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THE 
 
 LIFE AND THE POETRY OF 
 CHARLES COTTON 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES JACOB SEMBOWER 
 
 PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, INDIANA UNIVERSITY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 
 D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, AGENTS, NEW YORK 
 
 1911 
 
Copyright, 1911 
 BY THE UNIVERSITY OP PENNSYLVANIA 
 
 J. F. TAPLEY CO. 
 
 NCW YORK 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 I INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 II THE POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 64 
 
 III THE POETRY OF NATURE AND OF MEDITATION . . 101 
 INDEX . 121 
 
 227070 
 
THE 
 
 LIFE AND THE POETRY OF 
 CHARLES COTTON 
 
 INTBODUCTION 
 
 To the general reader, the name of Charles Cotton 
 means hardly anything at all ; and indeed to scholars, 
 who are not specialists within the period in which his 
 life fell, it is little more than a name. Now and 
 then, to he sure, it is remembered as the name of 
 Walton's associate " Angler, " perhaps also as that 
 of the translator of Montaigne, or, much less favor- 
 ably, as that of the author of a burlesque poem 
 called the "Virgil Travesty. " 
 
 Nevertheless, Cotton has not been without appre- 
 ciators who rank him as one of the most delightful 
 minor poets of the seventeenth century. Wordsworth 
 knew him well, and in "A Letter to a friend of Eob- 
 ert Burns, ' ' pays a tribute to him as a " highly-gifted 
 man" who not only in certain unfortunate circum- 
 stances of his life, but in "versatility of genius" 
 bore "no unobvious resemblance to the Scottish 
 bard." Coleridge found in the volume of "Poems 
 on Several Occasions" (1689) by Cotton, "not a 
 
 few poems replete with every excellence of thought, 
 
 i 
 
2 INTRODUCTION 
 
 image and passion which we expect or desire in the 
 poetry of the milder Muse." Charles Lamb quotes 
 and praises the poet more than once, in this case, 
 as so often elsewhere, hitting upon the distinctive 
 quality in his man. "How say you, reader" he 
 exclaims after quoting Cotton 's " New Year, ' ' ' l do 
 not these verses smack of the rough magnanimity 
 of the old English vein? Do they not fortify like 
 a cordial; enlarging the heart, and productive of 
 sweet blood and generous spirits in the concoction? 
 Where be those puling fears of death just now ex- 
 pressed or affected? Passed like a cloud absorbed 
 in the purging sunlight of clear poetry clean 
 washed away by a wave of genuine Helicon ." 
 Archbishop Trench, more careful perhaps to guard 
 against the charge of over-praise, found in Cot- 
 ton's poems "a merit which," he says, " certainly 
 strikes me more than any singular wealth of fancy 
 which I can find in them; and which to Words- 
 worth also must have constituted their chief attrac- 
 tion; namely, the admirable English in which they 
 are written. They are sometimes prosaic, some- 
 times blemished by more serious moral faults; but 
 for homely vigor and purity of language, for the 
 total absence of any attempt to conceal the defi- 
 ciency of strong and high imagination by a false po- 
 etic diction purple rags torn from other men's 
 garments and sewn upon his own he may take his 
 place among the foremost masters of the tongue." 
 In America it was Lowell who found Cotton to be 
 "an excellent poet, and a thorough master of suc- 
 culently idiomatic English, which he treated with a 
 
INTRODUCTION 3 
 
 country-gentlemanlike familiarity, as his master, 
 Montaigne, had treated French. " And again in de- 
 fense of the poet, Lowell says, "If he wrote the 
 * Virgil Travesty,' he also wrote verses which the 
 difficult Wordsworth could praise, and a poem of 
 gravely noble mood addressed to Walton on his 
 Lives, in which he shows a knowledge of what good- 
 ness is that no bad man could have acquired. Let 
 one line of it at least shine in my page, not as a sam- 
 ple but for its own dear sake : 
 
 'For in a virtuous act all good men share.' " 
 
 So much, in brief, as to the rare quality of 
 language, mind and heart that is to be found in 
 Cotton's serious verse. Why, if all this is so, has 
 he been, as a poet, so long neglected? 
 
 Two or three reasons at once occur to the student 
 of the poetry of the period. In the first place, very 
 little of his best work was published in his lifetime. 
 It circulated to some extent amongst his friends, 
 who were not insensible to its high merit; but it 
 was not printed till 1689. Then it came too late. 
 Cotton himself, though driven to it by necessity, 
 had helped to establish a taste for licentious verse 
 and for burlesque. In 1689, there was little appre- 
 ciation remaining for the verse of Cotton's youth 
 and early manhood. Perhaps even if it had been 
 published at the time of 'its production, it would still 
 have been out of key with the public taste. The 
 "sweet amenity" of his master, Isaac Walton, had 
 met with little response as pure literature. Until 
 well into the eighteenth century, the "Angler" was 
 
4 INTRODUCTION 
 
 thought of as merely a pleasant manual for the craft. 
 "The magnanimity of the old English vein" would 
 probably have been as easily overlooked. At all 
 events the reputation that Cotton gained after 1660 
 as a translator and as a pleasant burlesquer and 
 compiler was naturally adverse to a quick response 
 to the work of his serious muse. This reputation as 
 a clever man-of-letters kept fresh well into the next 
 century, but there is little or no record that his 
 poetry was known at all. It had to wait for its hear- 
 ing until the beginning of the following century, 
 when a genuine love of nature and of thoroughly 
 poetical conception sought out and discovered po- 
 etry wherever it lay hid. 
 
 As a poet, however, he would naturally have suf- 
 fered much from the changing attitude of his time 
 toward poetry. Professor Schelling, in the intro- 
 duction to his " Seventeenth Century Lyrics, " has 
 pointed out that " Whilst the larger number of 
 poets between 1640 and 1670, according to tem- 
 perament or circumstances, held either to the old 
 manner, as did Milton and Marvell, or went over 
 wholly to the new, as did Waller and Denham, a 
 few were caught, so to speak, between the conflict- 
 ing waves of the two movements, and are of unus- 
 ual historical interest on this account. " Of those 
 who, without being reactionary, were loyal to the 
 spirit that was passing, Charles Cotton was by no 
 means the least. 
 
 The poet was descended from an ancient and hon- 
 orable family. His great-grandfather was Sir Rich- 
 ard Cotton, Comptroller of the Household and Privy 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 Councilor to Edward the Sixth. His grandfather 
 was Sir George Cotton of Warblenton in the county 
 of Sussex and of Bedhampton in the county of 
 Southampton. Sir George married Cassandra, one 
 of the co-heiresses of Henry Mackwilliams of Stan- 
 burne-hall in the county of Essex, "sometymes of 
 the honorable band of Pensioners to the late Queene 
 of ffamous memorye, Queene Elizabeth/' Sir 
 George's son, Charles Cotton, Esquire, became the 
 poet's father. 
 
 Charles Cotton, the elder, has left no record of 
 himself in letters, but his fame is plentifully pre- 
 served in the writings of his friends and admirers. 
 Herrick and Lovelace are among those who inscribed 
 poems to him. Of the poets, Herrick gives the most 
 detailed appreciation of the man. 
 
 "For brave comportment, wit without offence, 
 Words fully flowing, yet of influence : 
 Thou art that man of men, the man alone, 
 
 "Who with thine own eyes read'st what w^e do write, 
 And giv'st our numbers euphony and weight; 
 Tell'st when a verse springs high, how understood 
 To be, or not, born of the royal blood. 
 
 For which, my Charles, it is my pride to be 
 Not as much known, as to be lov 'd of thee. ' ' 
 
 Thus, though he was not himself a poet, he was a 
 critic of rare ability and a man beloved by those 
 whose work he criticised. Lovelace, in dedicating 
 to him the poem called "The Grasshopper," made 
 affectionate reference to his capacity for good-fel- 
 
6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 lowship, a characteristic which we shall find also to 
 be not the least distinctive among those of his son : 
 
 "Thou best of men and friends! we will create 
 A genuine summer in each other's breast; 
 And spite of this cold Time and frozen Fate, 
 Thaw us a warme seate to our rest." 
 
 Another contemporary poet, Henry Glapthorne, 
 praised him with convincing discrimination; his 
 friend, Alexander Brome, dedicated an edition of 
 Fletcher's "Monsieur Thomas " to him; and his 
 relative and neighbor, Sir Aston Cokaine, affection- 
 ately took him to task in a poetical epistle for his 
 part in an edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, 
 which seemed to Sir Aston over-generous to the 
 Frenchman, Beaumont, at the expense of the Eng- 
 lishman, Fletcher. In 1652, Davenant dedicated the 
 Seventh Canto of the Third Book of "Gondibert" to 
 him; in stanzas iv and v, we find this friendly 
 prophecy : 
 
 "And Charles, in that more civil Century, 
 When this shall wholly fill the voice of Fame, 
 The busy Antiquaries then will try 
 
 To find amongst their Monarch's coin, thy Name. 
 
 Much they will bless thy Virtue, by whose fire 
 I'll keep my laurel warm, which else would fade, 
 And, thus inclos'd, think me of Nature's Quire, 
 Which still sing sweetest in the shade." 
 
 The list of the friends of the elder Cotton is, in- 
 deed, an imposing one ; it includes, besides those men- 
 tioned, such famous names as those of Ben Jonson, 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 Donne, Selden, May, Carew, Walton, Chief Justice 
 Vaughn and Lord Clarendon. The latter 's portrait 
 of him few can sketch more deftly than Clarendon 
 is interesting not only on its own account, but also 
 for the striking resemblance that it leaves us to find 
 between the father and the son : 
 
 "Charles Cotton, " says Lord Clarendon, "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 proper and significant, and 
 gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argu- 
 ment; 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 repu- 
 tation of being fine gentlemen ; such a sweetness and 
 gentleness of nature, and such a civility and delight- 
 fulness in conversation, that no man in the court, or 
 out of it, appeared a more accomplished person; 
 all these extraordinary qualifications being sup- 
 ported by as extraordinary a clearness of courage 
 and fearlessness of spirit." 
 
