Introduction to The Compleat Angler | Page 5

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 it undeniably was), and he dissolved the Long Parliament. While Marriott was advertising Walton's work, Cromwell was making a Parliament of Saints, 'faithful, fearing God, and hating covetousness.' This is a good description of Izaak, but he was not selected. In the midst of revolutions came The Compleat Angler to the light, a possession for ever. Its original purchasers are not likely to have taken a hand in Royalist plots or saintly conventicles. They were peaceful men. A certain Cromwellian trooper, Richard Franck, was a better angler than