what you are able in the commendation of hunting, to which you are so much affected ; and, if time will serve, I will beg your favour for a further enlargement of some of those several heads of which I have spoken. But no more at present.
Ven. Well, sir, and I will now take my turn, and will first begin with a commendation of the Earth, as you have done most excellently of the Air : the earth being that element upon which I drive my pleasant, wholesome, hungry trade. The earth is a solid, settled element : an element most universally beneficial both to man and beast : to men who have their several recreations upon it, as horse- races, hunting, sweet smells, pleasant walks : the earth feeds man, and all those several beasts that both feed him and afford him recreation. What pleasure doth man take in hunting the stately stag, the generous buck, the wild boar, the cunning otter, the crafty fox, and the fearful hare ? And if I may descend to a lower game, what pleasure is it sometimes with gins to betray the very vermin of the earth .'' as, namely, the fitchet, the fulimart, the ferret, the pole- cat, the mould-warp, and the like creatures that live upon the face and within the bowels of the earth. How doth the earth bring forth herbs, flowers, and fruits, both for physic and the pleasure of mankind! and above all, to me at least, the fruitful vine, of which, when I drink moderately, it clears my brain, cheers my heart, and sharpens my wit. How could Cleopatra have feasted Mark Antony, with eight wild boars roasted whole at one supper, and other meat suitable, if the earth had not been a bountiful mother .'' But to pass by the mighty elephant, which the earth breeds and nourisheth, and
33 c
The Compleat <tAngler
Z-HM- ,x
descend to the least of creatures, how doth the earth afFord us a doctrinal example in the little pismire, who in the summer provides and lays up her winter provision, and teaches man to do the like ! The earth feeds and carries those horses that carry us. If I would be prodigal of my time and your patience, what might not I say in commendations of the earth ? that puts limits to the proud and raging sea, and by that means preserves both man and beast, that it destroys them not, as we see it daily doth those that venture upon the sea, and are there shipwrecked, drowned, and left to feed haddocks ; when we that are so wise as to keep ourselves on the earth, walk, and talk, and live, and eat, and drink, and go a-hunting: of which recreation I will say a little, and then leave Mr. Piscator to the commendation of angling.
Hunting is a game for princes and noble persons ; it hath been
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The Compleat Angler
highly prized in all ages ; it was one of the qualifications that Xenophon bestowed on his Cyrus, that he was a hunter of wild beasts. Hunting trains up the younger nobility to the use of manly exercises in their riper age. What more manly exercise than hunting the wild boar, the stag, the buck, the fox, or the hare .'' How doth it preserve health, and increase strength and activity !
And for the dogs that we use, who can commend their excellency to that height which they deserve ? How perfect is the hound at smelling, who never leaves or forsakes his first scent, but follows it through so many changes and varieties of other scents, even over and in the water, and into the earth ! What music doth a pack of dogs then make to any man, whose heart and ears are so happy as to be set to the tune of such instruments ! How will a right greyhound fix his eye on the best buck in a herd, single him out, and follow him, and him only, through a whole herd of rascal game, and still know and then kill him ! For my hounds, I know the language of them, and they know the language and meaning of one another as per- fectly as we know the voices of those with whom we discourse daily.
I might enlarge myself in the commendation of hunting, and of the noble hound especially, as also of the docibleness of dogs in general ; and I might make many observations of land creatures, that for composition, order, figure, and constitution, approach nearest to the completeness and understanding of man ; especially of those creatures which Moses in the law permitted to the Jews, which have cloven hoofs, and chew the cud ; which I shall forbear to name, because I will not be so uncivil to Mr. Piscator, as not to allow him a time for the commendation of angling, which he calls an art ; but doubtless 'tis an easy one ; and, Mr. Auceps, I doubt we shall hear a watery discourse of it, but I hope it will not be a long one.
Auc. And I hope so too, though I fear it will.
Pisc. Gentlemen, let not prejudice prepossess you. I confess my discourse is like to prove suitable to my recreation, calm and quiet ; we seldom take the name of God into our mouths but it is either to praise Him or pray to Him ; if others use it vainly in the midst of their recreations, so vainly as if they meant to conjure, I must tell you it is neither our fault nor our custom ; we protest against it.
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The Co7npleat Jingler
But pray remember I accuse nobody ; for as I would not make a " watery discourse," so I would not put too much vinegar into it, nor would I raise the reputation of my own art by the diminution or ruin of another's. And so much for the prologue to what I mean to say.
And now for the water, the element that I trade in. The water is the eldest daughter of the creation, the element upon which the Spirit of God did first move, the element which God commanded to bring forth living creatures abundantly ; and without which, those that inhabit the land, even all creatures that have breath in their nostrils, must suddenly return to putrefaction. Moses, the great lawgiver, and chief philosopher, skilled in all the learning of the Egyptians, who was called the friend of God, and knew the mind of the Almighty, names this element the first in the creation : this is the element upon which the Spirit of God did first move, and is the chief ingredient in the creation : many philosophers have made it to comprehend all the other elements, and most allow it the chiefest in the mixtion of all living creatures.