 It was an extraordinary heritage. Yet the young- 
 er Cotton was endowed with most of these traits, 
 the finer and deeper ones no less than some of 
 
8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 those that had more dash and color. There re- 
 mains to be mentioned only one other faculty which 
 the father may have bequeathed to his son the gift 
 of expression. We have the testimony of no less a 
 man than Isaac Walton to the elder Cotton's pos- 
 session of this gift. Walton, speaking of the an- 
 cestral estate, Beresford, says, "The pleasantness 
 of the river, mountains, and meadows about it, can- 
 not be described, unless Sir Philip Sidney or Mr. 
 Cotton's father were again alive to do it." This 
 power of description was one of the most eminent 
 possessed by the son. 
 
 The poet's mother was Olive Stanhope, the daugh- 
 ter and heiress of Sir John Stanhope and his wife, 
 Olivia Beresford. Her father was half-brother to the 
 first Earl of Chesterfield ; her mother was a descend- 
 ant of the "brave Beresfords," a family that had 
 been prominent for centuries in the county of Derby. 
 The ancient seat of the Beresfords, Fenny Bentley, 
 was only a short walk to the northeast of Beresford 
 Hall, the poet's birthplace. The Beresfords, ancient 
 and modern, are known as men of fighting blood. 
 One of them, Thomas or "Tom" was a hero of 
 Agincourt, and left a story attached to his name 
 which is of credit to the family. On the eve of his 
 marriage, according to this story, the blast of a 
 trumpet announced the approach of a messenger of 
 King Henry the Fifth with a proclamation to his 
 loyal subjects that he had been insulted by the 
 French king, and that all unmarried men were to 
 hasten to his standard. The Beresfords were loyal, 
 Thomas was as yet unmarried; he must choose be- 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 tween his bride and his king. At the urgence of his 
 betrothed as well as by his own desire, he followed 
 the King into France. At Agincourt, he had the 
 valor and good-fortune to save King Henry 's life. 
 He was rewarded later at his marriage by the spe- 
 cial congratulations and favor of royalty. Such 
 stories, if simple, make a tradition to which the 
 least of kin does not listen with indifference, and 
 serve as a more or less potent standard of conduct 
 for a loyal line of soldiers and gentlemen. The 
 Beresford name has come down through a list of 
 rather remarkable men. Humphrey Beresford, one 
 of the sixteen sons of Thomas of Agincourt, was the 
 ancestor in direct line of the illustrious Irish Beres- 
 fords, Earls of Tyrone, Marquises of Waterford. 
 
 Olivia Beresford, great-grandmother of the poet, 
 had been the sole heiress of her father Edward 
 Beresford, and had come into possession of the fam- 
 ily estates. These had descended to her daughter 
 Olive (Beresford) Stanhope, and in due course they 
 passed to her daughter, Olive (Stanhope) Cotton, 
 mother of the poet, Charles. 
 
 The story of the love affair and run-away mar- 
 riage of the poet's father and mother is one of much 
 interest, as shown in the detailed account of it 
 found by Mr. John Sleight in 1868, among some old 
 family deeds and papers at Bentley Hall. The mu- 
 tual passion of the young lovers, their hopes and 
 fears, the plot and the carrying-out of it, have suf- 
 fered surprisingly little in the hands of some old 
 attorney : 
 
 "The 'Severall answeare of Charles Cotton, Es- 
 
10 INTRODUCTION 
 
 quire, to the bill of Complaynt of Sir John Stanhope, 
 Knight, Complaynannt. * 
 
 ' * This def endannt sayeth that it is true that under- 
 standing of the virtuous disposition of the Complay- 
 nannt 's daughter, and receavinge satisfaction of 
 the good report hee had heard, by the sight of her 
 person, he did by all possible means addrease him- 
 self to intimate unto her his desires, and having the 
 opportunity to meet with her att the house of one 
 of her Aunts, hee, this defendannt did, in shorte 
 time, discover her affection towards this defend- 
 annt, and there upon he was emboldened to pro- 
 ceede to move her in the way of marriadge. And 
 there were some messages interchanged betwixt 
 them, whereby she signified her readiness to an- 
 sweare this def endannt 's desires therein, and the 
 difficulty to obteyne her but by carrying her away. 
 And did herselfe appointe to come to this defend- 
 annt, If he could come for her ; where upon hee pre- 
 pared a coache, and in the eveninge of the day, in 
 the Bill mentioned, hee came in a Coache neere unto 
 Salisbury Courte, where the Complaynannt dwelleth. 
 And this def endannt 's now wyfe came of her owne 
 accorde to this defendannt, and went away with the 
 defendannt and the same night this defendannt con- 
 fesseth that they were marryed together; in doinge 
 whereof if this def endannt J s passion and fervency 
 of affection have transported him beyond the 
 bounds of wisdome, dutye, and good discretion, this 
 defendannt doth most humbly crave the pardon and 
 favorable construction of this most Hon ble Courte 
 and of the Complaynannt concerninge the same." 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 Sir John Stanhope, in his bill of complaint, had 
 imputed mercenary motives to the young lover, in 
 carrying off the young woman, who was under the 
 legal age of sixteen years. To make this charge 
 probable, he alleged that the young husband was 
 without means for her support. To this the de- 
 fendant answered that "he had an estate in Landes 
 of Inheritance and Eents left unto him of the 
 yearly value of 600 per annum, or thereabouts, 
 which he yet hath besides a personall estate to the 
 value of one thousand marks, or thereabouts. 
 And," goes on this excellent attorney, "if the same 
 be not aequivalent, or proportionable to the Com- 
 playnannt's daughter's estate; This Defendannt 
 doubteth not but to supply any wants thereof by his 
 affectionate love to his wyfe, and respectfull observa- 
 tion of such a ffather. And this defendannt fur- 
 ther saith that he did not know that said Olive was 
 under the age of sixteene yeares, but was credibly 
 informed that she was of age of above sixteene 
 years, nor knoweth what Inheritance was descend- 
 edable upon the Complaynannt's Daughter (now 
 this defendannt 's wife) att the tyme that he sought 
 to obteyne her for his wyfe; his affections beinge 
 more fixed upon her person, and the Allyance of soe 
 noble a ffamilye, than upon her estate." 
 
 The decision of the court is not included among 
 these family documents; but that it favored the 
 young lovers is shown by the record of a subsequent 
 court decision, dated Whitehall, 13 January, 1629. 
 This deals with a petition to the King by one John 
 Darbyshire and Anne, his wife; "to escape from a 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 mercenary father-in-law, the petitioners intermar- 
 ried, and unknowingly incurred the penalty against 
 women marrying under the age of 16 without their 
 parents ' consent." In this case, the Attorney Gen- 
 eral reported ' * that the parties, if prosecuted might 
 be punished and fined, but that there have been prec- 
 edents of pardons in like cases, ex. qr. that of Mr. 
 Cotton, for marrying the daughter of Sir John Stan- 
 hope, who was heir to her mother of a fair estate. " 
 The only issue of this marriage was Charles Cot- 
 ton, the poet. He was born, the 28th of April, 1630, 
 at Beresford Hall, which, to judge by the old prints, 
 was a typically comfortable and homelike English 
 country seat. We have fortunately a few details 
 from Part II. of the " Angler " and from some of 
 Cotton's poems which not only confirm the im- 
 pression of the prints, but give to them also some- 
 thing of the tinge of life. Piscator (Cotton) says 
 to Viator: l "Walk but into the parlour, you will 
 find one book or other in the window to entertain 
 you the while. " A sunlit cheerful parlor no doubt 
 it was with a row of books on the broad sill of its 
 latticed window, and beside it a comfortable chair 
 for the reader. Elsewhere in the " Angler " we are 
 told that Cotton's servants "knew his certain 
 hours" and that there was no tiresome waiting for 
 dinner and supper. "How sweet are all things 
 here!" the poet exclaims in "The Retirement," 
 ' ' How cleanly do we feed and lie ! What good hours 
 do we keep ! How quietly we sleep ! What peace ! 
 
 i Complete Angler, Part II., chap. X. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 What unanimity ! ' ' All must have been order, punc- 
 tuality and cleanliness. 
 
 The surroundings of the Hall were no less delight- 
 ful, to judge from Walton's comment upon "the 
 pleasantness of the river, mountains, and meadows 
 about it." Just behind the Hall, arose the hill 
 that formed the western wall of Beresford Dale. 
 It was along this green slope that Piscator and 
 Viator walked in the early morning of their famous 
 day of good sport and good conversation. They 
 stood at the edge of the bluff, overlooking Beresford 
 Dale. On a level with them were the bald hill-tops 
 and open moorland of the Peak. Beneath them, in 
 its idyllic glen, ran the ' ' silver ' ' Dove. 
 
 Viator said, " 'Tis a delicate morning indeed; and 
 I now think this a marvellous pretty place. 
 
 Piscator : Whether you think so, or no, you can- 
 not oblige me more than to say so, and those of 
 my friends who know my humour, and are so kind 
 as to comply with it, usually flatter me that way. 
 But look you, Sir, now you are at the brink of the 
 hill, how do you like my river, the vale it winds 
 through like a snake, and the situation of my little 
 fishing house? 
 
 Viator: Trust me, 'tis all very fine; and the 
 house seems at this distance a neat building. 
 
