Page 11 Advertisements Column 1

Press, Volume LXV, Issue 19813, 28 December 1929, Page 11

Mr John T. Winteneh, in "Books and the Man," gives a little more information about the "Compleat" of Walton's "Angler' than is known to the average reader who hugs the word: "The Compleat Angler" and its author are notable for a pair of ingenious spellings which have confused or delighted, or both confused and delighted, thousands among iglish-speaking peoples. The spelling' -orapleat" has endeared itself especially to those whose conception of :omance is a luncheon at Ye Coffee Shopre and a dinner at Ye Olde Inne, and who arp always taken sHghtly aback on learning that "ye" is pron«iinced "the." As a matter of fact, le spelling "compleat" occurs exactly once • u earh of the four editions under the original title published during Walton's lifetime. That once is on the engraved title page. On page one of the text the title reade "The Complete Angler," and thus it reads in the running heads- throughout the book. It was a day in which virtually any grouping of letters that made recognisable the word in the writer's mind served the purose a3 well as another. The spelling "com- _ [eat" in the beautiful cartouche on the title page could not be altered, of course, short of having the plate re-engraved. If author, printer, or publisher had raised *ny objection there wa( certainly plentv of time to make the change between editions: the fart that no change k»s made if reasnnable evidenco that nofcodv was sufficiently concerned about the business to suggest an • iteration. An English critic mentions among literary works which have fallen into undeserved neglect H. D. Traill's "The Xew Lucian," the short stories of Frank Harri*, and those of Frederick Wedmore. The> six best of Harris's, he says, equal the six best of any writer in English: and Wedmore's "A Chemist in the Suburbs" should be in "every anthology of short stories."