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Charles Cotton (28 April 1630 – 16 February 1687) was an English poet and writer, best known for translating the work of
Michel de Montaigne Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne ( ; ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), commonly known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the the essay ...
from French, for his contributions to ''
The Compleat Angler ''The Compleat Angler'' (the spelling is sometimes modernised to ''The Complete Angler'', though this spelling also occurs in first editions) is a book by Izaak Walton, first published in 1653 by John and Richard Marriot, Richard Marriot in Lon ...
'', and for the influential '' The Compleat Gamester'' attributed to him.


Early life

He was born in Alstonefield, Staffordshire, at Beresford Hall, near the
Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...
Peak District The Peak District is an Highland, upland area in central-northern England, at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It is subdivi ...
. His father, Charles Cotton the Elder, was a friend of
Ben Jonson Benjamin Jonson ( 11 June 1572 – ) was an English playwright, poet and actor. Jonson's artistry exerted a lasting influence on English poetry and stage comedy. He popularised the comedy of humours; he is best known for the satire, satirical ...
,
John Selden John Selden (16 December 1584 – 30 November 1654) was an English jurist, a scholar of England's ancient laws and constitution and scholar of Jewish law. He was known as a polymath; John Milton hailed Selden in 1644 as "the chief of learned m ...
, Sir
Henry Wotton Sir Henry Wotton (; 30 March 1568 – December 1639) was an English author, diplomat and politician who sat in the House of Commons of England, House of Commons in 1614 and 1625. When on a mission to Augsburg in 1604, he famously said "An amba ...
and Izaak Walton. The son was apparently not sent to university, but was tutored by Ralph Rawson, one of the fellows ejected from
Brasenose College, Oxford Brasenose College (BNC) is one of the Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It began as Brasenose Hall in the 13th century, before being founded as a college in 1509. The l ...
, in 1648. Cotton travelled in France and perhaps in Italy, and at the age of twenty-eight he succeeded to an estate greatly encumbered by lawsuits during his father's lifetime. Like many Royalist gentlemen after the
English Civil War The English Civil War or Great Rebellion was a series of civil wars and political machinations between Cavaliers, Royalists and Roundhead, Parliamentarians in the Kingdom of England from 1642 to 1651. Part of the wider 1639 to 1653 Wars of th ...
the rest of his life was spent chiefly in quiet country pursuits, in Cotton's case in the
Peak District The Peak District is an Highland, upland area in central-northern England, at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It is subdivi ...
and North Staffordshire. His ''Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque'' (1670) states that he held a Captain's commission and served in Ireland.


Fishing

His friendship with Izaak Walton began about 1655, and contradicts any assumptions about Cotton's character based on his coarse burlesques of
Virgil Publius Vergilius Maro (; 15 October 70 BC21 September 19 BC), usually called Virgil or Vergil ( ) in English, was an ancient Rome, ancient Roman poet of the Augustan literature (ancient Rome), Augustan period. He composed three of the most fa ...
and
Lucian Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syrian satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with which he frequently ridi ...
. Walton's initials, made into a cipher with Cotton's own, were placed over the door of Cotton's fishing cottage on the
Dove Columbidae is a bird family consisting of doves and pigeons. It is the only family in the order Columbiformes. These are stout-bodied birds with small heads, relatively short necks and slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres. ...
near Hartington. Cotton contributed a second section "Instructions how to angle for a
trout Trout (: trout) is a generic common name for numerous species of carnivorous freshwater ray-finned fishes belonging to the genera '' Oncorhynchus'', ''Salmo'' and ''Salvelinus'', all of which are members of the subfamily Salmoninae in the ...
or grayling in a clear stream", to Walton's ''
The Compleat Angler ''The Compleat Angler'' (the spelling is sometimes modernised to ''The Complete Angler'', though this spelling also occurs in first editions) is a book by Izaak Walton, first published in 1653 by John and Richard Marriot, Richard Marriot in Lon ...
''; the additions consisted of twelve chapters on fishing in clear water, which he understood largely but not exclusively to be
fly fishing Fly fishing is an angling technique that uses an ultra-lightweight lure called an artificial fly, which typically mimics small invertebrates such as flying and aquatic insects to attract and catch fish. Because the mass of the fly lure is in ...
. Another addition to the volume was Cotton's well-known poem "The Retirement", which appeared from the 5th edition onwards.


