flowryng age. That ys to sey, a feyre age and a longe ' (like
Walton's own), ' and sith hyt ys so I aske this question, wyche
bynne the menys and cause to reduce a man to a mery spryte.'
The angler 'schall have hys holsom walke and mery at hys
owne ease, and also many a sweyt eayr of divers erbis and
flowres that schall make hym ryght hongre and well disposed in
hys body. He schall heyr the melodies melodious of the ermony
of byrde : he schall se also the yong swannes and signetes
folowing ther eyrours, duckes, cootes, herons, and many other
fowlys with ther brodys, wyche me semyt better then all the
noyse of houndes, and blastes of homes and other gamys that
fawkners or hunters can make, and yf the angler take the
fyssche, hardly then ys ther no man meryer then he in his
sprites.'

This is the very ' sprite ' of Walton ; this has that vernal



xliv The COMPLETE ANGLER

and matutinal air of opening European literature, full of
birds' music, and redolent of dawn. This is the note to
which the age following Walton would not listen.

In matter of fact, again, Izaak follows the ancient
Treatise, We know his jury of twelve flies : the Treatise
says : —

* These ben the xij flyes wyth whyche ye shall angle to the
trought and graylling, and dubbe like as ye shall now here me
tell

* Marche, The donne fly, the body of the donne well, and
the wyngis of the pertryche. Another donne flye, the body of
blacke wolj, the wyngis of the blackyst drake ; and the lay under
the wynge and under the tayle.'

Walton has : —

* The first is the dun fly in March : the body is made of dun
wool, the wings of the partridge's feathers. The second is
another dun fly : the body of black wool ; and the wings
made of the black drake's feathers, and of the feathers under his
tail'

Again, the Treatise has : —

Auguste. The drake fly. The body of black wull and lappyd
abowte wyth blacke sylke : winges of the mayle of the blacke
drake wyth a blacke heed.'

Walton has : —

' The twelfth is the dark drake-fly, good in August : the body
made with black wool, lapt about with black silk, his wings are
made with the mail of the black drake, with a black head.'

This is word for word a transcript of the fifteenth cen-



INTRODUCTION xlv

tury Treatise, But Izaak cites, not the ancient Treatise^

but Mr. Thomas Barker. ^ Barker, in fact, gives many

more, and more variegated flies than Izaak offers in the

jury of twelve which he rendered, from the old Treatise^

into modern English. Sir Harris Nicolas says that the

jury is from Leonard Mascall's Booke of Fishing with Hooke

and Line (London, 1609), but Mascall merely stole from

the fifteenth-century book. In Cotton's practice, and that

of The Angler's Vade Mecum (1681), flies were as numerous

as among ourselves, and had, in many cases, the same

names. Walton absurdly bids us ' let no part of the line

touch the water, but the fly only.' Barker says, ' Let the

fly light first into the water.' Both men insist on fishing

down stream, which is, of course, the opposite of the true

art, for fish lie with their heads up stream, and trout are

best approached from behind. Cotton admits of fishing

both up and down, as the wind and stream may serve :

and, of course, in heavy water, in Scotland, this is all very

well. But none of the old anglers, to my knowledge, was

a dry-fly fisher, and Izaak was no fly-fisher at all. He took

what he said from Mascall, who took it from the old

Treatise^ in which, it is probable, Walton read, and followed

the pleasant and to him congenial spirit of the mediaeval

angler. All these writers tooled with huge rods, fifteen or

eighteen feet in length, and Izaak had apparently never

used a reel. For salmon, he says, ' some use a wheel about

the middle of their rods or near their hand, which is to be

^ Barker^ Delight y or^ The Art of Angling, 1651, 1657, 1659, London.



xlvi The COMPLETE ANGLER

observed better by seeing one of them, than by a large
demonstration of words.'

Mr. Westwood has made a catalogue of books cited by
Walton in his Compleat Angler. There is -^lian (who
makes the first known reference to fly-fishing) ; Aldro-
vandus, De Piscibus (1638) ; Dubravius, De Piscibus
(1559); and the EngHsh translation (1599) Gerard's
Herball (1633) ; Gesner, De Piscibus (s.a,) and Hi star ia
Naturalis (1558); Phil. Holland's Pliny (1601); Ronde-
let, De Piscibus Marines (1554); Silvianus Aquatilium
Historiae (1554) : these nearly exhaust Walton's supply
of authorities in natural history. He was devoted, as
we saw, to authority, and had a childlike faith in the
fantastic theories which date from Pliny. ' Pliny hath an
opinion that many flies have their birth, or being, from a
dew that in the spring falls upon the leaves of trees.' It
is a pious opinion ! Izaak is hardly so superstitious as the
author of The Angler's Fade Mecum, I cannot imagine
him taking ' Man's fat and cat's fat, of each half an ounce,
mummy finely powdered, three drams,' and a number of
other abominations, to ' make an Oyntment according to
Art, and when you Angle, anoint 8 inches of the line next
the Hook therewith.' Or, ' Take the Bones and Scull of
a Dead-man, at the opening of a Grave, and beat the same
into Pouder, and put of this Pouder in the Moss wherein
you keep your Worms, — but others like Grave Earth as
welU No doubt grave earth is quite as eflicacious.