There be that profess to believe that all bodies are made of water, and may be reduced back again to water only : they endeavour to demonstrate it thus :
Take a willow (or any like speedy growing plant) newly rooted in a box or barrel full of earth, weigh them all together exactly when the tree begins to grow, and then weigh all together after the tree is increased from its first rooting, to weigh a hundrd pound weight more than when it was first rooted and weighed ; and you shall find this augment of the tree to be without the diminution of one drachm weight of the earth. Hence they infer this increase of wood to be from water of rain, or from dew, and not to be from any other element. And they affirm they can reduce this wood back again to water ; and they affirm also the same may be done in any animal or vegetable. And this I take to be a fair testimony of the excellency of my element of water.
The water is more productive than the earth. Nay, the earth hath no fruitfulness without showers or dews ; for all the herbs and flowers and fruit are produced, and thrive by the water ; and the very minerals are fed by streams that run under ground, whose
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The Compleat Angler
natural course carries them to the tops of many high mountains, as we see by several springs breaking forth on the tops of the highest hills ; and this is also witnessed by the daily trial and testimony of several miners.
Nay, the increase of those creatures that are bred and fed in the water is not only more and more miraculous, but more advantageous to man, not only for the lengthening of his life, but for preventing of sickness, for it is observed by the most learned physicians, that the casting off of Lent and other fish days (which hath not only given the lie to so many learned, pious, wise founders of colleges, for which we should be ashamed) hath doubtless been the chief cause of those many putrid, shaking, intermitting agues, unto which this nation of ours is now more subject than those wiser countries that feed on herbs, salads, and plenty of fish ; of which it is observed in story, that the greatest part of the world now do. And it may be fit to remember that Moses (Lev. xi. 9, Deut. xiv. 9) appointed fish to be the chief diet for the best commonwealth that ever yet was.
And it is observable, not only that there are fish, as, namely, the whale, three times as big as the mighty elephant, that is so fierce in battle, but that the mightiest feasts have been of fish. The Romans in the height of their glory have made fish the mistress of all their entertainments ; they have had music to usher in their
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sturgeons, lampreys, and mullets, which they would purchase at rates rather to be wondered at than believed. He that shall view the writings of Macrobius or Varro may be confirmed and informed of this, and of the incredible value of their fish and fish-ponds.
But, gentlemen, I have almost lost myself, which I confess I may easily do in this philosophical discourse ; I met with most of it very lately (and I hope happily) in a conference with a most learned physician. Dr. Wharton, a dear friend, that loves both me and my art of angling. But, however, I will wade no deeper in these mysterious arguments, but pass to such observations as I can manage with more pleasure, and less fear of running into error. But I must not yet forsake the waters, by whose help we have so many known advantages.
And first, to pass by the miraculous cures of our known baths, how advantageous is the sea for our daily traffic, without which we could not now subsist ! How does it not only furnish us with food and physic for the bodies, but with such observations for the mind as ingenious persons would not want !
How ignorant had we been of the beauty of Florence, of the monuments, urns, and rarities that yet remain in and near unto old and new Rome (so many as it is said will take up a year's time to view, and afford to each of them but a convenient consideration) ; and therefore it is not to be wondered at that so learned and devout a father as St. Jerome, after his wish to have seen Christ in the flesh, and to have heard St. Paul preach, makes his third wish, to have seen Rome in her glory ; and that glory is not yet all lost, for what pleasure is it to see the monuments of Livy, the choicest of the historians ; of Tully, the best of orators ; and to see the bay-trees that now grow out of the very tomb of Virgil ! These, to any that love learning, must be pleasing. But what pleasure is it to a devout Christian to see there the humble house in which St. Paul was content to dwell, and to view the many rich statues that are made in honour of his memory ! nay, to see the very place in which St. Peter and he lie buried together ! These are in and near to Rome. And how much more doth it please the pious curiosity of a Christian to see that place on which the blessed Saviour of the world was pleased to
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humble himself, and to take our nature upon him, and to converse with men : to see Mount Zion, Jerusalem, and the very sepulchre of our Lord Jesus ? How may it beget and heighten the zeal of a Christian to see the devotions that are daily paid to him at that place ! Gentlemen, lest I forget myself I will stop here and remember you, that but for my element of water, the inhabitants of this poor island must remain ignorant that such things ever were, or that any of them have yet a being.
Gentlemen, I might both enlarge and lose myself in such-like arguments ; I might tell you that Almighty God is said to have spoken to a fish but never to a beast ; that he hath made a whale a ship to carry, and set his prophet Jonah safe on the appointed shore. Of these I might speak, but I must in manners break off, for I see Theobald's house. I cry your mercy for being so long, and thank you for your patience.
