THE COMPLETE ANGLER; OR, THE CONTEMPLATIVE MAN'S BY IZAAK WALTON. " BEING A Fac-simile reprint of the first edition, published in 1653. NEW YORK: THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY, A 16536 PREFACE. In the standard prose literature of England there are few books which have had a wider popularity than The Complete Angler of honest, gentle, thoughtful Izaak Walton, and few of which it is more difficult to obtain a copy of the first edition. Although not a work to come to an untimely end through such polemical influences as may safely be assumed to have put out of the way many a copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress when in its youth, though the odium theologicum can have had but small part or lot in the reduction of Walton's first edition to so small a remnant as is known to exist,-still there |