Marriages

In 1656, he married his cousin Isabella Hutchinson, the daughter of Thomas Hutchinson, M.P. for
Nottingham Nottingham ( , East Midlands English, locally ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and Unitary authorities of England, unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located south-east of Sheffield and nor ...
. She was a half-sister of Col. John Hutchinson; They had one child, Catherine Cotton, who married Sir Berkeley Lucy, 3rd Baronet. Isebella (Hutchinson) Cotton, died in 1670. At the request of his wife's sister, Miss Stanhope Hutchinson, he undertook the translation of
Pierre Corneille Pierre Corneille (; ; 6 June 1606 – 1 October 1684) was a French tragedian. He is generally considered one of the three great 17th-century French dramatists, along with Molière and Racine. As a young man, he earned the valuable patronage ...
's ''
Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (; 8 December 65 BC – 27 November 8 BC), Suetonius, Life of Horace commonly known in the English-speaking world as Horace (), was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). Th ...
'' in 1671. In 1675, he married Mary Cromwell, the dowager Countess of Ardglass; she had a
jointure Jointure was a legal concept used largely in late mediaeval and early modern Britain, denoting the estate given to a married couple by the husband's family. One of its most important functions was providing a livelihood for the wife if she became ...
of £1500 a year, but he did not have the power to spend it.