Aug. Sir, my pardon is easily granted you : I except against nothing that you have said ; nevertheless I must part with you at this park wall, for which I am very sorry ; but I assure you, Mr. Piscator, I now part with you full of good thoughts, not only of yourself, but your recreation. And so, gentlemen, God keep you both.
Pisc. Well now, Mr. Venator, you shall neither want time nor my attention to hear you enlarge your discourse concerning hunting.
Ven. Not I, sir : I remember you said that angling itself was of great antiquity and a perfect art, and an art not easily attained to ; and you have so won upon me in your former discourse, that I am very desirous to hear what you can say farther concerning those particulars.
Pisc. Sir, I did say so : and I doubt not but if you and I did converse together but a few hours, to leave you possessed with the same high and happy thoughts that now possess me of it ; not only of the antiquity of angling, but that it deserves commendations ; and that it is an art, and an art worthy the knowledge and practice of a wise man.
Ven. Pray, sir, speak of them what you think fit, for we have yet five miles to the Thatched House ; during which walk I dare
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promise you my patience and diligent attention shall not be wanting. And if you shall make that to appear which you have undertaken — first that it is an art, and an art worth the learning, I shall beg that I may attend you a day or two a-fishing, and that I may become your scholar and be instructed in the art itself which you so much magnify.
Pisc. O sir, doubt not that angling is an art. Is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly ? a trout ! that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold ; and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast : doubt not, therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable of learning it ? for angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so : I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice : but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observmg wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be like virtue, a reward to itself.
Ven. Sir, I am now become so full of expectation, that I long much to have you proceed ; and in the order you propose.
Pisc. Then first, for the antiquity of angling, of which I shall not say much, but only this : some say it is as ancient as Deucalion's flood ; others, that Belus, who was the first inventor of godly and virtuous recreations, was the first inventor of angling ; and some others say (for former times have had their disquisitions about the antiquity of it) that Seth, one of the sons of Adam, taught it to his sons, and that by them it was derived to posterity : others say, that he left it engraven on those pillars which he erected, and trusted to preserve the knowledge of the mathematics, music, and the rest of that precious knowledge and those useful arts which by God's appointment or allowance and his noble industry, were thereby preserved from perishing in Noah's flood.
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The Compleat Angler
c/ftmsh oases
^bmorrtbn Cfiurc^ard
These, sir, have been the opinions of several men that have possibly endeavoured to make anghng more ancient than is needful, or may well be warranted ; but for my part, I shall content myself in telling you, that angling is much more ancient than the Incar- nation of our Saviour ; for in the prophet Amos mention is made of fish-hooks ; and in the book of Job (which was long before the days of Amos, for that book is said to be writ by Moses) mention is made also of fish-hooks, which must imply anglers in those times.
But, my worthy friend, as I would rather prove myself a gentle- man, by being learned and humble, valiant and inoffensive, virtuous and communicable, than by any fond ostentation of riches ; or, wanting those virtues myself, boast that these were in my ancestors- (and yet I grant that where a noble and ancient descent, and such merit meet in any man, it is a double dignification of that person) ; so if this antiquity of angling (which for my part I have not forced}
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shall, like an ancient family, be either an honour or an ornament to this virtuous art which I profess to love and practise, I shall be the gladder that I made an accidental mention of the antiquity of it, of which I shall say no more, but proceed to that just commend- ation which I think it deserves.
And for that, I shall tell you, that in ancient times a debate hath arisen, and it remains yet unresolved : whether the happiness of man in this world doth consist more in contemplation or action ?
Concerning which some have endeavoured to maintain their opinion of the first ; by saying, that the nearer we mortals come to God by way of imitation, the more happy we are. And they say that God enjoys himself only, by a contemplation of his own infinite- ness, eternity, power, and goodness, and the like. And upon this ground, many cloisteral men of great learning and devotion, prefer contemplation before action. And many of the fathers seem to approve this opinion, as may appear in their commentaries upon the words of our Saviour to Martha (Luke lo. 41, 42).
And on the contrary, there want not men of equal authority and credit, that prefer action to be the more excellent ; as namely, experiments in physic, and the application of it, both for the ease and prolongation of man's life ; by which each man is enabled to act and do good to others, either to serve his country or do good to particular persons : and they say also that action is doctrinal, and teaches both art and virtue, and is a maintainer of human society ; and for these, and other like reasons, to be preferred before contemplation.
Concerning which two opinions, I shall forbear to add a third, by declaring my own : and rest myself contented in telling you, my very worthy friend, that both these meet together, and do most properly belong to the most honest, ingenious, quiet, and harmless art of angling.
