THE COMPLETE ANGLER:

PART II.

BEING

INSTRUCTIONS HOW TO ANGLE FOR A TROUT OR GRAYLING IN A CLEAR STREAM:

BY CHARLES COTTON,

OF BERESFORD IN THE PEAK, ESQ.

DKC

Qui mihi non credit, faciat licet ipse. perîclum
Et fuerit scriptis æquior ille meis.

SOME ACCOUNT

OF THE

LIFE AND WRITINGS

OF

CHARLES COTTON, ESQ.

COMPILED FROM THE MEMOIR OF

SIR JOHN HAWKINS.

CHARLES COTTON, Esq., was descended from an honourable family, of the town and county of Southampton. His grandfather was Sir George Cotton, Knight; and his grandmother, Cassandra, the heiress of a family named Mac William. The issue of their marriage was a daughter, named Cassandra, who died unmarried; and a son, named Charles, who settling at Ovingden, in the county of Sussex, married Olive, the daughter of Sir John Stanhope, of Elvaston, in the county of Derby, Knight, half brother to Philip, the first Earl of Chesterfield, and ancestor of the present Earl of Harrington, and by her had issue, Charles, the author of the ensuing Dialogues.

Of the elder Charles, we learn from unquestionable authority, that he was, even when young, a person of distinguished parts and accomplishments; for in the enumeration of those eminent persons whom Mr. Hyde, afterwards the Lord Chancellor Clarendon, chose for his friends and associates, while a student of the law, we find Mr. Cotton mentioned; together with Ben Jonson, Mr. Selden, Mr. John Vaughan, afterwards Lord Chief Justice; Sir Kenelm Digby, Mr. Thomas May, the translator of Lucan, and Thomas Carew, the poet. The characters of these several persons are exhibited, with the usual elegance and accuracy of

their author in the "Life of Edward, Earl of Clarendon," written by himself, and lately published: that of Mr. Cotton here follows:

"Charles Cotton was a gentleman, born to a competent fortune, and so qualified in his person and education, that for many years he continued the greatest ornament of the town, in the esteem of those who had been best bred. His natural parts were very great, his wit flowing in all the parts of conversation: the superstructure of learning not raised to a considerable height; but having passed some years in Cambridge, and then in France, and conversing always with learned men, his expressions were ever proper and significant, and gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argument; so that he was thought by those who were not intimate with him to have been much better acquainted with books than he was. He had all those qualities, which in youth raise men to the reputation of being fine gentlemen; such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delightfulness in conversation, that no man, in the court or out of it, appeared a more accomplished person; all these extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraordinary a clearness of courage and fearlessness of spirit, of which he gave too often manifestation. Some unhappy suits in law, waste of his fortune in those suits, made some impression on his mind; which-being improved by domestic afflictions, and those indulgencies to himself which naturally attend those afflictionsrendered his age less reverenced than his youth had been, and gave his best friends cause to have wished that he had not lived so long."

and

Our author was born on the 28th day of April, 1630. And having, as we must suppose, received such a school education as qualified him for an university, he was sent to Cambridge, where also his father had studied: he had for his tutor Mr. Ralph Rawson, once a Fellow of Brazen-nose College, Oxford, but who had been ejected from his fellowship by the Parliament visitors, in 1648. This person he has gratefully celebrated in a translation of an" Ode" of Johannes Secundus.

What was the course of his studies; whether they tended to qualify him for either of the learned professions, or, to furnish him with those endowments of general learning and polished manners, which are requisite in the character of a gentleman, we know not: it is however certain, that in the university he improved his knowledge of the Greek and Roman classics, and became a perfect master of the French and Italian languages.

But whatever were the views of his father in placing him at Cambridge, we find not that he betook himself in earnest to the pursuit of any lucrative profession; it is true, that, in a poem of