356 LIFE OF COTTON. 



Of my poor utodetigning infancy, 

 Could Heav'n offend to such a black degree, 

 As for th' offence to damn me to a place 

 Where nature only suffers, in disgrace. 



and these other equally splenetic : 



Environ'd round with nature's shames and ills, 



Black heaths, wild rocks, black crags, and naked hills. 



So far was Mr. Cotton from thinking with the Psalmist, 

 " that his lot was fallen in a fair ground, or that he 

 *' had a goodly heritage." 



But a greater and, to the world, a more beneficial 

 employment at this time solicited his attention. The 

 old translation of Montaigne's Essays, by the " reso- 

 lute" John Florio, as he styled himself, was become 

 obsolete ; and the world were impatient for a new one. 

 Mr. Cotton not only understood French with a critical 

 exactness, but was well acquainted with the almost bar- 

 barous dialect in which that book is written : and the 

 freedom of opinion, and general notions, of men and 

 things, which the author discovers, perhaps falling-in 

 with Mr. Cotton's sentiments of human life and man- 

 ners, he undertook, and in 1685 gave to the world, 

 in a translation of that author in three volumes 8vo. 

 one of the most valuable books in the English lan- 

 guage ; in short, a translation that, if it does not (and 

 many think it does, in some respects, transcend, is 

 yet nothing inferior to, the original. And, indeed, 

 little less than this is to be inferred, from the testimony 

 of the noble Marquis to whom it is dedicated : who 

 concludes a letter of his to Mr. Cotton, with this ele- 

 gant encomium : " Pray believe, that he who can 

 " translate such an author, without doing him wrong, 

 " must not only make me glad, but proud of being 

 " his very humble servant, HALIFAX." 



These are the whole of Mr. Cotton's writings pub- 

 lished in his life-time. Those that came abroad aftef 

 his decease, were : Poems on several Occasions^ 8vo. 



