CHARLES COTTON. clxxix 



which at some melancholy times, I believed I might not live to finish. 

 Being since restored to a better state of health, and coming to review my 

 papers, either the dislike of what I had already done, the shame of having 

 been so long in doing it, the indisposition of my disease left still hanging 

 upon me, the bulk of what I had undertaken, the little leisure I conceived 

 I might have wherewith to perform it, or all together, had almost per- 

 suaded me to hold on the same resolution, and for ever to let it alone ; till 

 recollecting myself, I remembered I had a greater obligation upon me 

 (which nevertheless I do not think fit to publish in this place) to go through 

 with what I had already begun, than was to be dissolved by any truant 

 humour, or private aversion of my own. I, therefore, reassumed my 

 former purpose, and some months since took the book again in good 

 earnest in hand, which when I have said, any ingenious person may 

 reasonably wonder, how a man in good earnest, and that has so little to do 

 in the world as I have, could be all this tedious time about such a piece of 

 work as this : to which, if what I have already said will not serve for an 

 excuse, I shall answer, that although by my incapacity, my ill fortune, or 

 both, I stand excused from public employment, I have notwithstanding so 

 much private concern of my own to divert me, and so few moments to 

 bestow upon myself, that I wonder it is done so soon ; an apology I might 

 however have spared, since my haste will I fear be too legible in every 

 line." 



It would seem that Cotton had met with some pecuniary losses 

 from his previous publications, and that he was not induced to 

 translate the work from any expectation of profit, as he says : 



"It was not, therefore, out of any ambition I had to be again in print, 

 I having suffered too much that way already ; nor to be reputed a good 

 translator, the best whereof sit in the lowest form of writers," "neither 

 was I prompted to it by any design of advantage, that consideration being 

 ever very much below my thoughts ; nor to oblige the world, that being as 

 much above my expectation : but having an incurable humour of scribbling 

 upon me, I believed I could not choose a braver subject for my friends' 

 diversion, and my own entertainment than this." 



He often adverts to the Duke of Espernon's loyalty in terms 

 of admiration, and states that it was his greatest inducement to 

 undertake the work, " especially," he adds, " when I reflected up- 

 on the times we ourselves have too lately seen, when loyalty was 

 not very much in fashion, or not to be owned without manifest 

 ruin." He then makes a pleasing acknowledgment to his 

 publisher, Henry Brome, who was, it is presumed, the brother of 

 the poet of that name, with whom, as has been already observed, 

 both Walton and Cotton were intimate : 



" Lastly, in the behalf of my bookseller Mr Brome (to whose kindness 

 I owe more than I can pay him by this impression) I am to say, that 

 although I dare not answer how far this history may suffer by my over- 

 sights or mistakes, or by the faults escaped the press, which (I know not 



