A QUAINT COMRADE BY QUIET STREAMS IN April, 1653, Oliver Cromwell, after much bloodshed and amid great confusion, violently dissolved the "Rump Parliament." In May of the same year, Izaak Walton published The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation. 'Twas a strange contrast between the tranquil book and the tempestuous time. But that the contrast was not displeasing may be inferred from the fact that five editions were issued during the author's life, which ended in 1683, at the house of his son-in-law in the cathedral close at Winchester, Walton being then in his ninety-first year and at peace with God and man. Doubtless one of the reasons why those early editions, especially the first, the second, and the fifth, (in which Walton's friend Charles Cotton added his "Instructions How to Angle for a Trout or Grayling in a Clear Stream,") are now become so rare and costly, is because they were carried about by honest anglers of the 17th Century in their coat-pockets or in their wallets, a practice whereby the body of a book is soon worn out, though its soul be immortal. That this last is true of Walton's Angler seems proven by its continual reappearance. The Hundredth Edition (called after the rivers Lea and Dove, which Walton loved) was brought out in 1888, by the genial fisherman and bibliophile, R. B. Marston of the London Fishing Gazette. Among the other English editions I like John Major's second (1824); and Sir John Hawkins', reissued by Bagster (1808); and Pickering's richly illustrated two volumes edited by Sir Harris Nicolas (1836). There is a 32mo reprint by the same publisher, (and a "diamond" from the Oxford University Press,) small enough to go comfortably in a vest-pocket with your watch or your pipe. I must speak also of the admirable introductions to the Angler written in these latter years by James Russell Lowell, Andrew Lang, and Richard Le Gallienne; and of the great American edition made by the Reverend Doctor |