44 Ikings of tbe IRofc, TCifle, an& (Sun 



style Cotton's contribution to " The Compleat Angler " 

 is equal to Walton's. It is a very creditable imitation 

 of the master, but the indescribable charm of Walton 

 is lacking. To the fly-fisher, however, the name of 

 Cotton is dear, for he was the first to write at once 

 elegantly, practically, and in detail of the highest 

 form of the art of angling. 



They were an oddly assorted pair, Izaak Walton 

 and Charles Cotton, and their friendship was a singular 

 one. At first sight it seems marvellous that two men 

 so utterly dissimilar in their lives and characters should 

 have become firm and affectionate friends that the 

 pious, sedate, irreproachable London tradesman should 

 have found anything to attract him in the roystering, 

 dissipated, reckless young squire, and vice versa. The 

 writer of the brief notice of Cotton in the " Dictionary 

 of National Biography " says that he was " a man of 

 unaffected piety " ! If he had written affected piety 

 I could have understood him, for it was often politic 

 in Cotton's days to affect piety and other virtues, and 

 Charles might have found such affectation advisable in 

 his intercourse with the sober and devout haberdasher. 

 But how anyone who has ever glanced at Cotton's 

 " Scarronides ; or, the First Book of Virgil Travestie " 

 could call him a man of unaffected piety I am at a loss 

 to imagine. His version, for example, of the Judg- 

 ment of Paris is as obscene and indecent as any- 

 thing that even Rochester ever wrote. It is all very 

 well to say that much breadth and coarseness were 

 allowed to the writers of those days. But this man revels 

 in lasciviousness a thing abhorrent to the cleanly 