Writings

The 1674 first edition of '' The Compleat Gamester'' is attributed to Cotton by publishers of later editions, to which additional, post-Cotton material was added in 1709 and 1725, along with some updates to the rules Cotton had described earlier. The book was considered the "standard"
English-language English is a West Germanic language that developed in early medieval England and has since become a English as a lingua franca, global lingua franca. The namesake of the language is the Angles (tribe), Angles, one of the Germanic peoples th ...
reference work on the playing of games – especially gambling games, and including
billiards Cue sports are a wide variety of games of skill played with a cue stick, which is used to strike billiard balls and thereby cause them to move around a cloth-covered table bounded by elastic bumpers known as . Cue sports, a category of stic ...
,
card game A card game is any game that uses playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, whether the cards are of a traditional design or specifically created for the game (proprietary). Countless card games exist, including famil ...
s,
dice A die (: dice, sometimes also used as ) is a small, throwable object with marked sides that can rest in multiple positions. Dice are used for generating random values, commonly as part of tabletop games, including dice games, board games, ro ...
,
horse racing Horse racing is an equestrian performance activity, typically involving two or more horses ridden by jockeys (or sometimes driven without riders) over a set distance for competition. It is one of the most ancient of all sports, as its bas ...
and cock fighting, among others – until the publication of Edmond Hoyle's ''Mr. Hoyle's Games Complete'' in 1750, which outsold Cotton's then-obsolete work. At Cotton's death in 1687 he was insolvent and left his estates to his creditors. He was buried in St James's Church, Piccadilly, on 16 February 1687. Cotton's reputation as a
burlesque A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects.
writer may account for the neglect with which the rest of his poems have been treated. Their excellence was not, however, overlooked by good critics. Coleridge praises the purity and unaffectedness of his style in ''Biographia Literaria'', and
Wordsworth William Wordsworth (7 April 177023 April 1850) was an English Romantic poet who, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped to launch the Romantic Age in English literature with their joint publication '' Lyrical Ballads'' (1798). Wordsworth's ...
(''Preface'', 1815) gave a copious quotation from the "Ode to Winter". The "Retirement" is printed by Walton in the second part of the ''Compleat Angler''. He was a
Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands of England. It borders Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and South Yorkshire to the north, Nottinghamshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south-east, Staffordshire to the south a ...
man who loved the
Peak District The Peak District is an Highland, upland area in central-northern England, at the southern end of the Pennines. Mostly in Derbyshire, it extends into Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Staffordshire, West Yorkshire and South Yorkshire. It is subdivi ...
and wrote a long topographic poem describing it: his father had moved there from the south of England, to live on his wife's estates. In Cotton's day, in the decades after the Civil War, the inaccessibility of good fishing spots was physical as well as legal. The opening chapters of his section of the ''Compleat Angler'' draw Cotton and his friend across a savage and mountainous landscape. The friend, who will be taught fly-fishing, expresses doubt as to whether they are still in Christendom: :"What do I think? Why, I think it is the steepest place that ever sure men and horses went down; and that, if there be any safety at all, the safest way is to alight..." says the pupil. After he picked his way down, they reach a bridge. "Do you ... travel with wheelbarrows in this country" he asks. "Because this bridge certainly was made for nothing else; why, a mouse can hardly go over it: it is not two fingers broad." They come at length to the sheltered valley in which stands Cotton's house and fishing hut. It is the first description of paradise in fishing history. "It stands in a kind of peninsula, with a delicate clear river about it." There Cotton and his friend breakfast on ale and a pipe of tobacco to give them the strength to wield their rods. For a trout river, he says, a rod of five or six yards should be long enough. In fact, "longer, though never so neatly and artificially made, it ought not to be, if you intend to fish at ease". Though he used a light line of carefully tapered horse-hair, Cotton's rod, of solid wood, was heavy. His description of the sport differs from modern fly-casting, which began with the arrival of heavy dressed-silk lines 200 years later. On windy days, he advises his guest to fish the pools because in the rapids, where the gorge of the Dove is narrower, the wind will be too strong for fishing. Some of Cotton's advice is still useful, as when he tells his guest to fish "fine and far off"; and he argues for small and neat flies, carefully dressed, over the bushy productions of London tackle-dealers. The flies which catch fish will always look wrong to the untrained eye, because they look too small and too delicate. Cotton's dressings are made with bear hair and
camel A camel (from and () from Ancient Semitic: ''gāmāl'') is an even-toed ungulate in the genus ''Camelus'' that bears distinctive fatty deposits known as "humps" on its back. Camels have long been domesticated and, as livestock, they provid ...
's under fur, the soft bristles from inside a black hog's ear, and from dog's tails. "What a heap of trumpery is here!" cries his visitor, when Cotton's dubbing bag is opened. "Certainly never an angler in Europe has his shop half so well-finished as you have." Cotton replies with the touchiness of a true obsessive: "Let me tell you, here are some colours, contemptible as they seem here, that are very hard to be got; and scarce any one of them, which, if it should be lost, I should not miss and be concerned about the loss of it too, once in the year." Cotton devotes a whole chapter to collection of flies for every month of the year. Few have modern analogues, but they are based on accurate observation, as with his stonefly: :His body is long and pretty thick, and as broad at the tail, almost, as at the middle; his colour is a very fine brown, ribbed with yellow and much yellower on the belly than on the back: he has two or three little whisks also at the tag of his tail, and two little horns upon his head: his wings, when full grown, are double, and flat down upon his back, of the same colour but rather darker than his body and longer than it... :On a calm day you shall see the still-deeps continually all over circles by the fishes rising, who will gorge themselves with these flies, will they purge again out of their gills. In
Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...
, the fish still rise to stoneflies until the water is "continually all over circles", but in the UK it is an anachronism. Cotton's Derbyshire is more remote from modern England, and closer to the wilderness than Montana or
Alaska Alaska ( ) is a non-contiguous U.S. state on the northwest extremity of North America. Part of the Western United States region, it is one of the two non-contiguous U.S. states, alongside Hawaii. Alaska is also considered to be the north ...
are now. He is quite unashamed of bait fishing, whether with flies or with grubs. He kills fish until weary. "I have in this very river that runs by us, in three or four hours taken thirty, five and thirty, and forty of the best trouts in the river." And he concludes his advice with a note of earthy practicality not to be found as the sport becomes more refined: a recipe for fresh trout boiled with beer and horseradish. Cotton loved nothing more than that his friends should share his delight. In the gorge of the Dove he had a private garden "with a delicate clear river about it" where the world was reduced to its simplest and best essentials. His masterpiece in translation, the ''Essays of M. de Montaigne'' (1685–1686, 1693, 1700, etc.), has often been reprinted, and still maintains its reputation; his other works include ''The Scarronides'', or ''Virgil Travestie'' (1664–1670), a gross burlesque of the first and fourth books of the ''Aeneid'', which ran through fifteen editions; ''Burlesque upon Burlesque, ... being some of Lucian's Dialogues newly put into English fustian'' (1675); ''The Moral Philosophy of the Stoicks'' (1667), from the French of Guillaume du Vair; ''The History of the Life of the Duke d'Espernon'' (1670), from the French of G Girard; the ''Commentaries'' (1674) of Blaise de Montluc; the ''Planter's Manual'' (1675), a practical book on
arboriculture Arboriculture (, from ) is the cultivation, management, and study of individual trees, shrubs, vines, and other perennial woody plants. The science of arboriculture studies how these plants grow and respond to cultural practices and to their env ...
, in which he was an expert; '' The Wonders of the Peake'' (1681); the ''Compleat Gamester'' and ''The Fair one of Tunis'', both dated 1674, are also assigned to Cotton. Here is Cotton's epitaph for "M.H.", a prostitute ''(spacing, spelling and capitalisation as originally printed)'':
Epitaph upon M.H