These remarks show how Izaak was equipped in books



INTRODUCTION xlvii

and in practical information : it follows that his book is
to be read, not for instruction, but for human pleasure.

So much for what Walton owed to others. For all the
rest, for what has made him the favourite of schoolboys
and sages, of poets and philosophers, he is indebted to none
but his Maker and his genius. That he was a lover of
Montaigne we know ; and, had Montaigne been a fisher,
he might have written somewhat like Izaak, but without
the piety, the perfume, and the charm. There are authors
whose living voices, if we know them in the flesh, we
seem to hear in our ears as we peruse their works. Of
such was Mr. Jowett, sometime Master of Balliol College,
a good man, now with God. It has ever seemed to me
that friends of Walton must thus have heard his voice as
they read him, and that it reaches us too, though faintly.
Indeed, we have here ' a kind of picture of his own dis-
position,' as he tells us Piscator is the Walton whom
honest Nat. and R. Roe and Sir Henry Wotton knew
on fishing-days. The book is a set of confessions, without
their commonly morbid turn. 'I write not for money,
but for pleasure,' he says ; methinks he drove no hard
bargain with good Richard Marriott, nor was careful and
troubled about royalties on his eighteenpenny book. He
regards scoffers as ' an abomination to mankind,' for indeed
even Dr. Johnson, who, a century later, set Moses Browne
on reprinting The Compleat Angler^ broke his jest on our
suffering tribe. 'Many grave, serious men pity anglers,'
says Auceps, and Venator styles them 'patient men,' as



xlviii The COMPLETE ANGLER

surely they have great need to be. For our toil, like that
of the husbandman, hangs on the weather that Heaven
sends, and on the flies that have their birth or being from a
kind of dew, and on the inscrutable caprice of fish j also,
in England, on the miller, who giveth or withholdeth at
his pleasure the very water that is our element. The
inquiring rustic who shambles up erect when we are lying
low among the reeds, even he disposes of our fortunes, with
whom, as with all men, we must be patient, dwelling ever —

' With close-lipped Patience for our only friend,
Sad Patience, too near neighbour of Despair."

O the tangles, more than Gordian, of gut on a windy
day ! O bitter east wind that bloweth down stream !
O the young ducks that, swimming between us and the
trout, contend with him for the blue duns in their season !
O the hay grass behind us that entangles the hook ! O
the rocky wall that breaks it, the boughs that catch it ;
the drought that leaves the salmon-stream dry, the floods
that fill it with turbid, impossible waters ! Alas for the
knot that breaks, and for the iron that bends j for the lost
landing-net, and the gillie with the gafF that scrapes the
fish ! Izaak believed that fish could hear ; if they can,
their vocabulary must be full of strange oaths, for all
anglers are not patient men. A malison on the trout that
' bulge ' and ' tail,' on the salmon that 'jiggers,' or sulks, or
lightly gambols over and under the line. These things,
and many more, we anglers endure meekly, being patient
men, and a light world fleers at us for our very virtue.



INTRODUCTION xlix

Izaak, of course, justifies us by the example of the
primitive Christians, and, in the manner of the age, drowns
opposition in a flood of erudition, out of place, but never
pedantic ; futile, yet diverting ; erroneous, but not dull.

*God is said to have spoken to a fish, but never to a
beast.' There is a modern Greek phrase, 'By the first
w^ord of God, and the second of the fish.' As for angling,
' it is somewhat like poetry : men are to be born so ' ; and
many are born to be both rhymers and anglers. But,
unhke many poets, the angler resembles 'the Adonis, or
DarHng of the Sea, so called because it is a loving and
innocent fish,' and a peaceful ; ' and truly, I think most
anglers are so disposed to most of mankind.'

