How far this virtue of your's has

hitherto been extended towards those for whose inftruction and delight the book was originally written, no one, who has ever feen the waters of Chilton, or heard with what care and expence they are preserved, can be ignorant. And, as this folicitude, for the mere amusement of anglers, a very small and inconfiderable part of mankind, is a peculiar ftrain of beneficence, fo it affords a probable ground to hope, that a treatise on the art itself, written with fo much

judgment and ingenuity, and containing fuch abundant inftruction and innocent entertainment as this does, can hardly fail of a favourable reception.

Next to the fatisfaction of having reftored to the world fo valuable a work, and having performed for Mr. Walton, an office he had frequently fo well discharged for others, and which, for the honour of his memory, I could wifh had been undertaken by fome abler hand, I feel none greater, than the occafion

1

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE

HE COMPLETE ANGLER having been written fo long ago as 1653, although the last publication thereof in the lifetime of the authors, was in 1676, contains many particulars of perfons, now but little known, and frequent allufions to facts, and even modes of living, the memory whereof is in a great measure obliterated: a new edition therefore feemed to require a retrospect to the time when the authors lived; an explanation of fuch paffages, as an interval of more than an hundred years had neceffarily rendered obfcure; together with fuch improvements in the art itself, as the accumulated experience of fucceeding times has enabled us to furnish.

An edition, undertaken with this view, is now attempted, and in a way, it is to be hoped, that may once again introduce the authors to

the