Thou hast at once abused thyself and us;
He's stout that dares flatter a tyranne thus.
Put up thy pen and ink, muzzle thy muse,
Adulterate hag fit for a common stews,
No good man's library; writ thou hast
Treason in rhyme has all thy works defaced:
Such is thy fault, that when I think to find
A punishment of the severest kind,

For thy offence, my malice cannot name
A greater; than, once to commit the same.
Where was thy reason then, when thou began
To write against the sense of God and man?
Within thy guilty breast despair took place,
Thou wouldst despairing die in spite of grace.
At once thou art judge, and malefactor shown,
Each sentence in thy poem is thine own.

Then, what thou hast pronounced go execute,
Hang up thyself, and say, I bid thee do it;
Fear not thy memory, that cannot die,
This panegyric is thy elegy,

Which shall be when, or wheresoever read,
A living poem to upbraid thee dead."

Though ardent Royalists, both Cotton and his father seem to have escaped the persecutions to which the Cavaliers were exposed, as their names have not been found in connection with any public event during the Commonwealth; nor do they appear to have been obliged to purchase safety by compounding for their estates. Of Cotton's acquaintances at this period, the most remarkable, with reference to this work, was Isaak Walton, his adopted father in the art of Angling, who became one of his intimate friends, and whose esteem is strong evidence of Cotton's moral worth. Walton was also known to his father, for in speaking of the Lives of Donne and Wotton, Cotton observes,

"How happy was my father, then, to see
Those men he lov'd, by him he lov'd to be
Rescued from frailties and mortality."

Literature and the pleasures of society did not, however, entirely engross his time; for besides his favourite pursuit of Angling, which he followed before he was seventeen,7 he amused himself in gardening and planting. Upon the latter subject, he not only afterwards wrote a treatise, but proved that his knowledge was practical, by planting his own grounds near Beresford Hall; and

7 Cotton says in his part of "The Complete Angler," in 1676: "I will tell you nothing, I have not made myself as certain of as any man can be in thirty years experience, for so long I have been a dabbier in that art."-P. 406.

8 Vide postea.

9 Viator.

It [Beresford Hall] appears on a sudden, but not before 'twas looked for. It stands prettily, and here's wood about it too, but so young as appears to be of your own planting.

"Piscator. It is so."-Cotton's part of "The Complete Angler," p. 420.

the taste with which he improved that place, caused him to be complimented by his constant eulogist, Sir Aston Cokayne.1

Towards the end of July or early in August 1656, when Cotton was in his twenty-seventh year, he married his cousin Isabella, daughter of Sir Thomas Hutchinson, of Owthorpe, in Nottinghamshire. In contemplation of that alliance, his father and himself vested the manors of Bentley, Borrowashe, and Beresford, together with the rectory of Spoondon, and other lands, in trustees, to sell so much of the same as would pay off a mortgage of £1700, granted in July 1655, by the younger Cotton; and to hold the surplus in trust for him and his heirs. The manor of Beresford was then settled upon his father for life, with remainder to his children; and a life interest in his other property was secured to his intended wife, Isabella Hutchinson, in case she survived him.3 In December 1658, Cotton lost his father, who appears from Lord Clarendon's account of him, to have lived to an advanced age, and to have injured his property by lawsuits. This circumstance ought not to be forgotten in forming a judgment of his son's character nor is it less material to remember, that though he may have inherited his father's talents, and been much indebted to his assistance during his education, yet his parent's conduct, particularly in the latter part of his life, afforded him an example of imprudence and irregularity, which he too closely followed.

Upon the restoration of Charles the Second, Cotton first appeared before the public as an author. He addressed a panegyric to the King, consisting of fourteen pages in prose, but it contains nothing which distinguishes it from the numerous other productions with which Charles's return was greeted. In the same year he became (probably for the first time) a father, by the birth of his eldest son, to whom he gave the name of Beresford. All which is known of Cotton during the ensuing four years is, that in 1664 he published a burlesque poem entitled "Scarronides, or the First Book of Virgil Travestie," which will be again alluded to; and that he prepared for the press a translation of "The Moral Philosophy of

1 "Your Basford house you have adorned much,

And Bently hopes it shortly shall be such;
Think on't; and set but Bently in repair,

To both those Basfords you will show y' are heir.”

2 Vide the accompanying pedigree.

3 Stat. 27 Car. II. 1675.

4 Several of these addresses are collected in one volume in the British Museum; and the exact date of their respective appearance, with some corrections of the names of their authors, have been added in a contemporary hand. Cotton's Panegyrick is dated 27th August 1660.

the Stoics," from the French of Du Vaix, but which was not published until 1667.5 In the dedication of that volume to his friend and kinsman John Ferrers, Esq., dated on the 27th of February 1663-4, he says he had translated it some years before by his father's command, who was a great admirer of the author, "so," he tells Ferrers, "that which you see was an effect of my obedience, and no part of my choice, my little studies, especially at that time, lying another way, neither had I now published it, but that I was unwilling to have a thing, how mean soever, turned to waste paper that cost me some hours' pains, and which, however I may have disguised it, is no ill thing in itself."

Cotton having found his income inadequate to his expenses, he was obliged to apply to Parliament for power to sell part of his estates for the payment of his debts; and an Act was accordingly passed in the 16th Charles II., 1665, for that purpose. He was at that time employed in translating Corneille's Tragedy of Horace, for the amusement of his wife's sister, Miss Stanhope Hutchinson. It was published in 1671, with a dedication to that lady, dated at Beresford, 7th November 1665, in which he says it was never to be made public; and in the printed address to the reader, written at the same place in October 1670, he refers to the dedication as proof that it was not intended for publication, but had been written for the "private amusement of a fair young lady." He adverted to Mrs Katherine Philips' translation of the same play in very respectful terms; and says that the songs and choruses to the Acts were "all wholly his own."