 Piscator: Good enough for that purpose; and 
 here is a bowling green too, close by it; so, though 
 I am myself no very good bowler, I am not totally 
 devoted to my own pleasure, but that I have also 
 some regard to other men's. And now, Sir, you are 
 
14 INTRODUCTION 
 
 come to the door ; pray walk in, and there we will sit, 
 and talk as long as you please. ' ' 1 
 
 The little fishing house, here mentioned, was built 
 to commemorate one of the most beautiful friend- 
 ships of which we have record, that of Cotton and 
 his hermetical father, Isaac Walton. But Walton, in 
 fact, so Cotton tells us, saw it only a-building, and 
 before the roof was on ; in which case, nevertheless, 
 he must have seen the famous "cipher stone " with 
 the interlaced initials, above the door, and resting on 
 it, the large square stone, with its legend "Piscator- 
 ibus Sacrum, 1674. ' ' It was not here therefore, but 
 in the cheerful parlor at the Hall that we must im- 
 agine the two actual sportsmen conversing in their 
 parabolic vein before and after the day's outing. 
 But doubtless they often seated themselves upon the 
 grass to talk near the spot where the fishing house 
 now stands as a monument to their friendship. 
 
 And when Piscator and Viator, as Cotton repre- 
 sents them in his part of the "Angler," entered the 
 fishing house, they found themselves in a room about 
 fifteen feet square, paved with black and white 
 marble, its walls covered, from the pavement to the 
 ceiling, with paneled wainscoting. In the large 
 panels were painted scenes of fishing, and in the 
 smaller the various sorts of tackle and implements 
 used. On the left side, opposite the door, was a 
 fireplace; and on the right, a large "beaufet" with 
 folding doors whereon were portraits of Cotton, 
 Walton, and a boy servant. Underneath the beau- 
 fet was a cupboard, on the door of which were 
 
 i Angler, Part II., chap. III. 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 painted a trout and a grayling. In the center of the 
 room was a black marble table, supported by two 
 stone feet. At this table Piscator and Viator "sate 
 them down," and while Piscator smoked the pipe of 
 tobacco " which, " said he, is "always my break- 
 fast, " the two discoursed on the secrets of angling. 
 
 A few paces from the door of the fishing house 
 was "Pike Pool." Here a conical shaft of lime- 
 stone, covered with lichens and creepers, rose from 
 the bed of the stream to the height of thirty or forty 
 feet. About its base the Dove had dug herself a 
 deep pool. On the Derby side a wall of rock rose 
 from the water ; on the Stafford side a lawn stretched 
 back to the hill over which Piscator and Viator had 
 come conversing. At this point the anglers first 
 tried their skill. 1 ' * What have we got here ? ' ' asked 
 Viator, "a rock springing up in the middle of the 
 river! this is one of the oddest sights that ever I 
 saw." The place is still as Viator saw it. It is a 
 spot of absolute quiet and seclusion; the silence is 
 broken only by the Dove chattering over little stone 
 weirs. Such a place fishermen often see in dreams. 
 
 We need not follow Piscator and Viator farther. 
 Theirs was a successful day; "Go thy way, little 
 Dove!" exclaimed Viator in the evening, "thou art 
 the finest river ever I saw and the fullest of fish." 
 Perhaps they were at the moment returning to the 
 Hall by way of the foot-path leading up the Staf- 
 fordshire bank of the Dove to the top of the hill 
 from which, in the morning, they had looked down 
 upon Beresford Dale. 
 
 i Angler, Part II., chap. VI. 
 
16 INTRODUCTION 
 
 The path ran near two objects that have interest 
 for us. Near the summit of the hill was the tower 
 alluded to by Cotton in an "Epistle to John Brad- 
 shaw, Esq." In this epistle the poet describes a 
 journey from London to Beresford Hall by way of 
 St. Albans, Stratford and Lichfield. He came at 
 night-fall of the fifth day within sight of his ' i Hero 's 
 Tow'r," from which the light of "her flambeaux" 
 beaconed him to his "long long'd-for Harbour of 
 delight. ' ' And not far from the tower was a narrow 
 cleft in the rock wide enough to allow one person to 
 pass through. It opened into a large hollow, in the 
 solid rock. To-day this cavity is known as "Cot- 
 ton's Hole." It is probably one of the caves which 
 the poet apostrophizes in "The Retirement." 
 
 "Oh, my beloved caves ! 
 
 
 What safety, privacy, what true delight 
 
 In th' artificial night 
 
 Your gloomy entrails make, 
 
 Have I taken, do I take ! 
 
 How oft, when grief has made me fly 
 
 To hide me from society, 
 
 Ev 'n of my dearest friends, have I 
 
 In your recesses' friendly shade 
 
 All my sorrows open laid, 
 And my most secret woes entrusted to your 
 privacy ! ' ' 
 
 If we combine into one conception the necessity 
 which drove the poet to lodge with "hard favoured 
 grief" in the gloomy entrails of his beloved rocks; 
 and the grateful pleasure which he found in the 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 sweetness and seclusion of Beresford Dale, in the 
 innocent sport which the "fair Dove" afforded him 
 and in the cleanliness and order of the domestic life 
 at the Hall, we may realize somewhat the manner of 
 man Cotton was, and we may value at its true worth 
 the frank and winning revelation of the man given 
 by his poetry. 
 
 No record remains of his boyhood and youth at 
 Beresford. From the place itself we may guess 
 how these years passed. The Dove was near, in 
 which a boy might fish and bathe; hills and caves 
 afforded adventure; flowers and nuts were there 
 to be gathered, and animals to be tamed, such as the 
 little marten to which he later addressed some 
 charming lines. There were excursions to Harting- 
 ton on market days, and visits from time to time' to 
 the world of fashion at Buxton. During the long 
 "Peak" winter, there were studies to be mastered, 
 a routine relieved by indoor amusements and by the 
 festivities of the English yule-tide. 
 
 There was of course a period of school life, but of 
 it likewise no record is left. It was, perhaps, 
 during his school days that Cotton was called upon 
 to bear his first great sorrow, the sudden death of 
 his mother at the age of thirty-eight. Tradition 
 says that she was a woman of great beauty, of much 
 intellect, and of extreme gentleness; Charles was 
 her only child, and the two were, no doubt, very dear 
 to each other. She was buried at Bentley, the an- 
 cient seat of her family. To her, Sir Aston Cokaine 
 inscribed the following epitaph : 
 
18 INTRODUCTION 
 
 "Passenger, stay, and notice take of her, 
 Whom this sepulchral marble doth inter : 
 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 
 Everywhere for his worth belov'd and known, 
 One only son she left, whom we presage 
 A grace t' his family, and to our age. 
 
 Now thou may'st go; but take along with thee 
 (To guide thy life and death) her memory. " 
 
 From tradition we learn that Cotton's father took 
 great interest in his son's education. He took a 
 hand in it personally by choosing authors for trans- 
 lation, and by setting the boy themes for practice 
 in writing. That the elder Cotton was in this re- 
 spect a competent mentor for his son there can be 
 no doubt. We have only to recall Herrick's praise 
 of his fine taste in poetry, and Walton's testimony 
 to his gift for description. Under these circum- 
 stances, it was perhaps not a matter of great mo- 
 ment whether or not the poet had a college training. 
 The tradition is persistent that he was sent to Cam- 
 bridge, though Mr. Bullen considers this not proved. 
 Nevertheless, he somehow acquired a knowledge of 
 the classics equal at least to that of a Cambridge 
 graduate, and he became early in life widely read 
 in French and Italian literature. Sir Aston Co- 
 kaine, in " Poems of Diverse Sorts," 1658, addressed 
 an epistle "To my Cousin, Mr. Charles Cotton, 
 the younger," in which the following lines occur, 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 r< In how few years have you rais'd up an high 
 Column of learning by your industry. " 
 
 And again, in the same volume, Sir Aston says, 
 
 "D'Avila, Bentivoglio, Guicciardine, 
 And Machiavil the subtle Florentine, 
 In their originals I have read through, 
 Thanks to your library and unto you. 
 
 When you have more such books, I pray vouch- 
 safe 
 Me their perusal. ' ' 
 
 This seems to contradict the inference of Macau- 
 lay in a note to his History of England (chap, iii) 
 as to the scarcity of books in country places in the 
 seventeenth century, an inference drawn by Macau- 
 lay from the fact that "Cotton seems, from his 
 Angler, to have found room for his whole library in 
 his hall window : and Cotton was a man of letters. ' ' 
 Cotton did his translations at Beresf ord ; from this 
 it would seem that he may have had about him there 
 a library of considerable size. 
 
 The first published verses of Cotton appeared in 
 Eichard Brome's "Lachrymae Musarum," 1650, a 
 volume of elegies written by "divers persons of 
 Nobility and Worth, upon the death of the most 
 hopefull Henry Lord Hastings/' Among the con- 
 tributors to this volume, besides Cotton, were 
 Thomas Bancroft, Sir Aston Cokaine, Alexander 
 Brome, Sir John Denham, Andrew Marvell, and 
 Eobert Herrick. Though Cotton was but nineteen 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 years of age, his elegy is far from being the poorest 
 in the volume; it is one of the best. It is con- 
 ventional, like most of the others; but it shows 
 no glaring faults in taste, and it was evidently writ- 
 ten with the poet's eye upon the object. Two years 
 later he prefixed commendatory verses to Edmund 
 Prestwick's translation of Seneca's ' ' Hippolytus. " 
 Belonging to about this time are several interesting 
 poems, to be found in the posthumous volume of 
 "Occasional Poems. " Among these is "An invi- 
 tation to Phillis," a variation upon Marlowe's 
 theme "Come live with me and be my love." The 
 setting for the poem is evidently Beresford Dale, 
 
 "Come live with me, and be my love, 
 And thou shalt all the pleasures prove, 
 The mountains towering tops can show 
 Inhabiting the Vales below. 
 From a brave height my Star shall shine l 
 T* illuminate the desart Clime. 
 Thy Summer's bower shall overlook, 
 The subtil windings of the Brook, 
 For thy delight which only springs 
 And cuts her way with Turtles Wings." 
 
 Further on the Dove is specifically mentioned, 
 "Where crystal Dove runs murmuring still." 
 
