That this last is true of Walton’s _Angler_ seems proven by its continual reappearance. The Hundredth Edition (called after the rivers Lea and Dove, which Walton loved) was brought out in 1888, by the genial fisherman and bibliophile, R. B. Marston of the London _Fishing Gazette_. Among the other English editions I like John Major’s second (1824); and Sir John Hawkins’, reissued by Bagster (1808); and Pickering’s richly illustrated two volumes edited by Sir Harris Nicolas (1836). There is a 32mo reprint by the same publisher, (and a “diamond” from the Oxford University Press,) small enough to go comfortably in a vest-pocket with your watch or your pipe. I must speak also of the admirable introductions to the _Angler_ written in these latter years by James Russell Lowell, Andrew Lang, and Richard Le Gallienne; and of the great American edition made by the Reverend Doctor George W. Bethune in 1847, a work in which the learning, wit, and sympathy of the editor illuminate the pages. This edition is already hard to find, but no collector of angling books would willingly go without it. The gentle reader has a wide choice, then, of the form in which he will take his Walton,—something rare and richly adorned for the library, or something small and plain for the pocket or the creel. But in what shape soever he may choose to read the book, if he be not “a severe, sour-complexioned man” he will find it good company. There is a most propitiating paragraph in the “Address” at the beginning of the first edition. Explaining why he has introduced “some innocent harmless mirth” into his work, Walton writes: “I am the willinger to justify this innocent mirth because the whole discourse is a kind of picture of my own disposition, at least of my disposition in such days and times as I allow myself, when honest _Nat._ and _R.R._ and I go a-fishing together.” This indeed is one of the great attractions of the book, that it so naturally and simply shows the author. I know of no other in which this quality of self-revelation without pretense or apology is as modest and engaging,—unless it be the _Essays_ of Charles Lamb, or those of M. de Montaigne. We feel well acquainted with Walton when we have read the _Angler_, and perhaps have added to our reading his only other volume,—a series of brief _Lives_ of certain excellent and beloved men of his time, wherein he not only portrays their characters but further discloses his own. They were men of note in their day: Sir Henry Wotton, ambassador to Venice; Dr. John Donne, Dean of St. Paul’s; Richard Hooker, famous theologian; George Herbert, sacred poet; Bishop Sanderson, eminent churchman. With most of these, and with other men of like standing, Walton was in friendship. The company he kept indicates his quality. Whatever his occupation or his means, he was certainly a gentleman and a scholar, as well as a good judge of fishing.