Our Saviour's peculiar affection for fishermen is, of
course, a powerful argument. And it is certain that Peter,
James, and John made converts among the twelve, for
' the greater number of them were found together, fishing,
by Jesus after His Resurrection.' That Amos was ' a
good-natured, plain fisherman,' only Walton had faith
enough to believe. He fixes gladly on mentions of hooks
in the Bible, omitting Homer, and that excellent Theo-
critean dialogue of the two old anglers and the fish of gold,
which would have delighted Izaak, had he known it ; but
he was no great scholar. 'And let me tell you that in the
Scripture, angling is always taken in the best sense,' though
Izaak does not dwell on Tobias's enormous capture. So
he ends with commendations of angling by Wotton, and
Davors (Dennys, more probably) author of The Secrets of
d



1 The COMPLETE ANGLER

Angling (1613). To these we may add Wordsworth,
Thomson, Scott, Hogg, Stoddart, and many minor poets
who loved the music of the reel.

Izaak next illustrates his idea of becoming mirth, which
excludes 'Scripture jests and lascivious jests,' both of them
highly distasteful to anglers. Then he comes to practice, be-
ginning with chub, for which I have never angled, but have
taken them by misadventure, with a salmon fly. Thence
we proceed to trout, and to the charming scene of the
milkmaid and her songs by Raleigh and Marlowe, ' I think
much better than the strong lines that are now in fashion
in this critical age,' for Walton, we have said, was the last
of the Elizabethans, and the new times were all for Waller
and Dryden. 'Chevy Chace ' and 'Johnny Armstrong'
were dear to Walton as to Scott, but through a century
these old favourites were to be neglected, save by Mr.
Pepys and Addison. Indeed, there is no more Curious proof
of the great unhappy change then coming to make poetry
a mechanic art, than the circumstance that Walton is much
nearer to us, in his likings, than to the men between 1670
and 1770. Gay was to sing of angling, but in ' the strong
lines that are now in fashion.' All this while Piscator
has been angling with worm and minnow to no purpose,
though he picks up 'a trout will fill six reasonable bellies'
in the evening. So we leave them, after their ale, 'in
fresh sheets that smell of lavender.' Izaak's practical
advice is not of much worth ; we read him rather for
sentences like this : ' I '11 tell you, scholar : when I sat last



INTRODUCTION li

on this primrose bank, and looked down these meadows, I
thought of them as Charles the Emperor did of the city of
Florence, " that they were too pleasant to be looked upon,
but only on holy-days."' He did not say, like Fox,
when Burke spoke of 'a seat under a tree, with a friend, a
bottle, and a book,* ' Why a book ? * Izaak took his book
with him — a practice in which, at least, I am fain to
imitate this excellent old man.

As to salmon, Walton scarcely speaks a true word about
their habits, except by accident. Concerning pike, he quotes
the theory that they are bred by pickerel weed, only as
what ' some think.' In describing the use of frogs as bait,
he makes the famous, or infamous, remark, ' Use him as
though you loved him . . . that he may live the longer.'
A bait-fisher may be a good man, as Izaak was, but it is
easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.
As coarse fish are usually caught only with bait, I shall
not follow Izaak on to this unholy and unfamiliar ground,
wherein, none the less, grow flowers of Walton's fancy,
and the songs of the old poets are heard. The Practical
Angler^ indeed, is a book to be marked with flowers, marsh-
marigolds and fritillaries, and petals of the yellow iris,
for the whole provokes us to content, and whispers that
word of the apostle, ' Study to be quiet.'

FISHING THEN AND NOW
Since Maui, the Maori hero, invented barbs for hooks.



lii The COMPLETE ANGLER

angling has been essentially one and the same thing.
South Sea islanders spin for fish with a mother-of-pearl
lure which is also a hook, and answers to our spoon. We
have hooks of stone, and hooks of bone ; and a bronze
hook, found in Ireland, has the familiar Limerick bend.
What Homer meant by making anglers throw ' the horn
of an ox of the stall' into the sea, we can only guess;
perhaps a horn minnow is meant, or a little sheath of horn
to protect the line. Dead bait, live bait, and imitations of
bait have all been employed, and ^lian mentions artificial
Mayflies used, with a very short line, by the Illyrians.

But, while the same in essence, angling has been im-
proved by human ingenuity. The Waltonian angler, and
still more his English predecessors, dealt much in the
home-made. The Treatise of the fifteenth century bids
you make your ' Rodde ' of a fair staff even of a six foot
long or more, as ye list, of hazel, willow, or ' aspe ' (ash ?),
and 'beke hym in an ovyn when ye bake,'^and let him
cool and dry a four weeks or more.' The pith is taken
out of him with a hot iron, and a yard of white hazel is
similarly treated, also a fair shoot of blackthorn or crabtree
for a top. The butt is bound with hoops of iron, the top
is accommodated with a noose, a hair line is looped in the
noose, and the angler is equipped. Splicing is not used,
but the joints have holes to receive each other, and with
this instrument ' ye may walk, and there is no man shall
wit whereabout ye go.' Recipes are given for colouring
and plaiting hair Hnes, and directions for forging hooks.