 The companion piece to this, "The Entertainment 
 to Phillis" should also be mentioned; it is equally 
 "sweet," musical, and sensuous: 
 
 iThis refers to the "Hero's TowV mentioned above. 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 "I have such Fruits too, for thy taste, 
 As teeming Autumn never grac't, 
 Apples, as round, as thine own Eyes ; 
 Or, as thy Sister Beauties prize, 
 Smooth, as thy snowy Skin, and sleek 
 And ruddy as the Morning's cheek, 
 Grapes, that the Tyrian purple wear, 
 The spritely Matrons of the Year, 
 Such, as Lyaeus never bare, 
 About his drowsy Brows, so fair, 
 So plump, so large, so ripe, so good, 
 So full of flavours, and of blood. " 
 
 In passing, it is worthy of mention that in these 
 poems, and others of this period, Cotton shows a 
 great fondness for alliteration, especially of the 
 liquids, and of the s-sound that, instead of hissing, 
 sings. Take for example, 
 
 " Sweet, as the milk of Sand-red Cow" ; 
 and again, 
 
 "Carpets where Flowers woven grow, 
 Only thy sweeter steps to strew, 
 Such as may emulation bring, 
 To the wrought mantle of the Spring." 
 
 Also of this period is the "Song Montross" ; 
 Montross was captured and executed, May 21, 1650. 
 "Laura Sleeping" 1 and "Laura Weeping," 2 two 
 beautiful lyrics, are likewise, to judge from evi- 
 dences of poetic style, of this period : 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 519. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 521. 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 * l Sweet sorrow drest in such a look, 
 As love would trick to catch desire ; 
 A shaded Leaf in Beauties Book, 
 Charactered with clandestine Fire." 1 
 
 These poems, as we have seen, are smooth and 
 warmly colored, and it should be added, relatively 
 impersonal. But in the "Eclogue. Damon. C. C. 
 Thyrsis. E. E. " a somewhat different note is struck. 
 This eclogue was written, probably, about 1650; for 
 Thyrsis says, evidently referring to the death of 
 the King, January 30, 1649, 
 
 " 'Las! who can sing? since our Pan dy'd 
 Each Shepherd's pipe is laid aside: 
 Our flocks they feed on parched ground, 
 Shelter, nor Water's for them found: 
 And all our sports are cast away, 
 Save when thou sing'st thy Ccelia." 2 
 
 Damon replies, 
 
 "Ccelia, I do confess alone 
 My object is of Passion, 
 My Star, my bright Magnetick Pole, 
 And only Guidress of my Soul. ' ' 3 
 
 Damon (C. C.) is obviously Cotton himself, and 
 Thyrsis (E. K.) Ralph Rawson, his tutor. Ralph 
 Rawson was in residence at Brasenose college, Ox- 
 ford, in 1648, and was expelled by the Parliamentary 
 visitors in that year. He was, about this time, Cot- 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 522. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 360. 
 Ibid., p. 403. 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 ton's tutor either at Cambridge, or, which is more 
 probable, his private tutor at Beresford. 
 
 It is altogether probable that the Coelia of the 
 eclogue is Cotton's distant relative, Isabella Hutch- 
 inson, the inspiration of many of the lyrics, written, 
 say, between 1650 and the time of his marriage to 
 her in 1656. She was the daughter of Sir Thomas 
 Hutchinson of Owthorpe, by his second wife, Cath- 
 erine, who was the daughter of Sir John Stanhope 
 of Elvaston. There was opposition to the marriage 
 from some quarters on the ground of too close a 
 blood relationship; in "The Separation " 1 Cotton 
 cries, 
 
 "But oh, th' unwelcome cause, 
 
 Of superstitious Laws! 
 That us, from our mutual embraces tear, 
 And separate our bloods, because too near. ' ' 
 
 And again, 2 
 
 "But I'll pursue her, till our flood agree, 
 Alpheus I, and Arethusa she." 
 
 So far as the lovers themselves were concerned, 
 love met love with "equal flame." The poet was 
 in despair when his mistress was coy or when she 
 was absent from him ; but, on the whole, he indulged 
 himself very little in conventional grief. More 
 often he expressed doubt of his own worthiness. 
 This note rings true whenever we find it. He seems 
 to have been unwontedly clear-eyed, even circum- 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 347, stanza iii. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 348. 
 
24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 spect, from beginning to end. He expressed himself 
 like one sobered rather than intoxicated by happi- 
 ness. He seemed anxious, one might say, to avoid 
 if possible the fatality of bliss. His appeal was 
 egotistical, and yet it does not offend; it sprang 
 from insight and sincerity, not from willful self-as- 
 sertion. He realized, even in the heyday of passion- 
 ate desire, that love cannot thrive long on self-abne- 
 gation. He knew that the best and the highest is 
 nevertheless earth-born, that it is a flower which 
 fades quickly when cut off from the stock on which 
 it grows. By virtue of his sincerity he instinctively 
 escaped the poetical dilemma of his age. He was 
 too much of a realist to be a Platonist in love, and 
 too wholesome to be a cynic. To illustrate his tem- 
 per, take the fifth stanza of "Estrennes to Calis- 
 ta," 1 
 
 " You who my last love have, my first love had, 
 To whom my all of love was and is paid, 
 Are only worthy to receive 
 The richest New years-gift I have. 
 My love, which I this morning give, 
 
 A nobler never Monarch gave 
 Which each new-year I will present a-new 
 And you'll take care, I hope, it shall be due." 
 
 The last line of this quotation illustrates what is 
 meant by calling him a realist ; it is by such fidelity 
 to the mixed texture of human experience and 
 human feeling, that, time and again, he wins convic- 
 tion. 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 162. 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 As the time for his departure to France drew 
 near, his love poems took on a tone of apprehension. 
 He wished for an avowal from his betrothed which 
 would hold him, in absence, true to himself at his 
 best, and to her. He had no doubts of her constancy, 
 which is the finest compliment a lover can pay, 
 but he was not absolutely sure that he could be true 
 to her and to himself : 
 
 11 'Tis my ador'd Diana, then must be 
 
 The Guid'ress to this beaten Bark of mine, 
 'Tis she must calm and smooth this troubled Sea, 
 And waft my hope over the vaulting Brine : 
 Call home thy venture Dian then at last, 
 And be as merciful as thou art chaste. " 
 
 He took her picture with him, explaining why with 
 disarming frankness: 
 
 "Then, Sweetest, would thy Picture turn 
 My wandering eyes to thee at home." 
 
 Upon trial of himself, however, he proved im- 
 pervious to temptation, and announced naively in 
 "The Retreat," 
 
 "I'm returned, my Fair, but see 
 Perfection in none but thee. ' ' 
 
 Isabella must have had a rare amount of insight 
 and good-sense, for there is a quality of love that 
 would have cavilled at that. Evidently she did not, 
 nor does the reader, who cannot help loving this 
 lover, so scrupulously honest with himself and with 
 
26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 her. One believes him when he sings in the ode, 
 "To Isabel": 1 
 
 "Fair Isabel, if aught but thee 
 
 I could, or would, or like, or love ; 
 If other Beauties but approve 
 To sweeten my Captivity: 
 
 I might those Passions be above, 
 
 Those Powerful Passions that combine 
 To make, and keep me only thine. 
 
 n. 
 
 Or, if for tempting treasure I 
 
 Of the World's God, prevailing Gold, 
 Could see thy Love, and my Truth sold, 
 A greater, nobler Treasury; 
 
 My flame to thee might then grow cold, 
 And I like one whose love is sense, 
 Exchange thee for convenience. 
 
 m. 
 
 But when I vow to thee, I do 
 
 Love thee above or Health, or Peace, 
 Gold, Joy, and all such Toys as these, 
 'Bove Happiness and Honour too : 
 
 Thou then must know, this love can cease, 
 Nor change for all the glorious show 
 "Wealth, and Discretion bribes us to. 
 
 IV. 
 
 What such a love deserves, thou, Sweet, 
 As knowing best, may'st best reward; 
 I, for thy bounty well prepared, 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 449. 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 With open arms my Blessing meet. 
 
 Then do not, Dear, our joys detard ; 
 But unto him propitious be, 
 That knows no love, nor life, but thee. ' ' 
 
 The marriage took place in 1656, upon Cotton's 
 return from his travels in France and Italy. 
 Before this event, he and his father had vested the 
 manors of Bentley, Barrowashe, and Beresford, 
 with other lands, in trustees, to sell off so much of 
 the property as would pay a mortgage of 1700, 
 and to hold the rest in trust for the younger Cotton 
 and his heirs. The elder Cotton, who had greatly 
 impoverished his estates by law-suits, died in 1658. 
 
 For the next ten or eleven years, the poet seems 
 to have lived, very happily, the life of a country gen- 
 tleman. Much of his time was taken up with the 
 care of his estates; but, like his cousin Sir Aston 
 Cokaine at the neighboring estate of Pooley, he 
 found time for reading and study, and for the indul- 
 gence, as he puts it, of "an incurable humour of 
 scribbling. " During these years, many of his best 
 lyrics were written. It seems probable that the 
 "Summer Day Quatrains " were composed during 
 the early years of his married life; and to these 
 years, perhaps, should be assigned the fine ode 
 to "Winter, 1 " which Wordsworth so much admired. 
 Here, too, should be placed a number of amorous 
 elegies and lyrics which seem to show the influence 
 of certain French poets, in particular that of Mal- 
 herbe, Voiture, Eacan, and Theophile de Viaud. 
 "The Battail of Yvry," a narrative poem based on 
 French history, belongs also to these years, i. e., 
 
28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the years just before the Restoration as the con- 
 cluding couplet of the last stanza indicates, 
 
 ' ' Leaving fair France unto his brighter Ray 
 May ev'ry injur'd Prince have such a Day." 
 
 Belonging to this period, too, are some pieces 
 of a satirical cast such as "The Litany," probably 
 written before 1660, and "The Joys of Marriage," a 
 poem of mildly satirical banter, in which is em- 
 bedded the following characteristic tribute to his 
 wife : 
 
 "Yet with me 'tis out of season 
 To complain thus without reason, 
 Since the best and sweetest fair 
 Is allotted to my share: 
 But alas ! I love her so 
 That my love creates my woe ; 
 For if she be out of humour, 
 Straight displeased I do presume her 
 And would give the World to know 
 What it is offends her so : 
 Or if she be discontented, 
 Lord, how am I then tormented ! 
 And am ready to persuade her 
 That I have unhappy made her : 
 But if sick I then am dying, 
 Meat and med'cine both defying: 
 So uneasie is his Life 
 Who is married to a Wife." 
 
