226 LIFE 01' CHARLES COTTON. 



communicated to the public the result of his experience, he 

 must be deemed the great improver of this elegant recrea- 

 tion, and a benefactor to his posterity. 



There is reason to think, that, after his leaving the 

 university, he was received into his father's family ; for we 

 are told that his father, being a man of bright parts, gave 

 him themes and authors whereon to exercise his judgment 

 and learning, even to the time of his entering into the state 

 of matrimony ;* the first fruit of which exercises was, as it 

 seems, his Elegy on the gallant Lord Derby. \ 



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, knight. J 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 

 possession of the family estate : but from the character of 

 his father, as given by Lord Clarendon, it cannot be sup- 

 posed but that it was struggling with lawsuits, and laden 

 with encumbrances. 



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 1660 he published A "Panegyric to the King's Mo.st^ 

 Excellent Majesty, a prose pamphlet, in folio, a copy of 

 which is preserved in the library at the British Museum. 



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 

 i\ 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 three- 

 score years before. 



His next publication was Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie, 

 being the first book of Virgil's JEneis, in English burlesque, 8vo. 

 1 664. Concerning which, and also the fourth book, translated 



* Oldy's Life, xii. f Ibid - \ Ibid - xiii ' 



