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. Thomas Westwood, whose
gentle poetry, it is to be feared, has won but few listeners, has drawn
this fancy picture of the commotion in St. Dunstan's Churchyard on a
May morning of the year 1653, when Richard Marriott first published the
famous discourse, little dreaming that he had been chosen for the
godfather of so distinguished an immortality. The lines form an
epilogue to twelve beautiful sonnets_ à propos _of the bi-centenary of
Walton's death:
"What, not a word for thee, O little tome,
Brown-jerkined, friendly-faced--of all my books
The one that wears the quaintest, kindliest looks--
Seems most completely, cosily at home
Amongst its fellows. Ah! if thou couldst tell
Thy story--how, in sixteen fifty-three,
Good Master Marriott, standing at its door,
Saw Anglers hurrying--fifty--nay, three score,
To buy thee ere noon pealed from Dunstan's bell:--
And how he stared and ... shook his sides with glee.
One story, this, which fact or fiction weaves.
Meanwhile, adorn my shelf, beloved of all--
Old book! with lavender between thy leaves,
And twenty ballads round thee on the wall."
Whether there was quite such a rush as this on its publishing day we
have no certain knowledge, though Westwood, in his "Chronicle of the
Compleat Angler" speaks of "the almost immediate sale of the entire
edition." According to Sir Harris Nicolas, it was thus advertised in_
The Perfect Diurnall_: from Monday, May 9th, to Monday, May 16th, 1653:
_"The Compleat Angler, or the Contemplative Man's Recreation_, being a
discourse of Fish and Fishing, not unworthy the perusal of most
Anglers, of 18 pence price. Written by Iz. Wa. Also the Gipsee, never
till now published: Both printed for Richard Marriot, to be sold at his
shop in Saint Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet street."
And it was thus calmly, unexcitedly noticed in the_ Mercurius
Politicus_: from Thursday, May 12, to Thursday, May 19, 1653: _"There is
newly extant, a Book of 18d. price, called the Compleat Angler, or the
Contemplative Man's Recreation, being a discourse of Fish and Fishing,
not unworthy the perusal of most Anglers. Printed for Richard Marriot,
to be sold at his shop in St. Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet street_."
Thus for it, as for most great births, the bare announcement sufficed.
One of the most beautiful of the world's books had been born into
the world, and was still to be bought in its birthday form--for
eighteen-pence.
In 1816, Mr. Marston calculates, the market value was about £4 4s. In
1847 Dr. Bethune estimated it at £12 12s. In 1883 Westwood reckoned it
"from £70 to £80 or even more" and since then copies have fetched £235
and £310, though in 1894 we have a sudden drop at Sotheby's to
£150--which, however, was more likely due to the state of the copy than
to any diminution in the zeal of Waltonian collectors, a zeal, indeed,
which burns more ardently from year to year.
Sufficiently out of reach of the poor collector as it is at present, it
is probable that it will mount still higher, and consent only to belong
to richer and richer men. And thus, in course of time, this facsimile
will, in clerical language, find an increasing sphere of usefulness;
for it is to those who have more instant demands to satisfy with their
hundred-pound notes that this facsimile is designed to bring
consolation. If it is not the rose itself, it is a photographic
refection of it, and it will undoubtedly give its possessor a
sufficiently faithful idea of its original.
But, apart from the satisfaction of such curiosity, the facsimile has a
literary value, in that it differs very materially from succeeding
editions. The text by which "The Compleat Angler" is generally known is
that of the fifth edition, published in 1676, the last which Walton
corrected and finally revised, seven years before his death. But in the
second edition (1655) the book was already very near to its final
shape, for Walton had enlarged it by about a third, and the dialogue
was now sustained by three persons, Piscator, Venator and Auceps,
instead of two--the original "Viator" also having changed his name to
"Venator." Those interested in tracing the changes will find them all
laboriously noted in Sir Harris Nicolas's great edition. Of the further
additions made in the fifth edition, Sir Harris Nicolas makes this just
criticism: "It is questionable," he says, "whether the additions which
he then made to it have increased its interest. The garrulity and
sentiments of an octogenarian are very apparent in some of the
alterations; and the subdued colouring of religious feeling which
prevails throughout the former editions, and forms one of the charms of
the piece, is, in this impression, so much heightened as to become
almost obtrusive."
There is a third raison d'être for this facsimile, which to name with
approbation will no doubt seem impiety to many, but which, as a
personal predilection, I venture to risk--there is no Cotton! The
relation between Walton and Cotton is a charming incongruity to
contemplate, and one stands by their little fishing-house in Dovedale
as before an altar of friendship. Happy and pleasant in their lives, it
is good to see them still undivided in their deaths--but, to my mind,
their association between the boards of the same book mars a charming
classic. No doubt Cotton has admirably caught the spirit of his master,
but the very cleverness with which he has done it increases the sense
of parody with which his portion of the book always offends me. Nor can
I be the only reader of the book for whom it ends with that gentle
benediction--"And upon all that are lovers of virtue, and dare trust in
his providence, and be quiet, and go a Angling"--and that sweet
exhortation from I Thess. iv. 11--"Study to be quiet."
After the exquisite quietism of this farewell, it is distracting to
come precipitately upon the fine gentleman with the great wig and the
Frenchified airs. This is nothing against "hearty, cheerful Mr.
Cotton's strain" of which, in Walton's own setting and in his own
poetical issues, I am a sufficient admirer. Cotton was a clever
literary man, and a fine engaging figure of a gentleman, but, save by
the accident of friendship, he has little more claim to be printed
along with Walton than the gallant Col. Robert Venables, who, in the
fifth edition, contributed still a third part, entitled "The
Experienc'd Angler: or, Angling Improv'd. Being a General Discourse of
Angling," etc., to a book that was immortally complete in its first.
While "The Compleat Angler" was regarded mainly as a text-book for
practical anglers, one can understand its publisher wishing to make it
as complete as possible by the addition of such technical appendices;
but now, when it has so long been elevated above such literary
drudgery, there is no further need for their perpetuation. For I
imagine that the men to-day who really catch fish, as distinguished
from the men who write sentimentally about angling, would as soon think
of consulting Izaak Walton as they would Dame Juliana Berners. But
anyone can catch fish--can he, do you say?--the thing is to have so
written about catching them that your book is a pastoral, the freshness
of which a hundred editions have left unexhausted,--a book in which the
grass is for ever green, and the shining brooks do indeed go on
forever.
_RICHARD LE GALLIENNE_.
[Frontispiece Text:
The
Compleat Angler
or the
Contemplative Man's
Recreation.
Being a Discourse of
FISH and FISHING,
Not unworthy the perusal of most Anglers.
Simon Peter said, I go a fishing; and they said. We
also wil go with thee. John 21.3.
London, Printed by T. Maxes for RICH. MARRIOT, in
S. Dunstans Churchyard Fleet Street, 1653.]
To the Right Worshipful JOHN OFFLEY Of MADELY Manor in the County of
_Stafford_, Esq, My most honoured Friend.