An Obscure Analogue of the Compleat Angler

Extract

In both his Life of Sir Henry Wotton and The Compleat Angler, Izaac Walton testifies to Wotton's love of angling. Wotton was, says Walton, “a most dear lover, and frequent practiser of the art,” and intended “to write a Discourse of the Art, and in praise of Angling.” Doubtless when Walton went down from London to visit Wotton at Eton, they would turn aside from discussions of letters and the vexatious questions of church and state to talk about fish and the best methods of catching them. It is not improbable that they cast their lines together in convenient brooks and rivers. Was their talk about angling overheard by a lad who later made both a literal and a literary application of their ideas? It is not unlikely; and it would seem that herein lies a kinship between the fourth section of Robert Boyle's Occasional Reflections and the great masterpiece of mid-seventeenth century literature.