Worthy of Perusal

In the 303 years since it was published, Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler has occupied a sure place as one of the most popular of English classics--and earned its author a reputation as one of the most genial of men. A onetime ironmonger, Walton wrote not for money but for pleasure, hoped each reader would share that pleasure and "that (if he be an honest Angler) the East wind may never blow when he goes a Fishing." But from Princeton University last week an ill wind did blow, setting many an honest angler to wondering whether their gentle idol was really as original as they thought.

The Walton story began in London two years ago when Manhattan Book Collector Carl Otto v. Kienbusch picked up a dilapidated little volume from "a package of odds and ends from the attic of a country house." The volume was a real find--the only copy of a long-forgotten book published in 1577 on The Arte of Angling. Its title page had gone, and so had the name of its author. But its text had a distantly familiar ring. Says Princeton Professor Gerald Eades Bentley in his introduction to the Princeton University Library's republication of the book: "It would appear to me likely that Izaak Walton had taken his idea for the general structure of The Compleat Angler from The Arte of Angling."

Both books were written in dialogue, and the two main characters, Piscator and Viator (changed in later Walton editions to Venator) are the same. Both books give similar information on how to bait a hook with a dead minnow and prepare certain kinds of fish. They even share the same errors. The author of the Arte says that the carp is "a fish not long knowen in England," while Walton says, "nor hath been long in England." Other coincidences:

P: In answering the question, "But how make you gentles [i.e., fly larvae] to keep them?" the Arte says: "Of a piece of a beast's liver, hanged in some corner over a pot or little barrel, with a cross stick and the vessel half full of red clay; and as they wax big, they will fall into that troubled clay and so scour them that they will be ready at all times." On the same subject, Walton says: "You may breed and keep gentles thus: take a piece of beast's liver, and with a cross stick hang it in some corner over a pot or barrel half full of dry clay; and as the gentles grow big, they will fall into the barrel, and scour themselves, and be always ready for use."

P: On preparing malt as bait, the Arte says: "You must take a handful of well-made malt and rub it between your hands in a fair dish of water to make them as clean as you may . . ." Says Walton: "Get a handful of well-made malt, and put it into a dish of water, and then wash and rub it betwixt your hands till you make it clean . . ."

Damaging as such evidence may sound by today's standards, says Bentley, no angler should be dismayed: "Everybody in Walton's time borrowed from other books. Milton did it, Shakespeare did it. Nobody thought of it as plagiarism at the time." Besides which, Walton fans will undoubtedly go right on agreeing with Walton's own judgment of his book: "And though this Discourse may be lyable to some Exceptions, yet I cannot doubt but that most Readers may receive so much pleasure or profit by it, as may make it worthy the time of their perusal, if they be not very busie men."

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