 At the Restoration, in 1660, Cotton published a 
 panegyric in prose on Charles II. He was an ar- 
 dent royalist. The only bitterly satirical verses 
 that he ever wrote were those provoked from him 
 
INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 by Waller's eulogy on Oliver Cromwell. Neverthe- 
 less, neither he nor his father appears to have 
 suffered any persecutions at the hands of the Com- 
 monwealth party. In an " Epode ' ' l addressed to 
 Alexander Brome, he expressed his joy at the return 
 of the King : 
 
 * ' Now let us drink, and with our nimble Feet, 
 The Floor in graceful measures beat; 
 
 Never so fit a time for harmless Mirth 
 Upon the Sea-guirt spot of Earth. 
 
 The King's returned !" 
 
 In the same poem, the following lines are found: 
 
 "Our Griefs once made us thirsty, and our Joy, 
 
 If not allay 'd, may now destroy, 
 Light up the silent Tapers, let them shine, 
 
 To give Complexion to our Wine ; 
 Fill each a Pipe of the rich Indian Fume 
 
 To vapour Incense in the Eoom, 
 That we may in that artificial shade 
 
 Drink all a Night ourselves have made. 
 No Cup shall be discharged, whilst round we sit, 
 
 Without a smart report of wit, 
 Whilst our Inventions quickened thus, and 
 warm, 
 
 Hit all they fly at, but not harm ; 
 For it Wit's mastery is, and chief est Art 
 
 To tickle all; but make none smart." 
 
 In 1664, Cotton began his burlesque writing, with 
 the publication of " Scarronides, or the First Book 
 of Virgil Travestie." Six years later, this book 
 was reprinted, with a travesty of the "fourth book" 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 511. 
 
30 INTRODUCTION 
 
 added. During the poet's lifetime, six editions of 
 ' ' Scarronides ' ' appeared. He seems always to have 
 been ashamed of this, his most popular work, as 
 many passing allusions in his epistles and elsewhere 
 attest; but hard necessity drove him to burlesque, 
 as from time to time it drove him to his caves. His 
 only defense was that the age in which he lived 
 required burlesque of him, and that he did it as well 
 as he could. His best in this kind, we must admit, 
 was better than that of any other, excepting Butler. 
 Compared with the similar work of Mennis and 
 Smith in the "Musarum Deliciae," Cotton's dog- 
 gerel is fine art. It is almost never dull; it does 
 not amble, nor trot; it gallops, as it should, with 
 vigorous ease. Whatever may be the true judgment 
 of his burlesque, it undoubtedly gave pleasure in 
 its day. Pepys, for one, records on March 2nd, 
 1663-64, that, stopping on his way home at St. Paul's 
 Church yard, in spite of an eye " mightily out of 
 order with rheum" he " there looked upon a pretty 
 burlesque poem called i Scarronides or Virgilian 
 Travesty,' " which he found "extraordinary good." 
 It is interesting to note that the publication of the 
 "Scarronides" synchronizes with a crisis in Cot- 
 ton's financial affairs. Some time prior to the year 
 
 1664 he had applied to Parliament for power to sell 
 part of his estates, in order to pay his debts. In 
 
 1665 this petition was favorably acted upon. Now 
 the question rises, what was the cause of his constant 
 pecuniary embarrassment? Was it due, as the usual 
 impression seems to be, to the dissipations of a reck- 
 less bon vivant? Before an answer is given to this 
 
INTRODUCTION 31 
 
 question, let us recall one or two well-ascertained 
 facts concerning the matter. 
 
 In the first place, it should be remembered that 
 Cotton's estates came to him seriously encumbered. 
 From the outset he was engaged in law-suits which 
 he had inherited, in some degree, with the paternal 
 estates. Moreover, his amiable weakness of gener- 
 osity laid him open to the arts of designing men, and 
 gave occasion to those pathetic references to ingrati- 
 tude and neglect met with in the eclogues, odes, epis- 
 tles, and elsewhere. Of these one may be cited, in 
 passing : 1 
 
 1 'The want of Wealth I reckon not distress, 
 But of enough to do good offices. 
 Which growing less those Friends will fall away; 
 Poverty is the ground of all decay : 
 With our Prosperities our Friendships end, 
 And to misfortune no one is a Friend, 
 Which I already find to that degree 
 That my old Friends are now afraid of me, 
 And all avoid me, as good men would fly 
 The common Hangman's shamefull company. 
 Those who by Fortune were advanced above, 
 Being obliged by my most ready love, 
 Shun me, for fear least my necessity 
 Should urge what they're unwilling to deny, 
 And are resolv'd they will not grant ; and those 
 Have shared my meat, my Money, and my Cloaths, 
 Grown rich with others Spoils as well as mine 
 The coming near me now do all decline, 
 Least shame and gratitude should draw them in 
 To be to me what I to them have been ; 
 By which means I am stripp'd of all Supplies 
 And left alone to my own Miseries. ' ' 
 
 i Eclogue: Poems, 1689, p. 108. 
 
32 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Such means of being " stripped of all supplies/' 
 taken in connection with inherited debts, and the 
 unsettled condition of public affairs in his day, are 
 in themselves sufficient to account for his straitened 
 circumstances. 
 
 If we are careful to avoid unjust inferences, it 
 may, however, be freely admitted that according to 
 our standards Cotton was intemperate. On one oc- 
 casion l he writes to his friend Bradshaw that hav- 
 ing got as far as Uttoxeter on his way home from 
 London, it being market-day, 
 
 ' ' I was constrained with some kind lads to stay 
 Tippling till afternoon, which made it night 
 When from my Hero's Tower I saw the light 
 Of her Flambeaux, and fancied as we drave 
 Each rising Hillock was a swelling wave 
 And that I swimming was in Neptune 's spight 
 To my long long'd-for Harbour of delight." 
 
 In the " Voyage to Ireland" 2 he stops at a way- 
 side inn for refreshment, and finds "the best ale in 
 England," 
 
 "I speak it with tears 
 Though I have been a Toss-pot these twenty good 
 
 years, 
 And have drank so much liquor has made me a 
 
 Debtor." 
 
 Again, in an epistle to Sir Clifford Clifton 3 he 
 describes himself as having, 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 55. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 174. 
 Ibid., p. 328. 
 
INTRODUCTION 33 
 
 " Grown something swab with drinking good Ale." 
 But in this same epistle l he also says, that though 
 
 ' l His delight is to toss the cann merrily round 
 And loves to be wet, ' ' 
 
 he nevertheless " hates to be drowned. " 
 
 Such instances might be multiplied. Two consid- 
 erations must be taken into account in attempting to 
 estimate their value as indications of Cotton's hab- 
 its and the probable consequences of them ; namely, 
 the attitude of the time toward drinking, and the con- 
 ventions of private correspondence and of burlesque 
 under which he so constantly spoke of himself as a 
 1 1 toss-pot. " It is certain that he was not more, 
 and may have been much less, indulgent to himself 
 in this respect than the average gentleman of his 
 time. It was a great time for drinking. Even 
 grave divines consumed large quantities of wine. 
 And Pepys, who was himself very often "fox'd with 
 drink/' tells of a lady who at one draught drank a 
 pint and a half. The evidence which Cotton him- 
 self furnishes is not sufficient to prove him a drunk- 
 ard, even if such evidence were to be taken liter- 
 ally, as of course it is not. Such evidence occurs 
 mainly in epistles to intimate friends, such friends 
 as might have been expected to understand as well 
 as to enjoy a decided touch of self-caricature. The 
 other source of evidence is the "Voyage to Ireland 
 in Burlesque." But here, obviously, the rules of 
 burlesque must be applied to what the poet has said 
 of his drinking, as well as to what he has said of 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 329. 
 
34 INTRODUCTION 
 
 himself in other respects. His confessions, if taken 
 literally, might as easily prove that he was a bad 
 poet as that he was a bad man, for he disparages 
 his poor muse as well as himself. The zest of cari- 
 cature, of course, depends upon exaggeration, an 
 exaggeration which by its evident falsity suggests 
 the truth. An age which does not know the sub- 
 ject of the caricature may well be at a loss to dis- 
 tinguish false from true. What is perhaps plainest 
 in these cartoons of Cotton is the glimpse they give 
 of a charming personality. Such facts as they sug- 
 gest of character and habits must be carefully 
 weighed in the most delicate and of necessity, un- 
 certain scales of criticism. 
 
 At about the time of this first crisis in his business 
 affairs Cotton seems to have made strenuous ef- 
 forts to retrieve his fortunes. The preface to his 
 translation of the "Duke of Espernon" (published 
 in 1669-70) shows that among other shifts he had 
 sought public employment. But whatever this was, 
 ' ' it did not hold long. ' ' Some light may possibly be 
 thrown upon what this employment was by the fol- 
 lowing letter found by Mr. H. F. Wake in a folio of 
 Cotton's translations of the "Duke of Espernon," 
 formerly in the Tixall Library. The letter, Mr. 
 Wake explains, though without name or date, is by 
 careful comparison, in Cotton's handwriting. It is 
 given here for what it may be worth. 
 
