COMPLEAT ANGLER, The. Though Izaak Walton's (Compleat Angler' is actually, as its title implies, a treatise on angling, it is not by reason of any technical excellence that it has become an English classic. The prosaic angler of Walton's own day (consult Robert Franck's 'Northern Memoirs,' 1694; re-edited by Sir Walter Scott, 1821) was ill-satisfied with him as a practical fisherman; but the whole of angling is not in the catching of fish — else there were little distinction between an angler and a fishmonger. It is the animating spint.of any sport which is the most important .thing about it, and Walton's success largely lies in his having so persuasively caught and pres.erved the spirit of angling, the peculiar aptitud.es which fit a man to follow what Walton happily described, in his sub-title, as "the Contempla tive Man's Recreation,* the natural gift to "be quiet, and go a-angling.* The born fisherman is necessanly a lover of quiet and a lover of nature in her peaceful natural aspects, and he is likely to be something of a philosopher and to have a boolcish tinge to his thoughts, as he sits hour after hour by the stream-side. Other wise he can scarcely he called a "compleat* angler. Such a man, with a pervading tincture of quaint old-world piety, was Walton him self, and it is because he chanced to be so typical an example of the angling fraternity and was able, in spealcing for himself, to speak so authentically for all anglers of all time, that 'The Compleat Angler' has become the sacred book of those, who, as Walton was fond of. reminding his readers, follow Saint Peter's call ing; and that Walton is not only °Honest Izaalc* but also "Saint Izaak,* the patron saint of the brethren of rod and reel. Walton in his writ ing, as Lowell has pointed out, has "an inno cent air of not knowing how it is done.* It is all so artless, we say, this quite fragrant writ ing, but the art is there, all the same. Artless ness in literature, while it begins in a natural grace, dei grail°, is never achieved without the expenditure of that art which conceals itself ; and Walton's °Lives* prove him the possessor of a literary gift which was not dependent on a limited subject matter for its exercise. That is, he was not merely a born angler, but also a born writer; in his degree, an artist in words. Otherwise, he would only have anglers fcrr readers; whereas 'The Compleat Angler' is for all who love good literature. No doubt, it was Walton's artless art which led him to choose the form he has given to his bou,k, that of a prose pastoral, with "Piscatorp and "Venator* (who have "well overtaken", each other on "Tottenham Hill,* "this fine fresh May morning”, for the chief interlocutors--; avith an occasional falconer,— "Auceps*— and milk maid, thrown in. This form, recalling Theoc ritus and Virgil, gives a gentle dramatic setting and interplay of character, as also an "open road,* gipsy quality, to the "discourse.* It has
the charm c f the walking-tour of two friends along a river-side, who, while they fish the stream, talk of the antiquity- of anything, or "How to fish for and to dress the chub,* or of the curiosities of natural history as found in Aldrovandus and Gessncr, and other naturalists of the time; and, "whilst .this shower falls so gently upon the teeming earth,* sit together imder the honeysuclde hedge, and recite to one another *old-fashioned poetry but choicely good, I think much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion in this critical age" — Dubartas, Sir Walter Raleigh and "holy Mr. George Herbert') Then, with the twilight, an old time English inn for supper, with a hostess, and her daughter to sing them an old-world ballad at bedtime. For "Merry England° still lives in this book—that is another of its claims for remembrance—Herricic's England of the Morris-dance and the maypole, and a peasantry that still cared for music and flowers. And the old English countryside, with its homes of ancient peace, its primroses and cowslips and hawthorn, as well as its various rustic characters, lives in this book as perhaps nowhere else in literature out of Shakespeare's plays. For this reason, it may with justice be described as the one English pastoral. This special quality of green "quiet* is the more surprising as 'The Compleat Angler' was written in that time of storm and stress succeeding the execution of Charles I. It was first published in 1653, and from that date on— such a remarkable appeal has this quiet book had for manlcind—a new edition has, on the average, been published every two and a half years. Walton was a meticulous reviser of his work, and in 1676 (being then 83; he died at 90) he gave forth his final "definitive* edition, the 5th. To this edition he invited his friend Charles Cotton to add a second part, which has thus become an integral, not unnecessary, portion of 'The Compleat Angler.' It has the value, moreover, of commemorating a charming friendship, a friendship the more surprising as Cotton was a brilliant young man-about-town, and Walton a patriarchal associate of bishops and deans. But both men had the gift of humanity, and it is by that sovereign gift, inclusive of all others, that 'The Compleat Angler) still remains a classic in a day which has too much forgot its final adraonition —"Study to be quiet* (1 Mess., 11). 'The Compleat Angler' has been a favorite book with many famous writ ers. Dr. Johnson considered "the preservation and elucidation of Waltonp—"a pious work,* and such different men as Scott, Wordsworth and Lamb have been among his many "dis ciples.°