And first, I shall tell you what some have observed (and I have found it to be a real truth) that the very sitting by the river's side is not only the quietest and fittest place for contemplation, but will invite an angler to it : and this seems to be maintained by the learned Pet. Du Moulin, who (in his discourse of the fulfilling of prophecies) observes, that when God intended to reveal any future events or high
42
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notions to his prophets, he then carried them either to the deserts or the sea-shore, that having so separated them from amidst the press of people and business, and the cares of the world, he might settle their minds in a quiet repose, and there make them fit for revelation.
And this seems also to be intimated by the Children of Israel (Psal. 137), who, having in a sad condition banished all mirth and music from their pensive hearts, and having hung up their then mute harps upon the willow-trees growing by the rivers of Babylon, sat down upon these banks bemoaning the ruins of Sion, and contem- plating their own sad condition.
And an ingenious Spaniard says, that " rivers and the inhabitants of the watery element were made for wise men to contemplate and fools to pass by without consideration." And though I will not rank myself in the number of the first, yet give me leave to free myself from the last, by offering to you a short contemplation, first of rivers and then of fish ; concerning which I doubt not but to give you many observations that will appear very considerable : I am sure they have appeared so to me, and made many an hour to pass away more pleasantly, as I have sat quietly on a flowery bank by a calm river, and contemplated what I shall now relate to you.
And first, concerning rivers : there be so many wonders reported and written of them, and of the several creatures that be bred and live in them ; and those by authors of so good credit, that we need not to deny them an historical faith.
As namely of a river in Epirus, that puts out any lighted torch, and kindles any torch that was not lighted. Some waters being drank cause madness, some drunkenness, and some laughter to death. The rivet Selarus in a is,yN hours turns a rod or wand to stone ; and our Camden mentions the like in England, and the like in Lochmere in Ireland. There is also a river in Arabia, of which all the sheep that drink thereof have their wool turned into a vermilion colour. And one of no less credit than Aristotle tells us of a merry river (the river Elusina) that dances at the noise of music, for with music it bubbles, dances, and grows sandy, and so continues till the music ceases, but then it presently returns to its wonted calmness and clearness. And Camden tells us of a well near to Kirby in West-
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moreland, that ebbs and flows several times every day : and he tells us of a river in Surrey (it is called Mole), that after it has run several miles, being opposed by hills, finds or makes itself a way under ground, and breaks out again so far off, that the inhabitants thereabout boast (as the Spaniards do of their river Anus) that they feed divers flocks of sheep upon a bridge. And lastly, for I would not tire your patience, one of no less authority than Josephus, that learned Jew, tells us of a river in Judea that runs swiftly all the six days of the week, and stands still and rests all their sabbath.
But I will lay aside my discourse of rivers, and tell you some things of the monsters, or fish, call them what you will, that they breed and feed in them. Pliny, the philosopher, says (in the third chapter of his ninth book) that in the Indian Sea, the fish called the balana or whirlpool, is so long and broad as to take up more in length and breadth than two acres of ground ; and of other fish of two hundred cubits long ; and that, in the river Ganges, there be eels of thirty feet long. He says there, that these monsters appear in the sea only when tempestuous winds oppose the torrents of water falling from the rocks into it, and so turning what lay at the bottom to be seen on the water's top. And he says that the people of Cadara (an island near this place) make the timber for their houses of those fish-bones. He there tells us that there are sometimes a thousand of these great eels found wrapt or interwoven together. He tells us there that it appears that dolphins love music, and will come when called for, by some men or boys that know, and use to feed them ; and that they can swim as swift as an arrow can be shot out of a bow ; and much of this is spoken concerning the dolphin, and other fish, as may be found also in the learned Dr. Casaubon's Discourse of Credulity and Incredulity, printed by him about the year 1670.
I know we islanders are averse to the belief of these wonders ; but there be so many strange creatures to be now seen (many collected by John Tradescant, and others added by my friend Elias Ashmole, Esq., who now keeps them carefully and methodically at his house near to Lambeth near London) as may get some belief of some of the other wonders I mentioned. I will tell you some of
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the wonders that you may now see, and not till then beheve, unless you think fit.
You may see the hog-fish, the dog-fish, the dolphin, the coney- fish, the parrot-fish, the shark, the poison- fish, sword-fish, and not only other incredible fish, but you may there see the sala- mander, several sorts of barna- cles, and Solan geese, the bird of Paradise, such sorts of snakes, and such birds'-nests, and of so various forms, and so wonder- fully made, as may beget wonder and amusement in any beholder : and so many hundred of other rarities in that collection, as will make the other wonders I spake of the less incredible ; for you may note that the waters are nature's store-house, in which she locks up her wonders.
But, sir, lest this discourse may seem tedious, I shall give it a sweet conclusion out of that holy poet Mr. George Herbert his divine Contemplation on God's Providence.
Lord^ who hath praise enough ; nay^ who hath any ?
