Elvaston in Derbyshire, by his first wife Olive, daughter and - heiress of Edward Beresford, of Beresford in Staffordshire, and of Bentley in the county of Derby, he succeeded to those estates in her right, and settled at Beresford. Mr Cotton was distinguished for his talents and accomplishments, and was the friend and companion of many of the most eminent of his contemporaries, ✦ including Ben Jonson, Sir Henry Wotton, Dr Donne, Selden, 6 Fletcher, Herrick, Carew, Lovelace, Davenant, and May, the Lord Chief Justice Vaughan, and the great Lord Clarendon. Some of those writers celebrated his merits in their verses; and Lord Clarendon has particularly mentioned him in his well-known autobiography.8 Mr Cotton's marriage connected him with the families of Stanhope, Cokayne, Aston, Port, and others of the highest rank in the counties of Derby and Stafford. Mrs Cotton died at Beresford between 1650 and 1658, in the thirty-eighth year of her age; and her cousin, Sir Aston Cokayne, wrote some verses to her memory.9 6 Vide Cokayne's Poems, p. 91, and the Apology to the Reader. 7 Herrick inscribed one of his poems to the elder Cotton, 8vo, 1648, p. 352. 8 "CHARLES COTTON was a gentleman born to a competent fortune; and so qualified in his person and education, that for many years he continued the greatest ornament of the town, in the esteem of those who had been best bred. His natural parts were very great, his wit flowing in all the parts of conversation; the superstructure of learning not raised to a considerable height: but having passed some years in Cambridge, and then in France, and conversing always with learned men, his expressions were ever proper and significant, and gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argument; so that he was thought by those who were not intimate with him, to have been much better acquainted with books than he was. He had all those qualities which in youth raise men to the reputation of being fine gentlemen; such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delightfulness in conversation, that no man, in the court or out of it, appeared a more accomplished person: all these extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraordinary a clearness of courage → and fearlessness of spirit, of which he gave too often manifestation. Some unhappy suits in law, and waste of his fortune in those suits, made some impression on his mind; which, being improved by domestic afflictions, and those indulgences to himself which naturally attend those afflictions, rendered his age less reverenced than his youth had been, and gave his best friends cause to have wished that he had not lived so long."Clarendon's Life, vol. i. p. 36, ed. Oxford, 1827. 9 Cokayne's Poems, 8vo, 1658. "On the death of my dear cousin germane Mrs Olive Cotton, who deceased at Beresford the 38th year of her age, and lyes buried at Bently by Ashbourne."-He also wrote verses "To my cousin german Mrs Olive Cotton," p. 138; and Of my staying supper with my cousin Mrs Olive Cotton," p. 139; and the following EPITAPH ON MY DEAR COUSIN GERMAN MRS OLIVE COTTON. Passenger, stay, and notice take of her For Sir John Stanhope's daughter and his heir, By his first wife, a Beresford, lies here. Her husband of a noble house was, one Every where for his worths belov'd and known. One only son she left, whom we presage A grace t' his family, and to our age. CHARLES COTTON, the only child1 of Mr Cotton by Olive Stanhope, was born at Beresford on the 28th of April 1630. No particulars are preserved respecting the place of his education; but he is supposed to have become a member of the University of _Cambridge sometime about the year 1649, though that fact can only be reconciled with his having been a pupil of Mr Ralph Rawson, Fellow of Brazen Nose College, Oxford, by supposing that Rawson removed to Cambridge on being ejected from his fellowship by the Parliamentary visitors in 1648.2 His affection for his tutor is strongly expressed in the translation of an ode of Johannes Secundus ;3 and his cousin Sir Aston Cokayne likewise showed his esteem for him in a similar manner; but some verses by Cokayne render it doubtful whether Rawson ever removed from Oxford to Cambridge. If, however, Cotton was educated at either of the Universities, he did not take his degree, as his name is not mentioned by Anthony Wood among the writers of Oxford; nor does it occur in the manuscript list of graduates of Cambridge in the British Museum. That he possessed considerable classical She was too good to live, and young to die, Now thou mayst go; but take along with thee In the parish register of St Dunstan's in the West the following entry occurs: "1653, Sept. 6, Persis, daughter of Charles Cotton, was baptized;" but as the younger Cotton was then unmarried, and his father aged and a widower, it is not likely that either of them was the person alluded to. 2 Athen. Oxon. ed. Bliss, vol. iv. p. 635. "An 3 Poems on Several Occasions written by Charles Cotton, Esq., 8vo, 1689; Ode of Johannes Secundus translated. To my dear Tutor, Mr Ralph Rawson," p. 547: Rawson acknowledged his kindness in some verses addressed "To my dear and honoured patron, Mr Charles Cotton, Ode, occasioned by his translation of an ode of Johannes Secundus directed to me, and inserted amongst his other Poems," a copy of which occurs in a manuscript containing the greater part of Cotton's Poems, some, if not all, of which are apparently in his own handwriting. + Cokayne's Poems, p. 207. "To Mr Ralph Rawson. lately Fellow of Brazen Nose College." It commences : "Though I of Cambridge was, and far above and thus concludes: Your mother Oxford did my Cambridge love; "I far above My Cambridge, and your Oxford shall it love." Had Rawson removed to Cambridge, some allusion would probably have been made to the circumstance in these verses, which were evidently written after he was ejected from his fellowship at Oxford. 