He cites Montaigne’s opinion of cats,—a familiar judgment expressed with lightness,—and in the first edition Winds up his quotation with the sentence, “To this purpose speaks Montaigne concerning cats.” In the fifth edition this is humourously improved to, “Thus _freely_ speaks Montaigne concerning cats,”—as if it were something noteworthy to take a liberty with this petted animal. The beautiful description of the song of the nightingale, and of the lark, and the fine passage beginning, “Every misery that I miss is a new mercy,” are jewels that Walton added in revision. In the first edition he gravely tells how the salmon “will force themselves over the tops of weirs and hedges or stops in the water, _by taking their tails into their mouths and leaping over those places_, even to a height beyond common belief.” But upon reflection this fish-story seems to him dubious; and so in the later edition you find the mouth-and-tail legend in a poetical quotation, to which Walton cautiously adds, “_This Michael Drayton tells you_ of this leap or summer-salt of the salmon.” It would be easy to continue these illustrations of Walton’s care in revising his work through successive editions; indeed a long article, or even a little book might be made upon this subject, and if I had the time I should like to do it. Another theme would well repay study, and that is the influence of the King James Version of the Bible upon his style and thought. That wonderful example of pure, strong, and stately English prose, was first printed and published when Walton was eighteen years old, about the time he came to London as an apprentice. Yet to such good purpose did he read and study it that his two books, the _Angler_ and the _Lives_, are full of apt quotations from it, and almost every page shows the exemplary effect of its admirable diction. Indeed it has often seemed to me that his fine description of the style of the Prophet Amos, (in the first chapter of the _Angler_,) reveals something of the manner in which Walton himself desired to write; and in this desire he was not altogether unsuccessful.