adapted to that end. The work should be reprinted in a similar format:
quarto editions are out of place.

The fortunes of the book, the _fata libelli_, have been traced by Mr.
Westwood. There are several misprints (later corrected) in the earliest
copies, as (p. 88) 'Fordig' for 'Fordidg,' (p. 152) 'Pudoch' for
'Pudock.' The appearance of the work was advertised in _The Perfect
Diurnal_ (May 9-16), and in No. 154 of _The Mercurius Politicus_ (May 19-
26), also in an almanack for 1654. Izaak, or his publisher Marriott,
cunningly brought out the book at a season when men expect the Mayfly.
Just a month before, Oliver Cromwell had walked into the House of
Commons, in a plain suit of black clothes, with grey stockings. His
language, when he spoke, was reckoned unparliamentary (as it undeniably
was), and he dissolved the Long Parliament. While Marriott was
advertising Walton's work, Cromwell was making a Parliament of Saints,
'faithful, fearing God, and hating covetousness.' This is a good
description of Izaak, but he was not selected. In the midst of
revolutions came _The Compleat Angler_ to the light, a possession for
ever. Its original purchasers are not likely to have taken a hand in
Royalist plots or saintly conventicles. They were peaceful men. A
certain Cromwellian trooper, Richard Franck, was a better angler than
Walton, and he has left to us the only contemporary and contemptuous
criticism of his book: to this we shall return, but anglers, as a rule,
unlike Franck, must have been for the king, and on Izaak's side in
controversy.

Walton brought out a second edition in 1655. He rewrote the book, adding
more than a third, suppressing _Viator_, and introducing _Venator_. New
plates were added, and, after the manner of the time, commendatory
verses. A third edition appeared in 1661, a fourth (published by Simon