None can express thy works but he that knows them ; And none can know thy works, they are so many.
And so complete, hut only he that owes them.
JVe all acknowledge both thy power and love To be exact, transcendent, and divine;
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Who dost so strangely and so sweetly move^
Whilst all things have their end, yet none but thine.
Wherefore, most sacred Spirit, I here present. For me, and all my fellows, praise to thee ;
And just it is that I should pay the rent. Because the benefit accrues to me.
And as concerning fish, in that psalm (Psalm 104) wherein, tor height of poetry and wonders, the prophet David seems even to exceed himself ; how doth he there express himself in choice metaphors, even to the amazement of a contemplative reader, concerning the sea, the rivers, and the fish therein contained ! And the great naturalist, Pliny, says, " that nature's great and wonderful power is more demonstrated in the sea than on the land." And this may appear by the numerous and various creatures inhabiting both in and about that element ; as to the readers of Gesner, Rondeletius,
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Pliny, Ausonius, Aristotle, and others, may be demonstrated. But I will sweeten this discourse also out of a contemplation in divine Du Bartas (in the fifth day), who says : —
God quickerCd in the sea, and in the rivers.
So many fishes of so many features.
That in the waters we may see all creatures.
Even all that on earth are to he found.
As if the world were in deep waters drown d.
For seas [as well as skies) have sun, moon, stars :
( As well as air) swallows, rooks and stares :
[As well as earth) vines, roses, nettles, melons,
Mushrooms, pinks, gillifowers, and 7nany millions
Of other plants, more rare, jnore strange than these.
As very fishes, living in the seas ;
As also rams, calves, horses, hares, and hogs.
Wolves, urchins, lions, elephants, and dogs ;
Tea, men and maids ; and, which I most admire.
The 7nitred bishop and the cowled friar ;
Of which, examples, but a few years since.
Were shown the Norway and Polonian Prince.
These seem to be wonders, but have had so many confirmations from men of learning and credit, that you need not doubt them ; nor are the number, nor the various shapes of fishes, more strange or more fit for contemplation than their different natures, inclina- tions, and actions ; concerning which I shall beg your patient ear a little longer.
The cuttle-fish will cast a long gut out of her throat, which (like as an angler doth his line) she sendeth forth and pulleth in again at her pleasure, according as she sees some little fish come near to her ; and the cuttle-fish (being then hid in the gravel) lets the smaller fish nibble and bite the end of it, at which time she by little and little draws the smaller fish so near to her that she may leap upon her, and then catches and devours her : and for this reason some have called this fish the sea-angler.
And there is a fish called a hermit, that at a certain age gets into
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a dead fish's shell, and like a hermit dwells there alone, studying the wind and weather, and so turns her shell, that she makes it de- fend her from the injuries that they would bring upon her.
There is also a fish called, by jiElian (in his ninth book of Living Creatures, chap. 1 6), the Adonis, or darling of the sea ; so called because it is a loving and innocent fish, a fish that hurts nothing that hath life, and is at peace with all the numerous in- habitants of that vast watery element : and truly I think most anglers are so disposed to most of mankind.
And there are also lustful and chaste fishes, of which I shall give you examples.
And first Du Bartas says of a fish called the sargus ; which (because none can express it better than he does) I shall give you in his own words ; supposing it shall not have the less credit for being in verse ; for he hath gathered this and other observations out of authors that have been great and industrious searchers into the secrets of nature. The adulterous sargus doth not only change IVives every day, in the deep streams, but, strange. As if the honey of sea-love delight Could not suffice his raging appetite. Goes courting she-goats on the grassy shore. Horning their husbands that had horns hefore.
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And the same author writes concerning the cantharus that which you shall also hear in his own words :
But, contrary, the constant cantharus. Is ever constant to his faithful spouse; In nuptial duties spending his chaste life; Never loves any hut his own dear wife.
Sir, but a little longer, and I have done.
Ven. Sir, take what liberty you think fit, for your discourse seems to be music, and charms me to an attention.
Pisc. Why then, sir, I will take a liberty to tell, or rather to remember you what is said of turtle-doves : first, that they silently plight their troth, and marry ; and that then the survivor scorns (as the Thracian women are said to do) to outlive his or her mate, and this is taken for a truth ; and if the survivor shall ever couple with another, then not only the living but the dead (be it either the he or the she) is denied the name and honour of a true turtle-dove.
And to parallel this land-rarity, and teach mankind moral faith- fulness, and to condemn those that talk of religion, and yet come short of the moral faith of fish and fowl ; men that violate the law affirmed by St. Paul (Rom. 2. 14, 15), to be writ in their hearts, and which he says shall at the last day condemn and leave them without excuse ; I pray hearken to what Du Bartas sings (for the hearing of such conjugal faithfulness will be music to all chaste ears), and therefore I pray hearken to what Du Bartas sings of the mullet.
