The Complete Angler - Or, the Comtemplative Man's Recreation

PREFACE, WALTOX Complete Angler ranks, by common consent, among the choicest morsels of our early literature, not as a mere manual of the piscatorial art, but as a work of imagination and truth, full of fine sentiment and virtuous precepts. Many of our best writers-Sir Walter Scott, Sheridan, Hallam, Washington bring, Miss Mitford-have rung its praises and Charles Lamb says, that it would sweeten a mans temper at any time to read it, and Christianise every discordant passion. It is, therefore, no matter of surprise that the demand for this beautiful pastoral is coltinuoua, and that there are so many editions of it before the public indeed so many, and some recent, that it would at first view almost seem superfluols to add to their number. But the publisher placed before me such a valuable store of materials, the accumulation of years, that it was quite evident the proposed edition would surpass all its predecessors, and be a great boon to the public I therefore willingly undertook a task every way congenial to my tastes and feelings. If a full appreciation of the piety and virtues of the Author, his honest simplicity of mind, his pure taste for the beautiful in nature, and his pleasing eloquence, were alone sufficient to qualify an editor of his immortal work, I should yield to no one but other qualifications are requisite, and I must leave the reader to determine how far they are exemplified in the volume before him. The two centuries which have elapsed since the first edition of tbe Complete Angler, have occasioned the necessity of many historical illustrations, several corrections of erroneous notions in matters of natural history, and large additions on the practice of angling. These have been collected from every available source, as will be seen by the numerous authorities quoted. Indeed, it has been endeavoured to combine all the advantages of preceding editions in the present. The notes of Sir John Hawkins have been taken bodily, excepting in some instances where they had become obsolete, or superseded and the notes of Browne, Rennie, Bagster, Sir Henry Ellis, Sir Harris Nicolas, and others, have been culled to supply whatever could add to the interest or instructiveness of the volume, must we omit mention of the American editor, whose edition, printed at New York in 1847, though deficient in graphic illustration, is in the way of annotation more complete than any produced in this country up to its date. The notes, however, being principally from common sources, have not been of the use to us that the merit of the edition would imply. The Complete Angler seems to have been an especial favourite of booksellers, and has had the good fortune to find no fewer than six foster-fathers among them. Indeed, nearly all the editions which have appeared during the last half century are more or less indebted to them. Bagster a practical angler led the way in 1808, with an improved edition of Sir John Hawkins, edited by himself this he republished in 1815, with additions of his own, and some by Sir Henry Ellis. Mr. Thomas Gosden, a devoted angler, published, and we believe edited, the edition of 1822, for which he also arranged the illustrations, and designed patterns for the binding. Air...