INTRODUCTION liii

'The smallest quarell needles' are used for the tiniest
hooks.

Barker (1651) makes the rod 'of a hasel of one piece,
or of two pieces set together in the most convenient
manner, light and gentle.' He recommends the use of
a single hair next the fly, — 'you shall have more rises,'
which is true, ' and kill more fish,' which is not so likely.
The most delicate striking is required with fine gut, and
with a single hair there must be many breakages. For
salmon, Barker uses a rod ten feet in the butt, ' that will
carry a top of six foot pretty stifFe and strong.' The
'winder,' or reel. Barker illustrates with a totally unin-
telligible design. His salmon fly 'carries six wings';
perhaps he only means wings composed of six kinds of
feathers, but here Franck is a better authority, his flies
being sensible and sober in colour. Not many old salmon
flies are in existence, nor have I seen more ancient speci-
mens than a few, chiefly of peacocks' feathers, in the
fly-leaf of a book at Abbotsford ; they were used in Ireland
by Sir Walter Scott's eldest son. The controversy as to
whether fish can distinguish colours was unknown to our
ancestors. I am inclined to believe that, for salmon, size,
and perhaps shade, light or dark, with more or less of
tinsel, are the only important points. Izaak stumbled on
the idea of Mr. Stewart (author of The Practical Angler)
saying, 'for the generality, three or four flies, neat, and
rightly made, and not too big, serve for a trout in most
rivers, all the summer.' Our ancestors, though they did



liv The COMPLETE ANGLER

not fish with the dry fly, were intent on imitating the
insect on the water. As far as my own experience goes,
if trout are feeding on duns, one dun will take them as
well as another, if it be properly presented. But my
friend Mr. Charles Longman tells me that, after failing
with two trout, he examined the fly on the water, an olive
dun, and found in his book a fly which exactly matched the
natural insect in colour. With this he captured his brace.
Such incidents look as if trout were particular to a
shade, but we can never be certain that the angler did
not make an especially artful and delicate cast when he
succeeded. Sir Herbert Maxwell intends to make the
experiment of using duns of impossible and unnatural
colours; if he succeeds with these, on several occasions,
as well as with orthodox flies, perhaps we may decide that
trout do not distinguish hues. On a Sutherland loch, an
angler found that trout would take flies of any colour,
except that of a light-green leaf of a tree. This rejection
decidedly looked as if even Sutherland loch trout exercised
some discrimination. Often, on a loch, out of three flies
they will favour one, and that, perhaps, not the trail fly.
The best rule is : when you find a favourite fly on a
salmon river, use it : its special favouritism may be a
superstition, but, at all events, salmon do take it. We
cannot afford to be always making experiments, but Mr.
Herbert Spencer, busking his flies the reverse way, used
certainly to be at least as successful with sea trout as his
less speculative neighbours in Argyllshire.



INTRODUCTION Iv

In making rods, Walton is most concerned with painting
them : ' I think a good top is worth preserving, or I had
not taken care to keep a top above twenty years.' Cotton
prefers rods 'made in Yorkshire,* having advanced from
the home-made stage. His were spliced, and kept up all
through the season, as he had his water at his own door,
while Walton trudged to the 'Lee and other streams near
London, when he was not fishing the Itchen, or Shawford
Brook. The Angler's Vade Mecum recommends eighteen-
feet rods : preferring a fir butt, fashioned by the arrow-
maker, a hazel top, and a tip of whalebone. This authority^
even more than Walton, deals in mysterious ' Oyntments '
of gum ivy, horse-leek, asafoetida, man's fat, cat's fat,
powdered skulls, and grave earth. A ghoulish body is the
angler of the Vade Mecum. He recommends up-stream
fishing, with worm, in a clear water, and so is a predecessor
of Mr. Stewart. 'When you have hooked a good fish,
have an especial care to keep the rod bent, lest he run to
the end of the line ' (he means, as does Walton, lest he
pull the rod horizontal) 'and break either hook or hold.'
An old owner of my copy adds, in manuscript, ' And hale
him not to near ye top of the water, lest in flaskering
he break ye line.'

