enormous popularity to his virtues as a man, and these virtues are what condition his style and give his work its fundamental meaning. Millions have read him with joy who have never caught a fish since childhood, if at all. Indeed, . . . in America at least,
most of the kinds of fish he talks about are left to small boys. The second half of The
Compleat Angler was added in the late editions and written by Charles Cotton as a guide to trout fishing in rough water. Those who want to know how to catch fish can learn most from Cotton’s additions. We read Izaak Walton for a special quality of soul . . . for his tone, for his perfect attunement to the quiet streams and flowered meadows and bosky hills of the Thames valley long ago. . . . It may sound outrageous to say that Izaak Walton wrote one of the Great Books — and that about catching fish — because he was a saint, but so it is.
— Volume 3: The Best in General Reference Literature, the Social Sciences, History and the Arts.
