Introduction to The Compleat Angler | Page 5

little idyll in prose, and 'angle, lines, and flies' are not omitted
in the description of 'the fruitful month of May,' while Pan is implored
to restore Arcadian peace to Britannia, 'and grant that each honest
shepherd may again sit under his own vine and fig-tree, and feed his
own flock,' when the King comes, no doubt. 'About' 1646 Walton
married Anne, half-sister of Bishop Ken, a lady 'of much Christian
meeknesse.' Sir Harris Nicolas thinks that he only visited Stafford
occasionally, in these troubled years. He mentions fishing in 'Shawford
brook'; he was likely to fish wherever there was water, and the brook
flowed through land which, as Mr. Marston shows, he acquired about
1656. In 1650 a child was born to Walton in Clerkenwell; it died, but
another, Isaac, was born in September 1651. In 1651 he published the
Reliquiae Wottonianae, with a Memoir of Sir Henry Wotton. The
knight had valued Walton's company as a cure for 'those splenetic
vapours that are called hypochondriacal.'
Worcester fight was on September 3, 1651; the king was defeated, and
fled, escaping, thanks to a stand made by Wogan, and to the loyalty of
Mistress Jane Lane, and of many other faithful adherents. A jewel of
Charles's, the lesser George, was preserved by Colonel Blague, who
intrusted it to Mr. Barlow of Blore Pipe House, in Staffordshire. Mr.
Barlow gave it to Mr. Milward, a Royalist prisoner in Stafford, and he,
in turn, intrusted it to Walton, who managed to convey it to Colonel
Blague in the Tower. The colonel escaped, and the George was given
back to the king. Ashmole, who tells the story, mentions Walton as
'well beloved of all good men.' This incident is, perhaps, the only
known adventure in the long life of old Izaak. The peaceful angler, with
a royal jewel in his pocket, must have encountered many dangers on the

highway. He was a man of sixty when he published his Compleat
Angler in 1653, and so secured immortality. The quiet beauties of his
manner in his various biographies would only have made him known to
a few students, who could never have recognised Byron's 'quaint, old,
cruel coxcomb' in their author. 'The whole discourse is a kind of picture
of my own disposition, at least of my disposition in such days and
times as I allow myself when honest Nat. and R. R. and I go a- fishing
together.' Izaak speaks of the possibility that his book may reach a
second edition. There are now editions more than a hundred!
Waltonians should read Mr. Thomas Westwood's Preface to his
Chronicle of the Compleat Angler: it is reprinted in Mr. Marston's
edition. Mr. Westwood learned to admire Walton at the feet of Charles
Lamb:-
'No fisher, But a well-wisher To the game,'
as Scott describes himself. {3}
Lamb recommended Walton to Coleridge; 'it breathes the very spirit of
innocence, purity, and simplicity of heart; . . . it would sweeten a man's
temper at any time to read it; it would Christianise every angry,
discordant passion; pray make yourself acquainted with it.' (Oct. 28,
1796.) According to Mr. Westwood, Lamb had 'an early copy,' found in
a repository of marine stores, but not, even then, to be bought a bargain.
Mr. Westwood fears that Lamb's copy was only Hawkins's edition of
1760. The original is extremely scarce. Mr. Locker had a fine copy;
there is another in the library of Dorchester House: both are in their
primitive livery of brown sheep, or calf. The book is one which only
the wealthy collector can hope, with luck, to call his own. A small
octavo, sold at eighteen-pence, The Compleat Angler was certain to be
thumbed into nothingness, after enduring much from May showers,
July suns, and fishy companionship. It is almost a wonder that any
examples of Walton's and Bunyan's first editions have survived into our
day. The little volume was meant to find a place in the bulging pockets
of anglers, and was well adapted to that end. The work should be
reprinted in a similar format: quarto editions are out of place.
The fortunes of the book, the fata libelli, have been traced by Mr.
Westwood. There are several misprints (later corrected) in the earliest
copies, as (p. 88) 'Fordig' for 'Fordidg,' (p. 152) 'Pudoch' for 'Pudock.'
The appearance of the work was advertised in The Perfect Diurnal

(May 9-16), and in No. 154 of The Mercurius Politicus (May 19-26),
also in an almanack for 1654. Izaak, or his publisher Marriott,
cunningly brought out the book at a season when men expect the
Mayfly. Just a month before, Oliver Cromwell had walked into the
House of Commons, in a plain suit of black clothes, with grey
stockings. His language, when he spoke, was reckoned unparliamentary
(as