Introduction to the Compleat Angler | Page 3

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 Walton, and he has left to us the only contemporary and
contemptuous criticism of his book: to this we shall return, but anglers,
as a rule, unlike Franck, must have been for the king, and on Izaak's
side in controversy.
Walton brought out a second edition in 1655. He rewrote the book,
adding more than a third, suppressing Viator, and introducing Venator.
New plates were added, and, after the manner of the time,
commendatory verses. A third edition appeared in 1661, a fourth

(published by Simon Gape, not by Marriott) came out in 1664, a fifth in
1668 (counting Gape's of 1664 as a new edition), and in 1676, the work,
with treatises by Venables and Charles Cotton, was given to the world
as The Universal