And here we may suppose the younger Mr. Cotton, tempted by the vicinity of a river plentifully stored with fish of the best kinds, to have chosen angling for his recreation; and looking upon it to be, what Walton rightly terms it, "an art," to have applied himself to the improvement of that branch of it, fishing with an artificial fly. To this end he made himself acquainted with the nature of aquatic insects, with the forms and colours of the several flies that are found on or near rivers, the times of their appearance and departure, and the methods of imitating them with furs, silks, feathers, and other materials: in all which researches he exercised such patience, industry, and ingenuity, and succeeded so well, that having, in the following dialogues, communicated to the public the result of his experience, he must be deemed the great improver of this elegant recreation, and a benefactor to his posterity.

There is reason to think, that, after his leaving the university, he was received into his father's family; for we are told that his father, being a man of bright parts, gave him themes and authors whereon to exercise his judgment and learning, even to the time of his entering into the state of matrimony;* the first fruit of which exercises was, as it seems, his Elegy on the gallant Lord Derby.†

In 1656, being then twenty-six years of age, and before any patrimony had descended to him, or he had any visible means of subsisting a family, he married a distant relation, Isabella, daughter of Sir Thomas Hutchinson, of Owthorp, in the county of Nottingham, knight. The distress in which this step might have involved him was averted by the death of his father, in 1658, an event that put him into possession of the family estate but from the character of his father, as given by Lord Clarendon, it cannot be supposed but that it was struggling with law-suits, and laden with encumbrances.

The great Lord Falkland was wont to say, that he " 'pitied

* Oldys' Life, xii.

+ Ibid.

Ibid. xiii.

unlearned gentlemen in rainy weather." Mr. Cotton might possibly entertain the same sentiment; for, in this situation, we find that his employments were,-study, for his delight and improvement, and fishing, for his recreation and health; for each of which several employments we may suppose he chose the fittest times and seasons.

In 1660 he published A Panegyric to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, a prose pamphlet, in folio, a copy of which is preserved in the library at the British Museum.

In 1663 he published the Moral Philosophy of the Stoics, translated from the French of Monsieur De Vaix, president of the Parliament of Provence, in obedience, as the Preface informs us, to a command of his father,-doubtless with a view to his improvement in the science of morality: and this, notwithstanding the book had been translated by Dr. James, the first keeper of the Bodleian library, above threescore years before.

His next publication was Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie, being the first book of Virgil's Æneis, in English burlesque, 8vo. 1664. Concerning which, and also the fourth book, translated by him, and afterward published, it may be sufficient to say, that, for degrading sublime poetry into doggrel, Scarron's example is no authority; and that, were the merit of this practice greater than many men think it, those who admire the wit, the humour, and the learning of Hudibras, cannot but be disgusted at the low buffoonery, the forced wit, and the coarseness and obscenity of the Virgil Travestie; and yet the poem has its admirers, is commended by Sir John Suckling, in his Session of the Poets, and has passed fourteen editions.

To say the truth, the absurdity of that species of the mock epic, which gives to princes the manners of the lowest of their inferiors, has never been sufficiently noticed. In the instance before us, how is the poet embarrassed, when he describes Dido as exercising regal authority, and at the same time employed in the meanest of domestic

offices; and Æneas, a person of royal descent, as a clown, a commander, and a common sailor! In the other kind of burlesque, namely, where the characters are elevated, no such difficulty interposes; grant but to Don Quixote and Sancho, to Hudibras and Ralpho, the stations which Cervantes and Butler have respectively assigned them, and all their actions are consistent with their several characters. Soon after, he engaged in a more commendable employment, a translation of the History of the Life of the Duke d'Espernon, from 1598, where D'Avila's history ends, to 1642, in twelve books; in which undertaking he was interrupted by an appointment to some place or post, which he hints at in the Preface, but did not hold it long; as also by a sickness that delayed the publication until 1670, when the book came out in a folio volume, with a handsome dedication to Dr. Gilbert Sheldon, archbishop of Canterbury.

