Mr.Westwood has made a catalogue of books cited by Walton in his Compleat Angler.There is AElian (who makes the first known reference to fly-fishing);Aldrovandus,De Piscibus (1638);Dubravius,De Piscibus (1559);and the English translation (1599)Gerard's Herball (1633);Gesner,De Piscibus (s.a.)and Historia Naturalis (1558);Phil.Holland's Pliny (1601);Rondelet,De Piscibus Marines (1554);Silvianus Aquatilium Historiae (1554):these nearly exhaust Walton's supply of authorities in natural history.He was devoted,as we saw,to authority,and had a childlike faith in the fantastic theories which date from Pliny.'Pliny hath an opinion that many flies have their birth,or being,from a dew that in the spring falls upon the leaves of trees.'It is a pious opinion!Izaak is hardly so superstitious as the author of The Angler's Vade Mecum.I cannot imagine him taking 'Man's fat and cat's fat,of each half an ounce,mummy finely powdered,three drains,'and a number of other abominations,to 'make an Oyntment according to Art,and when you Angle,anoint 8inches of the line next the Hook therewith.'Or,'Take the Bones and Scull of a Dead-man,at the opening of a Grave,and beat the same into Pouder,and put of this Pouder in the Moss wherein you keep your Worms,--BUT OTHERS LIKEGRAVE EARTH AS WELL.'No doubt grave earth is quite as efficacious.
These remarks show how Izaak was equipped in books and in practical information:it follows that his book is to be read,not for instruction,but for human pleasure.
So much for what Walton owed to others.For all the rest,for what has made him the favourite of schoolboys and sages,of poets and philosophers,he is indebted to none but his Maker and his genius.That he was a lover of Montaigne we know;and,had Montaigne been a fisher,he might have written somewhat like Izaak,but without the piety,the perfume,and the charm.There are authors whose living voices,if we know them in the flesh,we seem to hear in our ears as we peruse their works.Of such was Mr.Jowett,sometime Master of Balliol College,a good man,now with God.It has ever seemed to me that friends of Walton must thus have heard his voice as they read him,and that it reaches us too,though faintly.
Indeed,we have here 'a kind of picture of his own disposition,'as he tells us Piscator is the Walton whom honest Nat.and R.Roe and Sir Henry Wotton knew on fishing-days.The book is a set of confessions,without their commonly morbid turn.'I write not for money,but for pleasure,'he says;methinks he drove no hard bargain with good Richard Marriott,nor was careful and troubled about royalties on his eighteenpenny book.He regards scoffers as 'an abomination to mankind,'for indeed even Dr.Johnson,who,a century later,set Moses Browne on reprinting The Compleat Angler,broke his jest on our suffering tribe.'Many grave,serious men pity anglers,'says Auceps,and Venator styles them 'patient men,'as surely they have great need to be.For our toil,like that of the husbandman,hangs on the weather that Heaven sends,and on the flies that have their birth or being from a kind of dew,and on the inscrutable caprice of fish;also,in England,on the miller,who giveth or withholdeth at his pleasure the very water that is our element.The inquiring rustic who shambles up erect when we are lying low among the reeds,even he disposes of our fortunes,with whom,as with all men,we must be patient,dwelling ever -'With close-lipped Patience for our only friend,Sad Patience,too near neighbour of Despair.'