But for chaste love the Mullet hath no peer;
For if the fisher hath surprised her pheer.
As mad with woe to shore she followeth,
Brest to consort him both in life and death.
On the contrary, what shall I say of the house-cock, which "treads any hen, and then (contrary to the swan, the partridge, and pigeon) takes no care to hatch, to feed or to cherish his own brood, but is senseless, though they perish.
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^?m
And 'tis considerable that the hen, which, because she also takes any cock, expects it not, who is sure the chickens be her own, hath by a moral impression her care and afFection to her own brood more than doubled, even to such a height that our Saviour, in expressing his love to Jerusalem (Matt. 23. 37), quotes her for an example of tender afFection ; as his Father had done Job for a pattern of patience.
And to parallel this cock, there be divers fishes that cast their spawn on flags or stones, and then leave it uncovered and exposed to become a prey and be devoured by vermin, or other fishes ; but other fishes (as namely the barbel) take such care for the preserva- tion of their seed, that unlike to the cock or the cuckoo, they mutually labour, both the spawner and the melter, to cover the spawn with sand, or watch it, or hide it in some secret place, unfrequented by vermin or any fish but themselves.
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Sir, these examples may to you and others seem strange, but they are testified, some by Aristotle, some by Pliny, some by Gesner, and by many others of credit ; and are believed and known by divers both of wisdom and experience, to be a truth ; and indeed are (as I said at the beginning) fit for the contemplation of a most serious and a most pious man. And doubtless this made the prophet David say, "They that occupy themselves in deep waters see the wonderful works of God :" indeed such wonders and pleasures too, as the land affords not.
And that they be fit for the contemplation of the most prudent and pious and peaceable men, seems to be testified by the practice of so many devout and contemplative men, as the patriarchs and prophets of old ; and of the apostles of our Saviour in our latter times, of which twelve, we are sure he chose four that were simple fishermen^ whom he inspired and sent to publish his blessed will to the Gentiles ; and inspired them also with a power to speak all languages, and by their powerful eloquence to beget faith in the unbelieving Jews ; and themselves to suffer for that Saviour whom their forefathers and they had crucified ; and, in their sufferings, to preach freedom from the encumbrances of the law, and a new way to everlasting life : this was the employment of these happy fishermen. Concerning which choice some have made these obser- vations.
First, That he never reproved these for their employment or calling, as he did scribes and the money-changers. And secondly, he found that the hearts of such men by nature were fitted for contemplation and quietness ; men of mild, and sweet, and peace- able spirits, as indeed most anglers are : these men our blessed Saviour (who is observed to love to plant grace in good natures), though indeed nothing be too hard for him ; yet these men he chose to call from their irreprovable employment of fishing, and gave them grace to be his disciples, and to follow him and do wonders. I say four of twelve.
And it is observable, that it was our Saviour's will that these our four fishermen should have a priority of nomination in the catalogue of his twelve apostles (Matt. lo) ; as namely, first, St. Peter,
52
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St. Andrew, St. James, and St. John, and then the rest in their order.
And it is yet more observable, that when our blessed Saviour went up into the mount, when he left the rest of his disciples and chose only three to bear him company at his transfiguration, that those three were all fishermen. And it is to be believed, that all the other apostles, after they betook themselves to follow Christ, betook themselves to be fishermen too ; for it is certain that the greater number of them were found together fishing by Jesus after his Resurrection, as it is recorded in the 2ist chapter of St. John's Gospel.
And since I have your promise to hear me with patience, I will take the liberty to look back upon an observation that hath been made by an ingenious and learned man, who observes that God hath been pleased to allow those whom he himself hath appointed to write his holy will in holy writ, yet to express his will in such metaphors as their former affections or practice had inclined them to ; and he brings Solomon for an example, who before his conversion was remark- ably carnally amorous ; and after, by God's appointment, wrote that spiritual dialogue, or holy amorous love-song, the Canticles, betwixt God and his church ; in which he says, his beloved had eyes like the fish-pools of Heshbon.
And if this hold in reason (as I see none to the contrary) then it may be probably concluded that Moses, who I told you before writ the book of Job, and the prophet Amos, who was a shepherd, were both anglers ; for you shall, in all the Old Testament find fish-hooks, I think, but twice mentioned : namely, by meek Moses, the friend of God, and by the humble prophet Amos.
Concerning which last, namely, the prophet Amos, I shall make but this observation ; that he that shall read the humble, lowly, plain style of that prophet, and compare it with the high, glorious, eloquent style of the prophet Isaiah (though they both be equally true), may easily believe Amos to be, not only a shepherd, but a good-natured, plain fisherman.