 "Sir when I was last with you I aquainted you 
 how Sir Thomas Ingram had aquainted me how he 
 was by his Majestyes order to send down a comytyon 
 to me and others to exammyne dyvers wasts of- 
 
INTRODUCTION 35 
 
 fenses and losses his majesty suffered in Needwood 
 and the Honor of Tutbury. I am through his 
 Majestyes gratyouse Favor his lieutennant off the 
 Forrest and his high Steward off the Honor of 
 Tutbury. I then likewise tould you I conceaved I 
 had reason to beelieve iff the commytyon weare Full 
 itt would tuch some persons what would endevor 
 to avoyd itt and I have some assurance now it is 
 so For the commytyon, a coppy off which the 
 Channcelor sent mee to peruse, is I conceave de- 
 fective in what I Feared it would For itt gives us 
 Full power to fynd out all trespases in the woods 
 and game but the greatest prejudice his Majesty 
 suffers in is his grants of offyses; in grants off 
 Lands concealements of Lands and incrochments. 
 I have given Sir Tho : Ingram an answer by a letter 
 For hee writt to me to know my opynyon off the 
 commytyon. ' ' 
 
 " After being delivered from that employment, " 
 Cotton in the preface to the 'Duke of Espernon' 
 says, "I was taken off by so long and so uncom- 
 fortable a sickness, that I found myself utterly 
 unfit for any undertaking of this, or any other kind, 
 and consequently had almost given over all thought 
 of proceeding in a work which at some melancholy 
 times I believ'd I might not live to finish. 1 Being 
 since restored to a better state of health, and coming 
 to review my papers, either the dislike of what I had 
 already done, the shame of having been so long in 
 doing it, the indisposition my disease left still hang- 
 ing upon me, the bulk of what I had undertaken, the 
 little license I conceived I might have wherewith to 
 
 iA more intimate account of this sickness seems to be afforded 
 by the epistle to Sir Clifford Clifton quoted below. 
 
36 INTRODUCTION 
 
 perform it, or all together, had almost persuaded me 
 to hold on to the same resolution, and forever to 
 let it alone : till recollecting myself I remembered I 
 had a greater obligation upon me (which neverthe- 
 less I do not think fit to publish in this place) to 
 go through with what I had already begun, than was 
 to be dissolved by any truant humour, or private 
 aversion of my own. ' ' 
 
 These words, written probably at the end of the 
 year 1666, or the beginning of the following year, 
 would seem in the light of what we know of his 
 pecuniary difficulties about this time, to be an obvious 
 allusion to them. Furthermore, if there should be 
 any doubt as to his energy and patience in trying 
 to conjure forth his muse when she was unwilling, 
 the epistle to Sir Clifford Clifton may be quoted at 
 length to dispel it. We see the poet, just out of his 
 illness, start from his couch, 
 
 " Where I lay dull and muddy. 
 Of my servants inquiring the way to my study 
 For in truth of late days I so little do mind it 
 Should one turn me twice about I never should find 
 it" 
 
 Arrived at his study, he " brawls " for his muse 
 (which, as he says, some call " invoking "), but she 
 will not respond. 
 
 ' ' I then fell to searching, since I could not leave her. 
 I sought all the shelves, but never the nearer: 
 I tumbled my Papers, and rifled each Packet, 
 Threw my books all on heaps and kept such a 
 racket 
 
INTRODUCTION 37 
 
 Disordering all things, which before had their 
 
 places 
 
 Distinct by themselves in several classes, 
 That who'd seen the confusion, and look't on the 
 
 ware, 
 Would have thought he had been at Babylon 
 
 Fair." 
 
 Evidently, in spite of his careless tone, he was or- 
 dinarily a methodical literary worker. 
 
 "At last, when for lost I had wholly resign 't her 
 Where canst thou imagine, dear K>*, I should find 
 
 her? 
 
 Faith, in an old Drawer, I late had not been in, 
 'Twixt a coarse pair of sheets of the Housewife's 
 
 own spinning, 
 
 A Sonnet instead of a coif her head wrapping, 
 I happily took her small Ladiship napping. 
 Why how now, Minx, quoth I, what's the matter I 
 
 pray, 
 
 That you are so hard to be spoke with to day? 
 Fy, fy on this Idleness, get up, and rouse you, 
 For I have a present occasion to use you : 
 Our Noble Mecaenas, Sir Clifford of Cud-con, 
 Has sent here a Letter, a kind and a good one : 
 Which must be suddenly answer 'd, and finely, 
 Or the Knight will take it exceeding unkindly ; 
 To which having some time sat musing and mute, 
 She answer 'd sh'ad broke all the strings of her Lute ; 
 And had got such a Eheum with lying alone, 
 That her voice was utterly broken and gone : 
 
 1 i Besides this, she had heard x that of late I had made 
 A friendship with one that had since bin her Maid ; 
 One Prose, a slatternly ill- favoured toad, 
 
 1 A reference, no doubt, to Cotton's work on the translation of 
 the "Duke of Espernon." 
 
38 INTEODUCTION 
 
 As common as Hackney, and beaten as Eoad, 
 With whom I sat up sometimes whole Nights to- 
 gether, 
 
 Whil 'st she was exposed to the Wind and weather. 
 Wherefore, since that I did so slight and abuse her, 
 She likewise now hop'd I would please to excuse 
 her." 
 
 He now tries to regain his muse 's favor by repre- 
 senting to her the lure of fame. 
 
 11 Which she so much despised, she pish't at the 
 
 name; 
 
 And told me in answer, that she could not glory at 
 The Sail-bearing Title of Muse to a Laureat, 
 Much less to Ehymer, did nought but disgust one, 
 And pretended to nothing but pittiful Fustian 
 But oh, at that word, how I rated, and call 'd her, 
 And had my Fist up, with intent to have maul'd 
 
 her: 
 
 At which, the poor Minx, half afraid of the matter 
 Changing her note, 'gan to wheedle and flatter ; 
 
 Being thus made Friends, we fell to debating 
 What kind of Verse we should congratulate in: 
 I said 't must be Doggrel, which when I had said, 
 Maliciously smiling, she nodded her head 
 Saying Doggrel might pass to a friend would not 
 
 show it, 
 And do well enough for a Derbyshire Poet." 
 
 The epistle goes on to congratulate Sir Clifford 
 upon his election to Parliament, advises him to give 
 money to His Majesty, to beware falling out with 
 his betters, and to avoid treason. It ends with an 
 interesting description of the poet by himself. 
 
INTRODUCTION 39 
 
 1 ' Farewell then, dear Bully, but ne 're look for a 
 
 Name 
 
 For, expecting no honour, I will have no shame ; l 
 Yet, that you may ghess at the Party that writes 
 
 fee, 
 And not grope in the dark, I'll hold up these Lights 
 
 fee. 
 
 He always wants Money, which makes him want 
 
 ease, 
 
 And he's always besieg'd, tho himself of the Peace, 
 By an Army of Duns, who batter with Scandals, 
 And are Foemen more fierce than the Goths or the 
 
 Vandals. 
 
 But when he does rally, as sometimes he does, 
 Then hey for Bess Juckson, and a Fig for his Foes : 
 He's good Fellow enough to do every one right 
 And never was first that ask't, what time of Night: 
 His delight is to toss the cann merrily round, 
 And loves to be wet, but hates to be drown 'd: 
 He fain would be just, but sometimes he cannot, 
 Which gives him the trouble that other men ha' not. 
 He honours his Friend, but he wants means to show 
 
 it, 
 
 And loves to be rhyming, but is the worst Poet. 
 Yet among all these Vices, to give him his due, 
 He has the Vertue to be a true Lover of you." 
 
 At about the date of this epistle to Sir Clifford 
 Clifton, Cotton became a captain in the Earl of 
 Chesterfield's regiment of foot; this was a part of 
 a levy raised in anticipation of a land invasion by 
 the Dutch, who in June of 1667 burned Sheerness, 
 
 iAn allusion, perhaps, to his feeling about the "Scarronides," 
 anonymously printed in 1664; he was at this time at work on the 
 "fourth book" of it, which was published in 1670. 
 
40 INTRODUCTION 
 
 entered the Medway, and sailed to within twenty 
 miles of London. England was much alarmed. 
 Pepys makes this jotting, on the twelfth of June: 
 "The newes is true, that the Dutch have broke the 
 chaine and burned our ships, and particularly 'The 
 Eoyal Charles '; other particulars I know not, but 
 most sad to be sure. And the truth is I do fear so 
 much that the Kingdom is undone. " Cotton and 
 his regiment had, a few days before, passed through 
 London on their way to Harwich, where the militia 
 was assembling. On the ninth of June, Pepys had 
 recorded "In comes my Lord Berkeley who is going 
 down to Harwich also to look after the militia there ; 
 and there is also the Duke of Monmouth, and with 
 a great many young Hectors, the Lord Chesterfield, 
 My Lord Mandeville, and other s." No more definite 
 record remains of Cotton's military service. Per- 
 haps, as he said of his other public employment, it 
 "did not hold long," though there is some reason 
 to believe that three years later he went to Ireland 
 in a quasi-military capacity. Chesterfield's regi- 
 ment was in commission for only a short time, being 
 disbanded soon after the conclusion of the peace 
 with Holland, on the twenty-first of July, 1667. 1 
 
 For the following year and a half we have no 
 record of Cotton, unless, as seems probable, an 
 epistle to John Bradshaw 2 belongs to this time. In- 
 this, after a vivid description of a journey from Lon- 
 
 1 Calendar of State Papers: 1667. Pepys, 12 June, 1667; ibid., 
 9 June, 1667. Dalton, Army Lasts, i, 79. 
 
 2 Poems, 1689, p. 83. 
 
INTRODUCTION 41 
 
 don to Beresford, he gives the following character- 
 istic account of himself : 
 
 "And now I'm here set down again in peace, 
 After my troubles, business, Voyages, 1 
 The same dull Northern clod I was before, 
 Gravely enquiring how Ewes are a Score, 
 How the Hay-Harvest and the Corn was got 
 And if, or no, there's like to be a Eot: 
 Just the same sot I was e'er I removed, 
 Nor by my travel, nor the Court improved; 
 The same old fashion 'd Squire, no whit refin'd 
 And shall be wiser when the Devil's blind." 
 
