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THE COMPLETE ANGLER;

OR,

_THE CONTEMPLATIVE MAN'S RECREATION_.

By

ISAAK WALTON.


Being a _Facsimile_ Reprint of the First Edition published in 1653.
With a Preface by RICHARD LE GALLIENNE.




PREFACE.


The "first edition" has been a favourite theme for the scorn of those
who love it not. "The first edition--and the worst!" gibes a modern
poet, and many are the true lovers of literature entirely insensitive
to the accessory, historical or sentimental, associations of books. The
present writer possesses a copy of one of Walton's Lives, that of
Bishop Sanderson, with the author's donatory inscription to a friend
upon the title-page. To keep this in his little library he has
undergone willingly many privations, cheerfully faced hunger and cold
rather than let it pass from his hand; yet, how often when,
tremulously, he has unveiled this treasure to his visitors, how often
has it been examined with undilating eyes, and cold, unenvious hearts!
Yet so he must confess himself to have looked upon a friend's superb
first edition of "Pickwick" though surely not without that measure of
interest which all, save the quite unlettered or unintelligent, must
feel in seeing the first visible shape of a book of such resounding
significance in English literature.

Such interest may, without fear of denial, be claimed for a facsimile
of the first edition of "The Compleat Angler" after "Robinson Crusoe"
perhaps the most popular of English classics