Between the years 1665 and 1670, the only thing which is positively known of Cotton is, that about 1667 he wrote some verses on the Poems of his friend Alexander Brome, who died in June 1666, which were prefixed to a collection of his works published in 1668. In those verses he thus justly noticed the neglect which attends a Poet, in comparison with the fame that awaits a Hero and a Statesman :

"To advance their names no cost is spar'd;
Medals are cast, and obelisks are rear'd;

The marble quarry is torn up, the mine

Is search'd, and robb'd to make their triumphs shine;

But the neglected Poet when he dies,

Or with obscure, or with no obsequies

5 The Imprimatur is dated 13th April 1664.

6 In consequence of the fire in the House of Lords, which has caused great confusion among the Parliamentary Records, the Act cannot at this moment be found.

Is lay'd aside; and though by living verse,
Strew'd on this Hero's and that Statesman's hearse,
His pen graves characters by which they live
A longer life, than brass or marble give:
Yet has this generous Poet no return,
None to weep o'er his urn, nay, scarce an urn.
O undiscerning world! The Soldier's brave
Either for what he wants, or thirsts to have:
His breast opposing against fire and flame,
Either for riches or a glorious name.
Reward and honour make the Soldier's trade,
And if he either win, the man's well paid.
The Statesman, on the other side, takes pains
To smooth that war to peace, and works his brains,
Or to appease an enemy, or make

Such friends, as may at need make good the stake.
Nor is his reverend care, when all is done,
More for his country's safety, than his own;
And that which makes his city's freedom dear,
Is that himself and his inhabit there.
Whereas the Poet, by more generous ways
Distributes boughs of oak, and shoots of bays
According to due merit, nor does take
Thought of reward, but all for virtue's sake.
It were in vain to write on other score,
The Poet knows his lot is to be poor:

For whatsoe'er's well done, well writ, well said,
The Bard is ever the last man that's paid;
The wary world has wisely taken time,
Till the Greek Calends to account for rhyme.
Nor do I here intend the gold that's hurl'd
Like flaming brands thorough the peaceful world,
To make whole kingdoms into faction split,
Should be supposed the recompense of wit:
The Poet scorns that sordid seed of earth,
The world's alluring, but unhappy birth.
All he desires, all that he would demand,
Is only that some amicable hand

Would but irriguate his fading bays
With due, and only with deserved praise;
Yet even this, so modest a request,
The age denies."

That edition of Brome's Poems contains an epistle to Cotton with his answer; but the latter is only remarkable for the abhorrence which he expressed at being obliged to live in the country with no other friends, visitors, or company,

"But such, as I still pray, I may not see,
Such craggy, rough-hewn rogues, as do not fit,
Sharpen and set, but blunt the edge of wit;
Any of which (and fear has a quick eye)
If through a perspective I chance to spy,
Though a mile off, I take the alarm and run
As if I saw the Devil or a dun;

And in the neighbouring rocks take sanctuary,
Praying the hills to fall and cover me;

So that my solace lies amongst my grounds,
And my best company's my horse and hounds."

The same feeling of dislike at being separated from his literary companions, and from those intellectual enjoyments which a capital, and a capital only, affords, may be frequently traced in his

other pieces. It is most likely that many of his poems were written about this period; and it is nearly certain that the one in which he gives the fullest and most interesting account of himself, namely, "A Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque," was composed about the year 1670 or 1671, because he says he was then forty years old. For this reason it is desirable to insert several extracts from it, the length of which is justified by the humorous descriptions which they contain of his history, situation, and feelings. Cotton had, it appears, before that time entered the army, in which he then held a captain's commission; and being sent to Ireland, he describes his journey from Beresford to the place of embarkation in Wales.

His narrative thus commences :

"The lives of frail men are compar'd by the sages,

Or unto short journeys, or pilgrimages,

As men to their inns do come sooner or later,

That is, to their ends, to be plain in my matter;

From whence, when one dead is, it currently follows,

He has run his race, though his goal be the gallows;

And this 'tis, I fancy, sets folks so a-madding,
And makes men and women so eager of gadding;
Truth is, in my youth I was one of those people

Would have gone a great way to have seen a high steeple,
And though I was bred 'mong the wonder o' th' Peak,
Would have thrown away money, and ventur'd my neck
To have seen a great hill, a rock, or a cave,

And thought there was nothing so pleasant and brave;
But at forty years old you may, if you please,
Think me wiser than run such errands as these;
Or, had the same humour still ran in my toes,
A voyage to Ireland, I ne'er should have chose:
But to tell you the truth on't, indeed it was neither
Improvement nor pleasure for which I went thither;
I know then you'll presently ask me, for what?
Why, faith, it was that makes the old woman trot;
And therefore I think I'm not much to be blam'd
If I went to the place whereof Nick was asham'd.'

Among his regrets at taking leave of his home, his favourite pursuit of Angling is not forgotten :

"And now farewell, Dove, where I've caught such brave dishes

Of over-grown, golden, and silver-scal'd fishes:

Thy trout and thy grayling may now feed securely,
I've left none behind me can take 'em so surely;

Feed on, then, and breed on, until the next year,
But if I return I expect my arrear."

Of the ale which he drank at Holmes-Chapel, he observes,