5 Additional MSS. in the British Museum, No. 5885. Cole, however, mentions Cotton among the writers who belonged to that University, in his manuscript collections for an Athena Cantabrigiensis in the Additional MS. 5865, f. 47, in the British Museum. attainments, and united with them an extensive knowledge of modern languages, particularly of French and Italian," together with the usual accomplishments of the age, is however unquestionable. It does not appear that he was intended for any profession,7 and the early part of his life seems to have been passed in the society of the wits and other literary men of his time. He was himself ardently attached to literature; but except a few poems, he wrote nothing which was published until after the Restoration, Before that period the little which is known of his pursuits has been gleaned from the works of one or two of his friends, and from his own verses; but he probably went abroad before he attained his twenty-fourth year, as he certainly had travelled in France and Italy. That Cotton wrote many of the poems which were for the first time collected and published after his decease, at an early period of his life, is not only proved by internal evidence, but it is placed beyond dispute, by the subjoined verses addressed to him by Sir Aston Cokayne :— "TO MY MOST HONOURED COUSIN MR CHARLES COTTON THE Bear back, you crowd of wits, that have so long His picture, and you'll say that this is he; 6 It appears that Cotton's library contained some of the best Italian authors, as Cokayne says in one of his effusions, p. 231, "D'Avila, Bentivoglio, Guicciardine, And Machiavil the subtile Florentine, 7 Cotton says in his "Voyage to Ireland: ""Indeed I had a small smattering of Law," but his legal knowledge appears to have been gained from the performance of the duties of a Justice of the Peace, as he adds: "Which I lately had got more by practice than reading, In sitting oth' Bench, whilst others were pleading." 8 Among the poems attributed to the younger Cotton are an Elegy upon Henry Lord Hastings, only son of Ferdinand Earl of Huntingdon, who died in June 1649, which was printed in Brome's "Lachrymæ Musarum, the Tears of the Muses, expressed in elegies written by divers persons of nobility and worth" upon that young nobleman's death, 8vo, 1650, when Cotton was only twenty years of age; and a copy of verses prefixed to Edmund Prestwich's Translation of the Hippolitus of Seneca in 1651. 9 Beware, you poets, that (at distance) you Your puny threads with his lines to compare ; For vent'ring to approach too near his flames, As the presumptuous son of Clymene, So you shall fall or worse; not leave so much He is the Muses' darling, all the nine Phoebus disclaim, and term him more divine. Alonso de Ercilla, that in strong And mighty lines hath Araucana sung, And Sallust, that the ancient Hebrew story Hath poetiz'd, submit unto your glory. So the chief swans of Tagus, Arne, and Seine, The world will find your lines are great and strong, Cokayne also celebrated Cotton's merits on several other occasions, but only two of those effusions are deserving of notice, the one for the pithiness of the compliment paid to him, and the other because his father is mentioned : 64 TO MY HONOURED COUSIN MR CHARLES COTTON, JUNIOR. Donne, Suckling, Randolph, Drayton, Massinger, 9 Poems, pp. 147, 154 Jonson, Chapman, and Holland I have seen, "TO MY COUSIN MR CHARLES COTTON THE YOUNGER. In how few years have you rais'd up an high Proceed, fair plant of ex'ellencies, and grow Colonel Lovelace, who addressed an ode1 to Cotton's father, and wrote an elegy on his aunt, Cassandra, inscribed "The Triumphs of Philamore and Amoret, to the noblest of our youth and best of friends, Charles Cotton, Esquire, being at Beresford, at his house in Staffordshire, from London."2 In these verses he laments Cotton's absence, and thus affectionately anticipates his return : "But all our clouds shall be o'erblown when thee When thy dear presence shall our souls new dress; And spring an universal cheerfulness, When we shall be o'erwhelm'd in joy, like they That change their night for a vast half-year's day. Then shall the wretched few that do repine See and recant their blasphemies in wine; Then shall they grieve that thought I've sung too freo And their foul heresies and lips submit To th' all-forgiving breath of Amoret ; And me alone their anger's object call, That from my height so miserably did fall; And cry out my invention thin and poor, Who have said nought, since I could say no more." The most remarkable lines are, however, the following, because they seem to corroborate Aubrey's statement that Cotton had relieved Lovelace in his distress: 3 + "What fate was mine when in my obscure cave Shut up almost close prisoner in a grave Your beams could reach me through this vault of night, And canton the dark dungeon with light! Whence me, as gen'rous Spahy's, you unbound, Whilst I know myself both free and crown'd." 1 Lucasta. edit. 1649. "The Grasshopper, To my noble friend, Mr Charles Cotton." P. 34. 2 Lucasta. Posthume Poems of Richard Lovelace, Esq., 8vo, 1659. 3 "Lovelace died in 1658, in a mean lodging in Gunpowder Alley, near Shoe Lane. Aubrey's statement is, that 'George Petty, haberdasher in Fleet Street, carried twenty shillings to him every Monday morning from Sir — Many, and Charles Cotton, Esq., for months, and was never repaid."" Athen. Oxon. ed. Bliss, vol. iii. pp. 462, 463. |