In  this cold Monument  lies one,
That I know who has lain upon,
The happier He : her Sight would charm,
And Touch have kept King David  warm.
Lovely, as is the dawning East ,
Was this Marble's frozen Guest;
As soft, and Snowy, as that Down
Adorns the Blow-balls  frizled Crown;
As straight and slender as the Crest,
Or Antlet  of the one beam'd Beast;
Pleasant as th' odorous Month  of May :
As glorious, and as light as Day .

Whom I admir'd, as soon as knew,
And now her Memory pursue
With such a superstitious Lust,
That I could fumble with her Dust.

She all Perfections had, and more,
Tempting, as if design'd a Whore ,
For so she was; and since there are
Such, I could wish them all as fair.

Pretty she was, and young, and wise,
And in her Calling so precise,
That Industry had made her prove
The sucking School-Mistress  of Love :
And Death, ambitious to become
Her Pupil, left his Ghastly home,
And, seeing how we us'd her here,
The raw-bon'd Rascal  ravisht her.

Who, pretty Soul, resign'd her Breath,
To seek new Letchery in Death.


Legacy

William Oldys contributed a life of Cotton to Hawkins's edition (1760) of the ''Compleat Angler''. His ''Lyrical Poems'' were edited by J. R. Tutin in 1903, from an original edition of 1689. Cotton's translation of Montaigne was edited in 1892, and in a more elaborate form in 1902, by W. C. Hazlitt, who omitted or relegated to the notes the passages in which Cotton interpolates his own matter, and supplied Cotton's omissions.
Benjamin Britten Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten of Aldeburgh (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, o ...
set Cotton's ''The Evening Quatrains'' to music in his '' Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings'' in 1943. Andrew Millar, the prominent 18th century London bookseller, purchased a copyright share from John Osborne in a new, fifth, edition of Cotton's ''The Genuine Poetical Works''. Thus, Cotton's poetry remained popular and profitable well into the eighteenth century, partly due to his clever "burlesques" of famous works from classical literature. Charles Cotton was buried in
St James's Church, Piccadilly St James's Church, Piccadilly, also known as St James's Church, Westminster, and St James-in-the-Fields, is an Anglican church on Piccadilly in the centre of London, England. The church was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren. The churc ...
. A memorial to him is also found within the church.


References


Sources


''A Fly Fishing History''
*


External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Cotton, Charles 1630 births 1687 deaths Angling writers Cue sports writers English male poets Burials at St James's Church, Piccadilly Card game book writers