228 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 



And yet, for all that, rode astride on a beast, 



The worst that e'er went on three legs, I protest . 



It certainly was the most ugly of jades ; 



His hips and his rump made a right ace of spades ; 



His sides were two ladders, well spur-gall'd withal ; 



His neck was a helve, and his head was a mall : 



For his colour, my pains and your trouble I '11 spare, 



For the creature was wholly denuded of hair, 



And, except for two things, as bare as my nail, 



A tuft of a mane, and a sprig of a tail. 



Now, such as the beast was, e'en such was the rider, 



With a head like a nutmeg, and legs like a spider, 



A voice like a cricket, a look like a rat, 



The brains of a goose, and the heart of a cat. 



E'en such was my guide, and his beast : let them pass, 



The one for a horse, and the other an ass. 



In this poem, he relates, with singular pleasantry, that, 

 at Chester, coming out of church, he was taken notice of 

 by the mayor of the city, for his rich garb, and particularly 

 a gold belt that he then wore ; and by him invited home to 

 supper, and very hospitably entertained. 



In the same year, and also the year after, more correctly, 

 he published a translation of the tragedy entitled Les 

 Horaces, i. e. The Horatii, from the French of Pierre 

 Corneille ; and, in 1674, the Fair One of Tunis, a novel, 

 translated also from the French ; as also a translation of the 

 Commentaries of Blaise de Montluc, marshal of France, a 

 thrasonical gascon, (as Lord Herbert has shewn, in his 

 History of Henry VIII,} far better skilled in the arts of 

 flight than of battle. 



In 1675, Mr Cotton published two little books, The 

 Planter's Manual, being Instructions for cultivating all sorts 

 of Fruit Trees, octavo ; and a burlesque of sundry select 

 dialogues of Lucian, with the title of Burlesque upon 

 Burlesque, or the Scoffer scoffed, duodecimo, which has much 

 the same merit as the Virgil Travestie. 



Angling having been the favourite recreation of Mr 

 Cotton for many years before this, we cannot but suppose 

 that the publication of such a book as the Complete Angler 

 of Mr Walton had attracted his notice, and probably 

 excited in him a desire to become acquainted with the 

 author ; and that, setting aside other circumstances, the 

 advantageous situation of Mr Cotton, near the finest Trout 

 river in the kingdom, might conduce to beget a great 

 intimacy between them. For certain it is, that before the 

 year 1676 they were united by the closest ties of friendship ; 



