The complete angler ; or, Contemplative man's recreation, being a discourse on rivers, fish-ponds, fish, and fishing / In two parts: the first written by Mr. Isaac Walton; the second by Charles Cotton, esq. With the lives of the authors: and notes, historical, critical, supplementary, and explanatory, by Sir John Hawkins, knt.

Izaak Walton

Date:: 1808

Credit: The complete angler ; or, Contemplative man's recreation, being a discourse on rivers, fish-ponds, fish, and fishing / In two parts: the first written by Mr. Isaac Walton; the second by Charles Cotton, esq. With the lives of the authors: and notes, historical, critical, supplementary, and explanatory, by Sir John Hawkins, knt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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grateful acknowledgment of the honour done to thé memory of hisfather. ey % Doctor King, afterwards bishop of Chichester, in a letter to the author, thus expresses himself concerning this life: ** Iam glad that the general demonstration *¢ of his [Doctor Donne’s] worth was so fairly pre- *¢ served, and represented to the world, by your pen, ‘* in the history of his life; indeed, so well, that- ‘ beside others, the best critic of our later time; Mr. *¢ John Hales of Eaton, affirmed to me, he had not: ©© seen a life written with more advantage to the subject, ** or reputation to the writer, than that of Doctor ‘© Donne *,” a Sir Henry Wotton dying in 1639, Walton was im- gid by bishop King to undertake the writing his ife also; and, as it should scem by a circumstance. mentioned in the margin, it was finished about 1644+, Notwithstanding which, the earliest copy I have yet. been able to meet with, is that prefixed to a Collection of Sir Henry’s Remains, undoubtedly made by Wal- ton himself, intitled Reliquice Wottonianw, and by him, in 1651, dedicated to lady Mary Wotton, and her three daughters; though in a subsequent edition in | 1685, he has recommended them to the patronage of.a more remote relation of the author, namely Philip earl of Chesterfield. The Precepts of Angling—meaning thereby the Rules and Directions for taking Fish with a Hook and Line —till Walton’s time, having hardly ever been reduced to writing, were propagated from age to age chiefly by tradition: but Walton, whose benevolent and communi- cative temper appears in almost every line of his writ- ings, unwilling to conceal from the world those assistances nr 1714, the very book, with the origina] manuscript letter, was in the hands of the Rev. Mr. Borradale, rector of Market-Deeping, in the: county of Lincoln. * Bishop King’s Letter to Walton before the Collection of the Lives, iv 1670, + Itis certain that Hooker’s Life was written about 1664, and Walton says, in his Epistle before the Lives, that “ there was an interval of twenty “‘ years between the writing of Hooker's Life and Wotton’s, which fixes “ the date of the latter to 1644.”

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