 In the spring of 1669, his wife, whom he deeply 
 loved, died. She was buried at Alstonfield on the 
 twenty-sixth of April. As issue of this marriage 
 there had been eight children; five were living. 
 Beresford, the eldest, and the only son, was but 
 twelve years of age. Perhaps we may now begin to 
 understand what Cotton must have had at heart when 
 he wrote in the preface to the ' * Duke of Espernon, ' ' 
 apropos of his impulse to abandon that work, and his 
 remembrance of the obligation that urged him on to 
 it, "I therefore reassum'd my former purpose, and 
 some months since (probably 1668-69) took the book 
 again, in good earnest in hand, which when I have 
 said, any ingenious person may reasonably wonder 
 how a man, in good earnest, and that has so little 
 to do in the world as I have, could be all this tedious 
 
 i By "Voyages" it is probable that he means "journeys." Cf. 
 "A Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque," in which only a description 
 of travel by land is given. 
 
42 INTRODUCTION 
 
 time about such a piece of work as this. To which 
 (if what I have already said will not serve for an 
 excuse) I shall answer, that, although by my inca- 
 pacity, my ill fortune, or both, I stand excus 'd from 
 publick employment, I have notwithstanding so 
 much private concern of my own to divert me, and 
 so few moments to bestow upon myself, that I won- 
 der 'tis done so soon: an apology I might how- 
 ever have spar'd, since my haste will I fear be legible 
 in every line." 
 
 The "History of the Life of the Duke of Esper- 
 non: the great favorite of France " was published 
 in the year 1669-70. It covered the period of French 
 history "from the year 1598, when D'Avila leaves 
 off, down to our own times, 1642. ' ' It was dedicated 
 to Gilbert, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, one of 
 His Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council. Of 
 this dedication Cotton says "I have . . . been 
 prompted thereunto by an honest Vanity I have, the 
 World should take notice, that how private soever 
 my life has been, I have not altogether conversed 
 with Obscurity: but that I have had the Honour to 
 be sometimes known unto, and to have been Fa- 
 vour 'd by one of the greatest Prelates, and the best 
 men upon Earth." In the same "humour," mod- 
 estly his own, he affirms in the preface that his 
 motives in making the translation were not "any 
 design of advantage, that consideration being ever 
 very much below my thoughts : not to oblige the 
 world, that being above my expectations ; but having 
 an incurable humour of scribbling upon me, I be- 
 liev'd I could not choose a braver subject for my 
 
INTRODUCTION 43 
 
 Friends ' diversion, my own Entertainment than this. 
 ... It was not therefore out of any ambition 
 I had to be again in Print, I having suffered too 
 much that way already. " This reference is evi- 
 dently to the "Scarronides," and the unwelcome 
 reputation that it gave him. He did not, however, 
 on account of this feeling, desist from the writing of 
 burlesque. In this same year, he reprinted the 
 ' ' Scarronides ' ' with a travesty of the fourth book of 
 Virgil added. It proved to be very popular, going 
 through nine editions during the author's lifetime. 
 
 In May of this year (1670) he made a journey, or 
 as he called it, a " voyage " to Ireland. His expe- 
 riences on the way from Beresford to Wales are 
 given in the burlesque poem, "A Voyage to Ire- 
 land." It affords us many interesting glimpses of 
 the poet. At forty years of age he might well, he 
 says, be considered wiser than to run such errands as 
 these, though in his youth, he 
 
 " ... was one of those People 
 Would have gone a great way to have seen an high 
 steeple 
 
 But to tell you the truth on't, indeed it was neither 
 Improvement nor pleasure for which I went 
 thither ;" 
 
 It was necessity, as he explains, that induced him 
 to go "to the place whereof Nick was asham'd." 
 At Chester he was invited to sup with the mayor, 
 the latter 's eye having been caught by "a glorious 
 
44 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Gold Belt" that the poet wore. The occasion gives 
 rise to a flow of the poet's mild satire, some of it 
 directed to our illumination against himself : 
 
 "Supper being ended, and things away taken, 
 Master Mayor 's Curiosity 'gan to awaken ; 
 Wherefore making me draw something nearer his 
 
 chair, 
 
 He will'd and required me there to declare 
 My Country, my Birth, my Estates, and my Parts, 
 And whether I was not a Master of Arts ; 
 And what the business was had brought me thither, 
 With what I was going about now and whither : 
 Giving me caution, no lye should escape me, 
 For if I should trip, he should certainly trap me. 
 I answer 'd, my Country was fam'd Staffordshire; 
 That in Deeds, Bills, and Bonds, I was ever writ 
 
 Squire ; 
 That of Land, I had both sorts, some good, and 
 
 some evil, 
 But that a great part on't was pawn'd to the 
 
 Devil; 
 
 That as for my Parts, they were such as he saw ; 
 That indeed I had a small smattering of Law, 
 Which I lately had got more by practice than read- 
 ing, 
 
 By sitting o' th' Bench, whilst others were plead- 
 ing; 
 
 But that Arms I had ever more studied than Arts, 
 And was now to a Captain rais 'd by my desarts ; 
 That the business which led me through Palatine 
 
 ground 
 Into Ireland was, whither now I was bound ;" 
 
 What the business was, which led him into Ireland, 
 it would be, all things considered, somewhat inter- 
 
INTRODUCTION 45 
 
 esting to know. But about that he is unwontedly 
 reticent. 
 
 In 1671 he prepared for publication a translation 
 of Horatius by Corneille. The Horatius was not, in 
 fact, merely a translation; it contained a number 
 of original songs and choruses, which according to 
 Mr. Alfred Wallis in ' ' Notes and Queries ' ' l are to 
 be found no where else in Cotton's published poetry. 
 It is important to note that the preface to this 
 adaptation shows that the translation prior to 1671 
 existed only in manuscript, and that it was done 
 as early as 1665, for "the private amusement of a 
 fair young lady," the poet's relative, Mrs. Stan- 
 hope Hutchinson. It would seem, therefore, that 
 the work was not done originally for publication, 
 but that now, under the stress of circumstances, it 
 was put upon the market. 
 
 Two years later, 1673, the publisher, Henry 
 Brome, brought out an unsigned work, entitled ' * The 
 Compleate Gamester, or Instruction how to play at 
 Billiards, Trucks, Bowls, and Chess : Together with 
 all manner of usual and most gentile games, either 
 on Cards or Dice. To which is added, The Arts and 
 Mysteries of Biding, Eacing, Archery, and Cock- 
 fighting." This compilation, which was popular in 
 its day, was republished several times before 1699, 
 when its authorship was at last ascribed by the 
 publisher to Charles Cotton, Esq. Its publication 
 seems to be added proof that Cotton had been driven 
 to "pot-boiling." That he was not altogether oc- 
 
 i "Notes and Queries," 6th S. vol. viii, 1883. 
 
46 INTRODUCTION 
 
 cupied with hack-work is indicated by the fact that 
 his poem addressed to Walton on the "Life of Dr. 
 Donne " also belongs to this year. But that he was 
 mainly so occupied is open to little doubt. For in 
 the next year, 1674, he published his translation of 
 1 1 The Commentaries of Blaise de Montluc, Mareschal 
 of France, wherein are described all the combats, 
 rencounters, skirmishes, battles, sieges, assaults, 
 scalades, the taking and surprise of towns and 
 fortresses, as also the defence and assaults of the 
 besieged, etc." He was perhaps taking his cap- 
 taincy somewhat seriously, and at the same time 
 turning his interest in it to account. In the same 
 year he published "The Fair One of Tunis, or the 
 Generous Mistress; A new Piece of Gallantry, Out 
 of French, " the frontispiece of which represents 
 a Knight in armor on horseback, receiving from 
 Mars a spear entwined with laurel, and from Venus 
 a chaplet. In this year, too, he wrote a set of com- 
 mendatory verses which appeared with Thomas 
 Flatman's volume of poems. 1 
 
 For the most part, during the nine or ten years 
 following the granting of his petition to Parliament 
 in 1665 to be allowed to sell a part of his estates 
 
 i These verses, by the way, are of interest as expressing Cotton's 
 generous though discriminating praise of a poet one unlike him- 
 self who has yet perhaps to receive his full measure of apprecia- 
 tion. Flatman, says Cotton, knew how to "reconcile frailty with 
 Innocence," 
 
 "The Love you write, Virgins and Boyes may read, 
 And never be debauch't but better bred; 
 For without love, Beauty would bear no price, 
 And dulness, than desire's a greater vice." 
 
INTRODUCTION 47 
 
 in order to pay his debts, Cotton was engaged, then, 
 as we have seen, in trying to stem the tide of his 
 misfortunes. He seems not to have been lacking 
 either in resources or in energy. Yet, as subsequent 
 events show, his efforts had been of little avail. He 
 had obtained public employment, but soon "stood 
 excused from it"; he had entered the army, but 
 before he had seen any length of service, peace had 
 been declared; then, from about 1670 onward, he 
 had worked almost as a literary drudge, doing the 
 bidding of the book-sellers, or adventuring on like 
 speculations of his own. The epistle to John Brad- 
 shaw, written about this time (perhaps 1673-74), 
 serves to recall this period of his life. Settled 
 again at Beresford, he had begun, he says, "to live 
 at the old rate," 
 
 ' ' To bub old Ale, which nonsense does create, 
 Write lewd Epistles, and sometimes translate 
 Old Tales of Tubs, of Guyenne and Provence 
 And keep a clatter with th' old Blades of France 
 As D'Avenant did with those of Lombardy, 
 Which any will receive, but none will buy 
 And that sets H. B. 1 and me awry." 
 
 Amid this bewilderment of private griefs, and 
 public misfortunes, he bore himself for the most 
 part with cheerfulness ; one might say with a cava- 
 lier-like gayety of courage. Some of his occa- 
 sional verses, it must be admitted, such, for exam- 
 ple, as the odes on "Poverty" and "The World" 
 were colored by his sorrow and defeat; but ad- 
 
 iH. B. Henry Brome, his publisher. 
 
48 INTRODUCTION 
 
 versity did not make him hoarse or mute; within 
 his compass he sang with a clear voice that gave 
 expression to a sound heart. 
 
