Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler

Excerpt

To write on Walton is, indeed, to hold a candle to the sun.  The editor has been content to give a summary of the chief or rather the only known, events in Walton’s long life, adding a notice of his character as displayed in his Biographies and in The Compleat Angler, with comments on the ancient and modern practice of fishing, illustrated by passages from Walton’s foregoers and contemporaries.  Like all editors of Walton, he owes much to his predecessors, Sir John Hawkins, Oldys, Major, and, above all, to the learned Sir Harris Nicolas.