Which I do the rather believe, by comparing the affectionate, loving, lowly, humble epistles of St. Peter, St. James, and St. John, whom
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(■s-7^
„-„„ ,-.,• •.•-:A-'""4i;;;;'.r""*'"r.''.^xvr"/,,i'/,',"'/'', ■?.... ....
, ..\"'i//,.-.,.ii,<,„, ■•■.„r'
we know were all fishers, with the glorious language and high metaphors of St. Paul, whom we may believe was not.
And for the lawfulness of fishing : it may very well be maintained by our Saviour's bidding St. Peter cast his hook into the water and catch a fish, for money to pay tribute to Cssar. And let me tell you that angling is of high esteem and of much use in other nations. He that reads the voyages of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto, shall find, that there he declares to have found a king and several priests a-fishing.
And he that reads Plutarch shall find that angling was not con- temptible in the days of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra, and that they, in the midst of their wonderful glory, used angling as a prin- cipal recreation. And let me tell you, that in the Scripture, angling is always taken in the best sense, and that though hunting may be sometimes so taken, yet it is but seldom to be so understood. And let me add this more, he that views the ancient ecclesiastical canons, shall find hunting to be forbidden to churchmen, as being a turbu- lent, toilsome, perplexing recreation ; and shall find angling allowed
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to clergymen, as being a harmless recreation, a recreation that invites them to contemplation and quietness.
I might here enlarge myself by telling you what commendations our learned Perkins bestows on angling : and how dear a lover, and great a practiser of it our learned Doctor Whittaker was, as indeed many others of great learning have been. But I will content myself with two memorable men, that lived near to our own time, whom I also take to have been ornaments to the art of angling.
The first is Doctor Nowel, some time Dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Paul's in London, where his monument stands yet undefaced : a man that in the reformation of Queen Elizabeth (not that of Henry VIII.) was so noted for his meek spirit, deep learning, prudence, and piety, that the then Parliament and Convocation both, chose, enjoined, and trusted him to be the man to make a catechism for public use, such a one as should stand as a rule for faith and manners to their posterity. And the good old man (though he was very learned, yet knowing that God leads us not to Heaven by many nor by hard questions), like an honest angler, made that good, plain, unperplexed catechism, which is printed with our good old service-book. I say, this good old man was a dear lover and constant practiser of angling, as any age can produce : and his custom was to spend, besides his fixed hours of prayer (those hours which, by command of the church, were enjoined the clergy, and voluntarily dedicated to devotion by many primitive Christians) ; I say, beside those hours, this good man was observed to spend a tenth part of his time in angling ; and also (for I have conversed with those which have conversed with him) to bestow a tenth part of his revenue, and usually all his fish, amongst the poor that inhabited near to those rivers in which it was caught ; saying often, " that charity gave life to religion : " and, at his return to his house, would praise God he had spent that day free from worldly trouble ; both harmlessly, and in recreation that became a churchman. And this good man was well content, if not desirous,, that posterity should know he was an angler; as may appear by his picture, now to be seen, and carefully kept, in Brazen-nose College (to which he was a liberal benefactor). In which picture he was drawn, leaning on a desk, with his Bible before him, and on one hand
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■of him his lines, hooks, and other tackling lying in a round ; and on his other hand are his angle-rods of several sorts : and by them this is written, "That he died 13 Feb. 1601, being aged 95 years, 44 of which he had been Dean of St. Paul's Church ; and that his age had neither impaired his hearing, nor dimmed his eyes, nor weakened his memory, nor made any of the faculties of his mind weak or useless." 'Tis said that angling and temperance were great causes of these blessings, and I wish the like to all that imitate him, and love the memory of so good a man.
My next and last example shall be that under-valuer of money, the late provost of Eton College, Sir Henry Wotton (a man with whom I have often fished and conversed), a man whose foreign em- ployments in the service of this nation, and whose experience, learning, wit, and cheerfulness, made his company to be esteemed one of the delights of mankind : this man, whose very approbation ■of angling were sufficient to convince any modest censurer of it, this
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man was also a most dear lover, and a frequent practiser of the art of angling ; of which he would say, " 'Twas an employment for his idle time, which was then not idly spent : for angling was, after tedious study, a rest to his mind, a cheerer of his spirits, a di verier of sadness, a calmer of unquiet thoughts, a moderator of passions, a procurer of contentedness : and that it begat habits of peace and patience in those that professed and practised it." Indeed, my friend, you will find angling to be like the virtue of humility, which has a calmness of spirit, and a world of other blessings attending upon it.
Sir, this was the saying of that learned man, and I do easily believe, that peace and patience, and a calm content, did cohabit in the cheerful heart of Sir Henry Wotton ; because I know that when he was beyond seventy years of age, he made this description of a part of the present pleasure that possessed him, as he sat quietly in a summer's evening, on a bank a-fishing. It is a description of the spring ; which because it glided as soft and sweetly from his pen, as that river does at this time, by which it was then made, I shall repeat it unto you : —
This day dame Nature seenCd In love;
The lusty sap began to move;
Fresh juice did stir tF embracing vines ;
And birds had drawn their valentines.
