RIVERS, FISH-PONDS, FISH, AND FISHING. IN TWO PARTS: THE FIRST WRITTEN BY MR. IZAAK WALTON. THE SECOND BY CHARLES COTTON, Esq. WITH THE LIVES OF THE AUTHORS: AND NOTES, HISTORICAL, SUPPLEMENTARY, AND EXPLANATORY, BY SIR JOHN HAWKINS, Knt. THENEW YORK PUBLICLIBRARY 59634 ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOUNDATIONS. 1897. LONDON: PRINTED BY W. LEWIS, FINCH-LANE THE English language does not, perhaps, contain a book of more general and undivided popularity than THE COMPLETE ANGLER; it is praised and loved by persons of all conditions; and, so far from being confined to those who are devoted to the sport of which it mainly treats, it is a favourite with many men who never handled an Angling-rod in their lives. As a literary production it is a phenomenon, a work entirely sui generis, such as was never before produced, and such as we shall probably never see again. Lucid and interesting treatises have been very frequently written upon recreative sports, but, although the authors have had all the excitement which an ardent attachment to the respective subjects could supply, none of them have been made to extend beyond the circle for whose instruction or amusement they were undertaken, nor have they in any instance filled so independent a station in literature, as The Complete Angler has done. |