The Complete Angler | Page 2

and Fishing,
not unworthy the perusal of most Anglers. Printed for Richard Marriot,
to be sold at his shop in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet street."
Thus for it, as for most great births, the bare announcement sufficed.
One of the most beautiful of the world's books had been born into the
world, and was still to be bought in its birthday form--for
eighteen-pence.
In 1816, Mr. Marston calculates, the market value was about £4 4s. In
1847 Dr. Bethune estimated it at £12 12s. In 1883 Westwood reckoned
it "from £70 to £80 or even more" and since then copies have fetched
£235 and £310, though in 1894 we have a sudden drop at Sotheby's to
£150-- which, however, was more likely due to the state of the copy
than to any diminution in the zeal of Waltonian collectors, a zeal,
indeed, which burns more ardently from year to year.
Sufficiently out of reach of the poor collector as it is at present, it is
probable that it will mount still higher, and consent only to belong to
richer and richer men. And thus, in course of time, this facsimile will,
in clerical language, find an increasing sphere of usefulness; for it is to
those who have more instant demands to satisfy with their
hundred-pound notes that this facsimile is designed to bring

consolation. If it is not the rose itself, it is a photographic refection of it,
and it will undoubtedly give its possessor a sufficiently faithful idea of
its original.
But, apart from the satisfaction of such curiosity, the facsimile has a
literary value, in that it differs very materially from succeeding editions.
The text by which "The Compleat Angler" is generally known is that of
the fifth edition, published in 1676, the last which Walton corrected
and finally revised, seven years before his death. But in the second
edition (1655) the book was already very near to its final shape, for
Walton had enlarged it by about a third, and the dialogue was now
sustained by three persons, Piscator, Venator and Auceps, instead of
two--the original "Viator" also having changed his name to "Venator."
Those interested in tracing the changes will find them all laboriously
noted in Sir Harris Nicolas's great edition. Of the further additions
made in the fifth edition, Sir Harris Nicolas makes this just criticism:
"It is questionable," he says, "whether the additions which he then
made to it have increased its interest. The garrulity and sentiments 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."
There is a third raison d'être for this facsimile, which to name with
approbation will no doubt seem impiety to many, but which, as a
personal predilection, I venture to risk--there is no Cotton! The relation
between Walton and Cotton is a charming incongruity to contemplate,
and one stands by their little fishing-house in Dovedale as before an
altar of friendship. Happy and pleasant in their lives, it is good to see
them still undivided in their deaths--but, to my mind, their association
between the boards of the same book mars a charming classic. No
doubt Cotton has admirably caught the spirit of his master, but the very
cleverness with which he has done it increases the sense of parody with
which his portion of the book always offends me. Nor can I 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 go a Angling"--and that sweet exhortation from I Thess.

iv. 11--"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. This is nothing against "hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton's
strain" of which, in Walton's own setting and in his own poetical issues,
I am a sufficient admirer. Cotton was a clever literary man, and a fine
engaging figure of a gentleman, but, save by the accident of friendship,
he has little more claim to be printed along with Walton than the
gallant Col. Robert Venables, who, in the fifth edition, contributed still
a third part, entitled "The Experienc'd Angler: or, Angling Improv'd.
Being a General Discourse of Angling," etc., to a book that was
immortally complete in its first.
While "The Compleat Angler" was regarded mainly as a text-book for
practical anglers, one can understand its publisher wishing to make it as
complete as possible by the addition of such technical appendices; but
now, when it has so long been elevated