The unfailing charm of the book lives in its delicately clear descriptions of the country and of rural life; in its quaint pastoral scenes, like the interview with the milkmaid and her mother, and the convocation of gipsies under the hedge; and in its sincerely happy incitements to patience, cheerfulness, a contented spirit, and a tranquil mind.
In its first form the book opened with a dialogue between Piscator and Viator; but later this was revised to a three-sided conversation in which Venator, a hunter, and Auceps, a falconer, take the place of Viator and try valiantly to uphold the merits of their respective sports as superior to angling. Of course Piscator easily gets the best of them, (authors always have this power to reserve victory for their favourites,) and Auceps goes off stage, vanquished, while Venator remains as a convert and willing disciple, to follow his “Master” by quiet streams and drink in his pleasant and profitable discourse. As a dialogue it is not very convincing, it lacks salt and pepper; Venator is too easy a convert; he makes two or three rather neat repartees, but in general, he seems to have no mind of his own. But as a monologue it is very agreeable, being written in a sincere, colloquial, unaffected yet not undignified manner, with a plenty of digressions. And these, like the by-paths on a journey, are the pleasantest parts of all. Piscator’s talk appears easy, unconstrained, rambling, yet always sure-footed, like the walk of one who has wandered by the little rivers so long that he can move forward safely without watching every step, finding his footing by a kind of instinct while his eyes follow the water and the rising fish.
But we must not imagine that such a style as this, fluent as it seems and easy to read as it is for any one with an ear for music, either comes by nature or is attained without effort. Walton speaks somewhere of his “artless pencil”; but this is true only in the sense that he makes us forget the processes of his art in the simplicity of its results. He was in fact very nice in his selection and ordering of words. He wrote and rewrote his simplest sentences and revised his work in each of the five earlier editions, except possibly the fourth.
Take, for example, the bit which I have already quoted from the “address to the reader” in the first edition, and compare it with the corresponding passage in the fifth edition:
“I am the willinger to justify the pleasant part of it, because, though it is known I can be serious at reasonable times, yet the whole discourse is, or rather was, a picture of my own disposition, especially in such days and times as I have laid aside business, and gone a-fishing with honest Nat. and R. Roe; but they are gone, and with them most of my pleasant hours, even as a shadow that passeth away and returns not.”
All the phrases in italics are either altered or added.
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.