’Sir, I have too long delayed my thanks to you for giving me such an obliging evidence of your remembrance:  that alone would have been a welcome present, but when joined with the book in the world I am the best entertained with, it raiseth a strong desire in me to be better known, where I am sure to be much pleased.  I have, ’till now, thought wit could not be translated, and do still retain so much of that opinion, that I believe it impossible, except by one, whose genius cometh up to the author.  You have so kept the original strength of his thought, that it almost tempts a man to believe the transmigration of souls.  He hath by your means mended his first edition.  To transplant and make him ours, is not only a valuable acquisition to us, but a just censure of the critical impertinence of those French scriblers, who have taken pains to make little cavils and exceptions, to lessen the reputation of this great man, whom nature hath made too big to confine himself to the exactness of a studied stile.  He let his mind have its full flight, and shewed by a generous kind of negligence, that he did not write for praise, but to give to the world a true picture of himself, and of mankind.  He scorned affected periods to please the mistaken reader with an empty chime of words; he hath no affectation to set himself out, and dependeth wholly upon the natural force of what is his own, and the excellent application of what he borroweth.

’You see, sir, I have kindness enough for Monsieur de Montaigne to be your rival, but nobody can pretend to be in equal competition with you.  I do willingly yield, which is no small matter for a man to do to a more prosperous lover, and if you will repay this piece of justice with another, pray believe, that he who can translate such an author without doing him wrong, must not only make me glad, but proud of being his

  most humble servant,’
  * * *.

Thus far the testimony of the marquis of Hallifax in favour of our author’s performance, and we have good reason to conclude, that the translation, is not without great merit, when so accomplished a judge has praised it.

We cannot be certain in what year our author died, but it was probably some time about the revolution.  He appears to have been a man of very considerable genius, to have had an extraordinary natural vein of humour, and an uncommon flow of pleasantry:  he was certainly born a poet, and wrote his verses easily, but rather too loosely; his numbers being frequently harsh, and his stile negligent, and unpolished.  The cause of his Life being inserted out of chronological order, was an accident, the particulars of which are not of importance enough to be mentioned.

[Footnote 1:  M. Cotton’s works are printed together in one volume, 12mo.  The thirteenth edition is dated 1751.]

* * * * *

The Right Honourable Joseph Addison, Esq;