Charles Cotton

For other people named Charles Cotton, seeCharles Cotton (disambiguation).

Charles Cotton
Charles Cotton fromAnglingby Alexander Cargill, 1897
Born	(1630-04-28)28 April 1630 Alstonefield,Staffordshire
Died	16 February 1687(1687-02-16)(aged 56)
Occupation(s)	Poet, writer
Known for	Translation ofMontaigne; The Compleat Gamester

Charles Cotton(28 April 1630 – 16 February 1687) was an English poet and writer, best known for translating the work ofMichel de Montaignefrom French, for his contributions toThe Compleat Angler,and for the influentialThe Compleat Gamesterattributed to him.

Early life

He was born inAlstonefield,Staffordshire, at Beresford Hall, near theDerbyshirePeak District.His father, Charles Cotton the Elder, was a friend ofBen Jonson,John Selden,SirHenry WottonandIzaak Walton.The son was apparently not sent to university, but was tutored by Ralph Rawson, one of the fellows ejected fromBrasenose College, Oxford,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 theEnglish Civil Warthe rest of his life was spent chiefly in quiet country pursuits, in Cotton's case in thePeak DistrictandNorth Staffordshire.HisVoyage to Ireland in Burlesque(1670) states that he held a Captain's commission and served in Ireland.

Fishing

His friendship withIzaak Waltonbegan about 1655, and contradicts any assumptions about Cotton's character based on his coarse burlesques ofVirgilandLucian.Walton's initials, made into a cipher with Cotton's own, were placed over the door of Cotton's fishing cottage on theDovenearHartington.Cotton contributed a second section "Instructions how to angle for atroutorgraylingin a clear stream ", to Walton'sThe Compleat Angler;the additions consisted of twelve chapters on fishing in clear water, which he understood largely but not exclusively to befly fishing.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 ofThomas Hutchinson,M.P. forNottingham.She was a half-sister ofCol. John Hutchinson;They had one child, Catherine Cotton, who marriedSir 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 ofPierre Corneille'sHoracein 1671. In 1675, he marriedMary Cromwell, the dowager Countess of Ardglass;she had ajointureof £1500 a year, but he did not have the power to spend it.

Charles Cotton's Fishing House, built in 1674 on the Banks of theRiver Dove.Cotton lived in nearby Beresford Hall and practised his sport on thetroutandgraylingof the River Dove.

Writings

The 1674 first edition ofThe Compleat Gamesteris 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-languagereference work on the playing of games – especially gambling games, and includingbilliards,card games,dice,horse racingandcock fighting,among others – until the publication ofEdmond Hoyle'sMr. Hoyle's Games Completein 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 inSt James's Church,Piccadilly, on 16 February 1687.

Cotton's reputation as aburlesquewriter may account for the neglect with which the rest of his poems have been treated. Their excellence was not, however, overlooked by good critics.Coleridgepraises the purity and unaffectedness of his style inBiographia Literaria,andWordsworth(Preface,1815) gave a copious quotation from the "Ode to Winter". The "Retirement" is printed by Walton in the second part of theCompleat Angler.

He was aDerbyshireman who loved thePeak Districtand 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 theCompleat Anglerdraw 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 andcamel'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 hisstonefly:

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.

InMontana,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 orAlaskaare 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, theEssays of M. de Montaigne(1685–1686, 1693, 1700, etc.), has often been reprinted, and still maintains its reputation; his other works includeThe Scarronides,orVirgil Travestie(1664–1670), a gross burlesque of the first and fourth books of theAeneid,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 ofGuillaume du Vair;The History of the Life of the Duke d'Espernon(1670), from the French of G Girard; theCommentaries(1674) ofBlaise de Montluc;thePlanter's Manual(1675), a practical book onarboriculture,in which he was an expert;The Wonders of the Peake(1681); theCompleat GamesterandThe 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 Oldyscontributed a life of Cotton to Hawkins's edition (1760) of theCompleat Angler.HisLyrical Poemswere 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, byW. C. Hazlitt,who omitted or relegated to the notes the passages in which Cotton interpolates his own matter, and supplied Cotton's omissions.

Benjamin Brittenset Cotton'sThe Evening Quatrainsto music in hisSerenade for Tenor, Horn and Stringsin 1943.

Andrew Millar,the prominent 18th century London bookseller, purchased a copyright share from John Osborne in a new, fifth, edition of Cotton'sThe 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 inSt James's Church, Piccadilly.A memorial to him is also found within the church.

A memorial to Charles Cotton in St James's Church, Piccadilly

Sources

• A Fly Fishing History
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain:Chisholm, Hugh,ed. (1911). "Cotton, Charles".Encyclopædia Britannica.Vol. 7 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 255.

External links

• Works by or aboutCharles CottonatWikisource
• Works by Charles CottonatProject Gutenberg
• Works by or about Charles Cottonat theInternet Archive
• Works by Charles CottonatLibriVox(public domain audiobooks)