This is a favourite device of sea trout, which are very
apt to 'flasker' on the top of the water. The Vade
Mecum^ in advance of Walton on this point, recommends
a swivel in minnow-fishing : but has no idea of an
artificial minnow of silk. I have known an ingenious



Ivi The COMPLETE ANGLER

lady who, when the bodies of her phantom minnows gave
out, in Norway, supplied their place successfully with
bed-quilting artfully sewn. In fact, anything bright and
spinning will allure fish, though in the upper Ettrick,
where large trout exist, they will take the natural, but
perhaps never the phantom or angel minnow. I once
tried a spinning Alexandra fly over some large pond trout.
They followed it eagerly, but never took hold, on the first
day ; afterwards they would not look at it at all. The
Fade Mecum man, like Dr. Hamilton, recommends a light
fly for a light day, a dark fly for a dark day and dark
weather ; others hold the converse opinion. Every one
agrees that the smallness of the flies should be in pro-
portion to the lowness of the water and the advance of
summer.^

Our ancestors, apparently, used only one fly at a time;
in rapid rivers, with wet fly, two, three, or, in lochs like
Loch Leven, even four are employed. To my mind more
than two only cause entanglements of the tackle. The
old English anglers knew, of course, little or nothing of
loch fishing, using bait in lakes. The great length of
their rods made reels less necessary, and they do not seem
to have waded much. A modern angler, casting upwards,

1 I have examined all the Angling works of the period known to me.
Gilbert's Angler'' s Delight (1676) is a mere pamphlet ; William Gilbert, gent.,
pilfers from Walton, without naming him, and has literally nothing original or
meritorious. The book is very scarce. My own copy is ' uncut,' but incom-
plete, lacking the directions for fishing * in Hackney River.' Gervase
Markham, prior to Walton, is a compiler rather than an original authority on
angling.



INTRODUCTION Ivii

from the middle of the stream, with a nine-foot rod, would
have astonished Walton. They dealt with trout less
educated than ours, and tooled with much coarser and
heavier implements. They had no fine scruples about
bait of every kind, any more than the Scots have, and
Barker loved a lob-worm, fished on the surface, in a dark
night. He was a pot-fisher, and had been a cook. He
could catch a huge basket of trout, and dress them in
many different ways, — broyled, calvored hot with antchovaes
sauce, boyled, soused, stewed, fried, battered with eggs,
roasted, baked, calvored cold, and marilled, or potted, also
marrionated. Barker instructs my Lord Montague to fish
with salmon roe, a thing prohibited and very popular in
Scotland. 'If I had known it but twenty years agoe, I
would have gained a hundred pounds onely with that bait.
I am bound in duty to divulge it to your Honour, and not
to carry it to my grave with me. I do desire that men of
quality should have it that delight in that pleasure : the
greedy angler will murmur at me, but for that I care not.'
Barker calls salmon roe 'an experience I have found of
late : the best bait for a trout that I have seen in all my
time,' and it is the most deadly, in the eddy of a turbid
water. Perhaps trout would take caviare, which is not for-
bidden by the law of the land. Any unscrupulous person
may make the experiment, and argue the matter out with
the water-bailie. But, in my country, it is more usual
to duck that official, and go on netting, sniggling, salmon-
roeing, and destroying sport in the sacred name of Liberty.



Iviii The COMPLETE ANGLER

Scots wha fish wi' salmon roe,
Scots wha sniggle as ye go,
Wull ye stand the Bailie ? No !
Let the limmer die !

Now 's the day and now 's the time.
Poison a' the burns wi' lime,
Fishing fair 's a dastard crime,
We 're for fishing /r^^ !

' Ydle persones sholde have but lyttyl mesure in the sayd
disporte of fysshyng,' says our old Treatise^ but in southern
Scotland they have left few fish to dysporte w^ith, and the
trout is like to become an extinct animal. Izaak w^ould
especially have disliked Fishing Competitions, which, by
dint of the multitude of anglers, turn the contemplative
man's recreation into a crowded skirmish ; and we would
repeat his remark, ' the rabble herd themselves together ' (a
dozen in one pool, often), ' and endeavour to govern and
act in spite of authority.'

For my part, had I a river, I would gladly let all honest
anglers that use the fly cast line in it, but, where there is
no protection, then nets, poison, dynamite, slaughter of
fingerlings, and unholy baits devastate the fish, so that
' Free Fishing ' spells no fishing at all. This presses most
hardly on the artisan who fishes fair, a member of a large
class with whose pastime only a churl would wish to
interfere. We are now compelled, if we would catch fish,
to seek Tarpon in Florida, Mahseer in India : it does not
suffice to 'stretch our legs up Tottenham Hill.'

Andrew Lang.



* Simon Peter said, I go a fishing : and they said.
We also will go with thee.' JOHN xxi. 3.




'1+;



â– *?f/ 'V.



. i-^W'



To the Right worshipful

JOHN OFFLEY^

of Made ley Manor ^ in the County of Stafford