Poems On several Occasions. Written by Charles Cotton, Esq.

Cotton, Charles. (1630-1687) Poems On several Occasions. Written by Charles Cotton, Esq. London: Printed for Tho. Basset, at the George in Fleet-street; Will. Hinsman and Tho. Fox, in Westminster-Hall, 1689.

Octavo, 7.1 x 4.4 in. First edition. A4, B-Z8, Aa-Zz8. This copy was formerly the property of Wadsworth Library 1868 and has its blind stamp on the title; library numbers appear on the verso of the title. The contents are cleaned and in good condition throughout, and the book is now bound in full handsome speckled calfskin in the style of the seventeenth century English binding.

Charles Cotton:

English poet and country squire, chiefly remembered for his share in Izaak Walton's The Compleate Angler.

Cotton made a number of translations from the French, including, in 1685, the often-reprinted Essays of Michael Seigneur de Montaigne, Corneille's Horace (1671), and several historical and philosophical works. Following the French fashion, he wrote Scarronides (1664, 1665), which is a coarse burlesque of the Aeneid, books 1 and 4, and the Burlesque upon Burlesque . . . Being some of Lucians Dialogues newly put into English fustian (1675).

His original writings include The Compleat Gamester (1674); The Planter's Manual (1675); and the second part, on fly fishing, which he added at Walton's suggestion, to the 5th edition of The Compleat Angler (1676). The Wonders of the Peake (1681), a long topographical poem popular throughout the 18th century, and his other poetry, published in the posthumous and unauthorized Poems on several occasions (1689), reflect Cotton's enjoyment of life. A poet who found early popularity with Restoration readers is Charles Cotton, whose Scarronides (1664-65), travesties of books one and four of Virgil's Aeneid, set a fashion for poetical burlesque. He is valued today, however, for work that attracted less contemporary interest but was to be admired by Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Charles Lamb. The posthumous Poems on Several Occasions (1689) includes deft poetry of friendship and love written with the familiar, colloquial ease of the Cavalier tradition and carefully observed, idiosyncratically executed descriptions of nature. He also added a second part to his friend Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler in 1676. A writer whose finest work was unknown to his contemporaries, much of it having been published only during the 20th century, is the poet and mystic Thomas Traherne. Influenced by the Hermetic writings and the lengthy Platonic tradition, he wrote, with extreme transparency of style, out of a conviction of the original innocence and visionary illumination of infancy. His poetry, though uneven, contains some remarkable writing, but his richest achievements are perhaps to be found in the prose Centuries of Meditations (first published in 1908).

'Charles Cotton was the son of a country gentleman [Charles] who possessed estates in Derbyshire and Staffordshire, and who was the friend of Donne, Jonson, Izaak Walton, Herrick and other literary men of his day'. (Sutherland)

Wing C-6389; TCIL 254; Grolier, W-P 215; Pforzheimer 221; Hazlit I, 1903.