PREFATORY ADDRESS

TO THE

SH439 h3 1822

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF GREAT BRITAIN.

NATURE maintains so unvarying a course in all her operations, that no man of sound judgment will expect any thing very new in a Treatise on the ART OF ANGLING, especially if he have been lucky enough to have possessed himself of the works of Mr. Isaac Walton, and Charles Cotton, Esq. the fathers of the art, who have treated so profoundly, and so judiciously on it, as to leave little more to those who follow in the same track, than to

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improve upon their (now) antiquated language. Of the former, particularly, it has been observed, that he seems an original and model "to all who have come after, as Virgil ap

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pears among the writers (ever since) of Geor"gics and Pastoral." Another author has

observed, "this art seems to have arrived at its

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highest perfection, almost at once, and to "have been the same in Mr. Walton, as that

"of Poetry was in Homer. The improve"ments that are made by the generality of "late writers are indeed so few, and for the "most part so trivial, rather adding to and per"plexing his words, like the commentators on "the Greek Poet, than either clearing up or

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enlarging his sense, that one cannot but won"der at seeing so much done, to so little pur

* See "The Compleat Angler, or Contemplative Man's "Recreation," in two parts, by the ingenious and celebrated