The Compleat Angler.
I am told that it is generally though silently admitted that, while
Charles Cotton came of a school of fishermen renowned for accomplishment
even now, his master and friend was not in the modern or Cottonian sense
a fisherman at all. There was in him, indeed, a vast deal of the
philosopher and the observer of nature and still more, perhaps, of the
artist in English; but there was also not a little of the cockney
sportsman. He never rose above the low-lived worm and quill; his prey
was commonly those fish that are the scorn of the true angler, for he
knew naught of trout and grayling, yet was deeply interested in such base
creatures (and such poor eating) as chub and roach and dace; and that
part of his treatise which has still a certain authority--which may be
said, indeed, to have placed the mystery of fly-fishing upon something of
a scientific basis--was not his work but that of 'my most honoured
friend, Charles Cotton, Esq.' Again, it is a characteristic of your true
as opposed to your cockney sportsman that, unless constrained thereto by
hunger, he does not eat what he has killed; and it is a characteristic of
Walton--who in this particular at least may stand for the authentic type
of the cockney sportsman as opposed to the true one--that he delighted
not much less in dining or supping on his catch than he did in the act of
making it: as witness some of the most charming parts in a book that from
one end to the other is charm and little besides. Indeed the truth--(with
reverence be it spoken)--appears to be that the _Compleat Angler_ is an
expression in the terms of art of the cit's enjoyment of the country.
Master Piscator.
What Walton saw in angling was not that delight in the consciousness of
accomplishment and intelligence which sends the true fisherman to the
river and keeps him there, rejoicing in his strength, whether he kill or
go empty away. It was rather the pretext--with a worm and perhaps a good
supper at one end and a contemplative man at the other--of a day in the
fields: where the skylark soared, and the earth smelled sweet, and the
water flashed and tinkled as it ran, while hard by some milk-maid,
courteous yet innocent, sang as she plied her nimble fingers, and not
very far away the casement of the inn-parlour gleamed comfortable
promises of talk and food and rest. That was the Master Piscator who,
being an excellent man of letters, went out to 'stretch his legs up
Tottenham Hill' in search of fish, and came home with immortal copy; and
that was the Izaak Walton who 'ventured to fill a part' of Cotton's
'margin' with remarks not upon his theory of how to angle for trout or
grayling in a clear stream but 'by way of paraphrase for your reader's
clearer understanding both of the situation of your fishing house, and
the pleasantness of that you dwell in.' He had the purest and the most
innocent of minds, he was the master of a style as bright, as sweet, as
refreshing and delightful, as fine clean home-spun some time in lavender;
he called himself an angler, and he believed in the description with a
cordial simplicity whose appeal is more persuasive now than ever. But he
was nothing if not the citizen afield--the cockney aweary of Bow Bells
and rejoicing in 'the sights and sounds of the open landscape.' After
all it is only your town-bred poet who knows anything of the country, or
is moved to concern himself in anywise for the sensations and experiences
it yields. Milton was born in Bread Street, and Herrick in Cheapside.
Yet Milton gave us the _Allegro_ and the _Penseroso_ and the scenery in
_Comus_ and the epic; while as for Herrick--the _Night-Piece_, the lovely
and immortal verses _To Meadows_, the fresh yet sumptuous and noble _To
Corinna Going a-Maying_, these and a hundred more are there to answer for
_him_. Here Walton is with Herrick and Milton and many 'dear sons of
Memory' besides; and that is why he not only loved the country but was
moved to make art of it as well.