The Compleat Angler
A fair bit of the book is available on-line....I was fortunate to get a copy
of the last issue, more like lucky. I was walking along a street in Halifax
NS and there it was in the window - I wanted a copy for years. Went in -
opened the cover and there was the price $7.00 !!!! Still had the mint
cover on it too. There is a fishing God.
Who cares if he plagiarized something from a hundred years before his time.
If he did, he was a lucky guy to have the original book (if he did!) Maybe
Izaak just thought along the same lines. Old Izaak was onto
something......He had appreciation for the rivers and fish...As:
Of recreation there is none
So free as fishing is alone;
All other pastimes do no less
Than mind and body both possess:
My hand alone my work can do,
So I can fish and study too.
And, from The Anglers Song in the book:
As inward love breeds outward talk
The hound some praise, and some the hawk
Some, better pleas'd with private sport
Use tennis, some a mistress court:
But these delights I neither wish
Nor envy, while I freely fish.
Keith P.
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