Note 4 — Chapter II · THE FOUNDER OF THE COTTONIAN LIBRARY.

Here, if we accepted Cotton’s authorship of the Twenty-four Arguments, whether it be more expedient to suppress Popish Practices, &c., published in the Cottoni Posthuma, by James Howell, we should have to add that ‘he travelled on the Continent and passed many months in Italy.’ But that tract is not Cotton’s—though ascribed to him by so able and careful an historian as Mr. S. R. Gardiner (Archæologia, vol. xli. Comp. Prince Charles and the Spanish Marriage, &c., vol. i, p. 32). That its real author was in Italy is plain, from his own statement ‘I remember that in Italy it was often told me,’ &c.; and, again: ‘In Rome itself I have heard the English fugitive taxed,’ &c., Posthuma, pp. 126, seqq. Dr. Thomas Smith put a question as to this implied visit of Sir Robert to Italy to his grandson, Sir John Cotton, who assured him that no such visit was known to any of the family; by all of whom it was believed that their eminent antiquary never set foot out of Britain. Smith’s words are these:—

... ‘D. Joannes Cottonus hac de re a me literis consultus, se de isthoc avi sui itinere Italico ne verbum quidem a Patre suo edoctum fuisse respondit.... Cottonum usum et cognitionem linguæ Italicæ a Joanne Florio ... anno 1610 addidicisse ex ejusdem literis ad Cottonum scriptis, mihi certo constat.’ Vita, p. xvii.