This is the first complete edition of the poetry of Charles Cotton (1630-1687), one of the most interesting poets of the mid-seventeenth century. Although better known as translator of Montaigne's Essays and most of all as a fly-fisherman and author of the second part of The Compleat Angler, a classic work that has never been out of print, Cotton's poetry has attracted notice and admiration across the centuries from readers as diverse as Samuel Pepys and William Wordsworth. Celebrated in his lifetime as a poet of rural retirement and as an author of an immensely successful comical travesty of Virgil's Aeneid, Scarronides (1664-65), his posthumously published Poems on Several Occasions (1689) reveal a poet of many styles and many voices, capable of delicate, cavalier lyric, Restoration bawdry, political passion, and moody Pindaric ode. His self-characterization in burlesque travelogs and intimate epistles gives a sense of an attractively companionable and engaging writer. This is the first edition of Cotton's poetry based on consultations of all of the available manuscripts and early printed editions. It contains two major works not hitherto edited as well as full commentary on all texts. In uniting the different parts of Cotton's prolific output, Paul Hartle offers readers of his verse a "Compleat" Cotton.
Recenzijos
In terms of both its textual analysis and its rich explanatory commentary of over six hundred pages, Hartle's edition is an achievement of impressive substance. A complete checking of Hartle's texts against their sources would, of course, involve as much exacting labour as he has expended himself. Suffice it to say that spot-checks against printed sources, together with the general thoroughness and judiciousness of the volumes' editorial contributions, give one every confidence that the totality of Cotton's poetical output has now been presented with unprecedented accuracy."-- * Notes and Queries *
Volume 1
General Introduction
Textual Introduction
Poems from Manuscript:
An Elegy upon the death of that hopefull, and learned gentleman Henry Lord Hastings, who died of the small Pox
Poems from the Derby Manuscript
Poems from Poems on Several Occasions (1689)
The Anglers Ballad
Textual Notes
Commentary
Volume 2
Poems from Printed Texts:
Scarronides I
Scarronides IV
Horace
Burlesque upon Burlesque
The Wonders of the Peake
To my Worthy Friend Mr Edmund Prestwich, on his Translation of Hippolitus.
The Answer.
An Epigramme to the Authour, upon his Tragedy of OVID.
To the Authour On Captain HANNIBAL, An Epigramme.
[ HORACE BOOK I] ODE VI. By C. C. Esq; To AGRIPPA.
On my Friend Mr. ALEXANDER BROME
On the brave Mareschal de Montluc, and his Commentaries writ by his own hand.
The Explanation of the Frontispiece [ The Compleat Gamester].
ON THE EXCELLENT POEMS OF MY Most Worthy Friend Mr. THOMAS FLATMAN.
To my Old, and most Worthy Friend, Mr. IZAAK WALTON, on his Life of Dr. DONNE, &c.
The Retirement. Stanzes Irreguliers to Mr. Izaak Walton.
To the Admir'd Astrea.
The IDEA. By Charles Cotton, Esq;
Doubtful Work:
Old Age. Against old men taking physick
Textual Notes
Commentary
Appendix 1: 1689 Table of Contents and location in this edition
Appendix 2: Virgil Line References in Scarronides
Index of First Lines
Paul Hartle was educated at Victoria College, Jersey and then at St Catharine's College, Cambridge. He has a particular interest in the afterlives of the classics and has published widely on the subject. His next project is an account of the presence and perception of Japan in Early Modern British culture.
