LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 365 



Stafford, and of which the reader will be told so much here- 

 after. 



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, Knt. 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 the pos- 

 session 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 lawsuits and laden with 

 incumbrances. 



The great Lord Falkland was wont to say that he pitied 

 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 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 Traves- 

 tie," being the first book of Virgil's " yneid " in English 

 burlesque, 8vo., 1664, concerning which (and also the fourth 