The jealous trout, that low did lie.
Rose at a well-dissembled fly ;
There stood my friend, with patient skill.
Attending of his trembling quill ;
Already were the eaves possessed
With the swift pilgrim^ s daubed nest;
The groves already did rejoice
In PhilomeFs triumphing voice.
The showers were short, the weather mild.
The morning fresh, the evening smiled.
Joan takes her neat-rubbed pail, and now She trips to milk the sand-red cow; Where, for some sturdy foot-ball swatHy foan strokes a syllahub or twain.
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The fields and gardens were beset With tulips crocus^ violet; And now, though late, the modest rose Did more than half a blush disclose.
Thus all looks gay and full of cheer^ To welcome the new-liveried year.
These were the thoughts that then possessed the undisturbed mind of Sir Henry Wotton. Will you hear the wish of another angler, and the commendation of his happy life, which he also sings in verse ? — viz., Jo. Davors, Esq. : —
Let me live harmlessly ; and near the brink Of Trent or Avon have a dwelling-place.
Where I may see my quill or cork down sink With eager bite of perch, or bleak, or dace;
And on the world and my Creator think :
Whilst some men strive ill-gotten goods f embrace.
And others spend their time in base excess
Of wine, or worse, in war and wantonness.
Let them that list, these pastimes still pursue. And on such pleasing fancies feed their fill ;
So I the fields and meadows green may view. And daily by fresh rivers walk at will.
Among the daisies and the violets blue. Red hyacinth and yellow daffodil.
Purple narcissus like the morning rays.
Pale gander-grass, and azure culverkeys.
I count it higher pleasure to behold
The stately compass of the lofty sky ; And in the midst thereof [like burning gold)
The flaming chariot of the world's great eye ; The watery clouds that, in the air up-rolPd,
With sundry kinds of painted colours fly ; And fair Aurora, lifting up her head. Still blushing, rise from old Tithonus'' bed. 60
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The htlh and mountains raised from the plains^ The plains extended level with the ground ;
The grounds divided into sundry veins.
The veins enclosed with rivers running round;
These rivers making way through nature's chains With headlong course into the sea profound;
The raging sea, beneath the valleys low.
Where lakes and rills and rivulets do fow.
The lofty woods, the forests wide and long.
Adorned with leaves and branches fresh and green.
In whose cool bowers the birds, with many a song. Do welcome with their choir the suminer^s queen ;
The meadows fair, where Flora's gifts among Are intermixed, with verdant grass between ;
The silver-scaled fish that softly swim
Within the sweet brook'' s crystal watery stream.
All these, and many more of His creation
That made the heavens, the angler oft doth see :
Taking therein no little delectation.
To think how strange, how wonderful they be !
Framing thereof an inward contemplation To set his heart from other fancies free ;
And whilst he looks on these with joyful eye.
His mind is wrapt above the starry sky.
Sir, I am glad my memory has not lost these last verses, because they are somewhat more pleasant and more suitable to May-day than my harsh discourse. And I am glad your patience hath held out so long, as to hear them and me ; for both together have brought us within the sight of the Thatched House : and I must be your debtor (if you think it worth your attention) for the rest of my promised discourse, till some other opportunity, and a like time of leisure.
Ven. Sir, you have angled me on with much pleasure to the Thatched House ; and I now find your words true, "that good com- pany makes the way seem short ;" for trust me, sir, I thought we had wanted three miles of this house, till you showed it to me. But
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now we are at it, we'll turn into it, and refresh ourselves with a cup of drink, and a little rest.
Pisc. Most gladly, sir, and we'll drink a civil cup to all the otter-hunters that are to meet you to-morrow.
Ven. That we will, sir, and to all the lovers of angling, of which number I am now willing to be one myself : for, by the help of your good discourse and company, I have put on new thoughts both of the art of angling, and of all that profess it ; and if you will but meet me to-morrow, at the time and place appointed, and bestow one day with me and my friends in hunting the otter, I will dedicate the next two days to wait upon you, and we two will for that time do nothing but angle, and talk of fish and fishing.
Pisc. 'Tis a match, sir ; I'll not fail you, God willing, to be at Amwell Hill to-morrow morning before sun-rising.
CHAPTER II
Observations of the Otter and Chub.
''^^■^*H3EN. My friend Piscator, you have kept time with : my thoughts, for the sun is just rising, and I
myself just now come to this place, and the dogs have just now put down an otter. Look down at the bottom of the hill there in that meadow, chequered with water-lilies and lady- smocks ; there you may see what work they make : look ! look ! you may see all busy, men and dogs, dogs and men all busy.
Pisc. Sir, I am right glad to meet you, and glad to have