LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 3^9 



Durst I expostulate with Providence, 



I then should ask wherein the innocence 



Of my poor undesigning 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 employ- 

 ment at this time solicited his attention. The old trans- 

 lation of Montaigne's " Essays," by the resolute John Florio, 

 as he styled himself, was become obsolete, and the world 

 were impatient for a new one. Mr. Cotton not only under- 

 stood French with a critical exactness, but was well ac- 

 quainted with the almost barbarous dialect in which that 

 book is written ; and the freedom of opinion, and general 

 notions of men and things which the author discovers, per- 

 haps falling in with Mr. Cotton's sentiments of human life 

 and manners, 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 language ; 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 elegant encomium : " Pray believe that he who can trans- 



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