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 L4 4s. In
1847 Dr. Bethune estimated it at L12 12s. In 1883 Westwood reckoned it
"from L70 to L80 or even more" and since then copies have fetched L235
and L310, though in 1894 we have a sudden drop at Sotheby's to L150--
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 increa