BLIND HOOKEY.
A RISE AT THE FATHER OF ANGLING.
THE memory of Izaak Walton has hitherto floated down the stream of time without even a nibble at it; but, alas! where is the long line so pure and even that does not come sooner or later to have a weak length detected in it? The severest critic of Molière was an old woman; and now a censor of the same sex takes upon herself to tax the immortal work of our Piscator with holding out an evil temptation to the rising generation Instead of concurring in the general admiration of his fascinating pictures of fishing, she boldly asserts that the rod has been the spoiling of her child, and insists that in calling the Angler gentle and inoffensive, the Author was altogether
[Pg 426]
 wrong in his dubbing. To render her strictures more attractive she has thrown them into a poetical form; having probably learned by experience that a rhyme at the end of a line is a very taking bait to the generality of readers. Hark! how she rates the meek Palmer whom Winifred Jenkins would have called “an angle upon earth!”
To Mr. IZAAK WALTON, at Mr. MAJOR’S the Bookseller’s in Fleet Street.
Mr. Walton, it’s harsh to say it, but as a Parent I can’t help wishing
You’d been hung before you publish’d your book, to set all the young people a fishing!
There&............