In the same year, being the fortieth of his age, and having been honoured with a captain's commission in the army, he was drawn, by some occasion of business or interest, to visit Ireland; which event he has recorded, with some particular circumstances touching the course of his life, in a burlesque poem called A Voyage to Ireland, carelessly written, but abounding in humorous description, as will appear by the following extract therefrom:—

A guide I had got, who demanded great vails
For conducting me over the mountains of Wales;
Twenty good shillings, which sure very large is:
Yet that would not serve, but I must bear his charges;

And yet, for all that, rode astride on a beast,

The worst that e'er went on three legs, I protest:

It certainly was the most ugly of jades;

His hips and his rump made a right ace of spades;
His sides were two ladders, well spur-gall'd withal;
His neck was a helve, and his head was a mall ;-
For his colour, my pains and your trouble I'll spare,
For the creature was wholly denuded of hair,
And except for two things, as bare as my nail,—
A tuft of a mane, and a sprig of a tail.
Now, such as the beast was, e'en such was the rider,
With a head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider,

A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat,

The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat.

E'en such was my guide, and his beast; let them pass,

The one for a horse, and the other an ass.

In this poem, he relates, with singular pleasantry, that, at Chester, coming out of church, he was taken notice of by the mayor of the city, for his rich garb, and particularly a gold belt that he then wore; and by him invited home to supper, and very hospitably entertained.

In the same year, and also the year after, more correctly, he published a translation of the tragedy entitled Les Horaces, i. e. The Horatii, from the French of Pierre Corneille; and, in 1674, the Fair One of Tunis, a novel, translated also from the French; as also a translation of the Commentaries of Blaise de Montluc, marshal of France, a thrasonical gascon, (as Lord Herbert has shown, in his History of Henry VIII.,) far better skilled in the arts of flight than of battle.

In 1675, Mr. Cotton published two little books,— The Planter's Manual, being Instructions for Cultivating all sorts of Fruit Trees, octavo; and a burlesque of sundry select dialogues of Lucian, with the title of Burlesque upon Burlesque, or the Scoffer Scoffed, duodecimo, which has much the same merit as the Virgil Travestie.

Angling having been the favourite recreation of Mr. Cotton for many years before this, we cannot but suppose that the publication of such a book as the Complete Angler of Mr. Walton had attracted his notice, and probably excited in him a desire to become acquainted with the author; and that, setting aside other circumstances, the advantageous situation of Mr. Cotton, near the finest Trout river in the kingdom, might conduce to beget a great intimacy between them. For certain it is, that before the year 1676 they were united by the closest ties of friendship; Walton, as also his son, had been frequent visitants to Mr. Cotton, at Beresford; who, for the accommodation of the former, no less than of himself, had erected a fishing-house on the

bank of the river, with a stone in the front thereof, containing a cypher that incorporated the initials of both their

names.

These circumstances, together with a formal adoption, by Walton, of Mr. Cotton for his son, that will be explained in its place, were doubtless the inducements with the latter to the writing of a second part of the Complete Angler, and therein to explain more fully the art of fishing either with a natural or an artificial fly, as also the various methods of making the latter. The book, as the author assures us, was written in the short space of ten days, and first came abroad, with the fifth edition of the first part, in the above year, 1676; and ever since the two parts have been considered as one book.

The second part of the Complete Angler is, apparently, an imitation of the first. It is a course of dialogues, between the author, shadowed under the name of Piscator, and a traveller, the very person distinguished in the first part by the name of Venator, and whom Walton of a hunter had made an angler:* in which, besides the instructions there given, and the beautiful scenery of a wild and romantic country therein displayed, the urbanity, courtesy, and hospitality of a well-bred country gentleman are represented to great advantage.

This book might be thought to contain a delineation of the author's character; and dispose the reader to think that he was delighted with his situation, content with his fortunes, and, in short, one of the happiest of men: but his next publication speaks a very different language; for living in a country that abounds, above all others in this kingdom, in rocks, caverns, and subterraneous passages, (objects that, to some minds, afford more delight than stately woods and fertile plains, rich enclosures and other the milder beauties of rural nature,) he seems to have been prompted by no other than a sullen curiosity to explore the * Vide part ii. chap. i.