 An episode of these years was his marriage to 
 his distant relative, the Countess Dowager of Ard- 
 glass, eldest daughter of Sir William Eussell, and 
 widow of Wingfield, fifth Baron Cromwell. Just 
 when the marriage took place is not known. The 
 act of administration of Cotton's effects in 1695 
 speaks of the Countess of Ardglass as his widow. 
 That the marriage took place sometime before 1675 
 a document soon to be given in abstract will show. 
 In dealing with this passage in the poet's life Cot- 
 ton's biographers have concerned themselves only 
 with what would appear to be the obvious motive for 
 such a marriage. Cotton was broken in fortune: 
 he had a family of five young children: his distant 
 kinswoman was a reasonable choice for the head of 
 his household, particularly since she had a jointure 
 of 1,500 a year. No doubt at Cotton's time of life 
 these considerations had much weight with him. 
 However, as to the jointure of 1,500 a year, there is 
 some reason to believe that it was secured to his 
 wife ; it did not, at any rate, relieve his financial em- 
 barrassment. Convenience does not seem to have 
 been the sole motive for his second marriage. 
 Among his occasional poems there is a considerable 
 number which have a tone of intimately discriminat- 
 ing praise rather than one of mere gallantry, but 
 which, for all their evident sincerity, lack the morn- 
 ing freshness of his youthful verses to Isabella. It 
 is not improbable that these were addressed to his 
 
INTRODUCTION 49 
 
 second wife. They express a feeling as genuine as 
 was the love of his youth. Time, of course, has left 
 its marks on the poet, and with characteristic honesty 
 he makes no pretense to a sentiment which life per- 
 haps grants only once. But in these verses if there is 
 less of the early fire, there is no abatement of manly 
 tenderness, and there is the added charm of a pecu- 
 liar candor. The ' ' Stanzas Irreguliers " l to Chloris, 
 which begin with the more startling aspects of this 
 candor, close with its more delicate shades. 
 
 1 1 
 
 Lord ! how you take upon you still ! 
 
 How you crow and domineer ! 
 How ! still expect to have your will, 
 
 And carry the Dominion clear, 
 As you were still the same that once you were ! 
 
 VI. 
 
 And Faith, consult your glass, and see 
 
 If I ha 'n't reason on my side ; 
 Are those eyes still the same they used to be? 
 Come, come, they're alter 'd, 'twill not be deni'd; 
 And yet, although the glass be true, 
 And shew you, you no more are you, 
 
 I know you'll scarce believe it, 
 For Womankind are all born proud, and never, 
 never leave it. 
 
 vn. 
 
 Yet still you have enough, and more than needs, 
 To rule a more Rebellious heart than mine ; 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 118. 
 
50 INTRODUCTION 
 
 For as your eyes still shoot my heart still bleeds, 
 And I must be a Subject still. 
 
 Nor is it much against my will, 
 Though I pretend to wrestle and repine : 
 Your Beauties still are in the height, 
 
 And I must still adore, 
 New Years, new Graces still create, 
 Nay, maugre Time, Mischance and Fate, 
 You in your very ruines shall have more, 
 Than all the Beauties that have grac'd the world 
 before." 
 
 This may be an expression of middle-aged senti- 
 ment, but it is a rare expression of the depth of it; 
 paradoxical as it may seem, the romance of love re- 
 mains, although stripped of illusion. 
 
 In the "Calendar of State Papers " for 1675 there 
 is preserved an amended draft of a second Act en- 
 abling Charles Cotton, Esq., to sell lands in order 
 to pay debts, and also to raise portions for his 
 younger children. In the light of what we have 
 seen of his ten years * struggle with adverse cir- 
 cumstances, this document becomes one of pathetic 
 interest. It states that his wife Isabella was then 
 dead ; that she had left one son and four daughters, 
 who were prevented, by their father's mortgages, 
 and other incumbrances, from enjoying the advan- 
 tages to which they were entitled under the pre- 
 vious settlement in 1665, and that, therefore, he 
 was willing to divest himself of his title to his prop- 
 erty for the payment of his debts, which, together 
 with 2,000 to be raised for his daughters' portions, 
 amounted to about 8,000. Parliament, therefore, 
 enacted that all his lands should be "vested in trus- 
 
INTRODUCTION 51 
 
 tees who should allow him to retain Beresford Hall, 
 and to receive the sum of forty pounds per annum 
 during his own life, and the life of the Bight Hon. 
 Dame Mary, Countess Dowager of Ardglass, and 
 after her decease the sum of sixty pounds yearly 
 above the said annuity as long as he might live; 
 that as much land should be sold as would pay his 
 debts, and raise 2,000 for his daughters' portions 
 and that the rest of his estates should be conveyed to 
 his only son, Beresford Cotton, and the heirs of his 
 body, with remainder to the heirs of his father." 
 
 In view of these facts it seems significant that 
 in this year, 1675, he published the "Burlesque 
 upon Burlesque, or the Scoffer Scoft, being some 
 of Lucian's Dialogues, newly put into English Fus- 
 tian. " It was frequently reprinted; burlesque 
 seems to have been the poet's one sure source of 
 revenue. 
 
 In the following year (1676) he published his most 
 famous original work in prose, a treatise on fly-fish- 
 ing, which was added as a "Second Part" to the fifth 
 edition of Walton's "Complete Angler." Prefixed 
 was an epistle, dated 10th March, 1675-76, "To 
 my most worthy father and friend, Mr. Isaak 
 Walton, the elder," in which Cotton says that his 
 treatise had been hurriedly written in ten days. 
 Nevertheless, the "Second Part" is not unworthy 
 of its place beside the first. It has been success- 
 fully adapted to the form of the "First Part," and 
 though it lacks somewhat the peculiar charm of its 
 prototype, it is perhaps rather better than its 
 model when considered as a book of practical in- 
 
52 INTRODUCTION 
 
 struction for anglers. At the end of this "Second 
 Part" Walton had his publishers print the verses by 
 Cotton entitled "The Retirement" (which, Walton 
 declared to his friend, "will make any reader that 
 is blest with a generous soul, to love you the bet- 
 ter), and also an epistle from himself to Cotton 
 which may be quoted as one of the few records that 
 remain of the charming friendship between the two. 
 
 ' 1 To my most Honored Friend 
 "Charles Cotton, Esq. 
 
 "Sir, You now see, I have returned you, your 
 very pleasant, and useful discourse of the Art of 
 Fli Fishing Printed, just as 'twas sent me: for I 
 have been so obedient to your desires, as to endure 
 all the praise you have ventured to fix upon me in 
 it. And when I have thankt you for them, as the 
 effects of an unassembled love: then, let me tell 
 you, Sir, that I will endeavor to live up to the char- 
 acter you have given me, if there were no other 
 reason ; yet for this alone, that you, that love me so 
 well, may not, for my sake, suffer by a mistake in 
 your judgment. 
 
 "And, Sir, I have ventured to fill a part of your 
 Margin, by way of Paraphrase, for the Reader's 
 clearer understanding, the situation both of your 
 Fishing-House, and the pleasantness that you dwell 
 in. And I have ventured also to give him a copy of 
 Verses, that you were pleas 'd to send me, now some 
 years past; in which he may see a good picture of 
 both; and, so much of your own mind too, as will 
 make any Reader that is blest with a Generous soul, 
 to love you the better. I confess, that for doing 
 this you may justly judge me too bold : if you do, I 
 will say so too: and so far commute my offence, 
 that, though I be more than a hundred miles from 
 
INTRODUCTION 53 
 
 you, and in the eighty-third year of my Age, yet 
 I will forget both, and next begin a pilgrimage to 
 beg your pardon, for, I would dye in your favour: 
 and till then will live, 
 
 "Sir, 
 
 "Your most affectionate 
 "Father and Friend, 
 
 "Izaak Walton. 
 
 "London, April 29th, 1676." 
 
 The friendship of Cotton and Walton continued 
 to the latter 's death. In Walton's will (dated 
 August 16, 1683), Cotton was among those named 
 to receive a ring with the motto "A friend's fare- 
 well." To the 1675 edition of Walton's "Lives" Cot- 
 ton prefixed a copy of commendatory verses dated 
 17th January, 1672-73, in which he speaks of Walton 
 as "the best friend I now or ever knew," and in 
 the "Second Part" of the Angler he attempts with 
 humorous delicacy to express what the older man's 
 affection meant to him. "My opinion of Mr. Wal- 
 ton's Book," he says in the character of Piscator, 
 Junior, "is the same with every man's that under- 
 stands anything of the Art of Angling, that it is an 
 excellent good one, and that the fore-mentioned 
 Gentleman understands as much of Fish and Fish- 
 ing as any man living: but I must tell you farther, 
 that I have the happiness to know his person, and to 
 be intimately acquainted with him, and in him to 
 know the worthiest man and to enjoy the best and 
 truest Friend any man ever had; nay, I shall ac- 
 quaint you further, that he gives me leave to call 
 him father, and I hope is not yet asham'd to own 
 
54 INTRODUCTION 
 
 me for his adopted son. . . . My father Walton 
 will be seen twice in no man's company he does 
 not like, and likes none but such as he believes to 
 be honest men, which is one of the best arguments 
 I have, that I either am, or that he thinks me one 
 of those, seeing I have not yet found him weary of 
 me. ' ' And how delightful the companionship of the 
 older and the younger man was may be gathered 
 from the Angler. 1 "All this," exclaims Piscator, on 
 one occasion, at a bold suggestion from his pupil, ' ' in 
 a strange river and with a fly of your own making ! 
 Why, what a dangerous man are you ! ' ' 
 And Viator replies : 
 
 "I, sir, but who taught me? Damoetas says by 
 his man Dorus, (Arcadia) so you may say by me. 
 
 . . . "If my man such praises have 
 What then have I, that taught the knave?" 
 
 Cotton's pleasure in the companionship is further 
 expressed in his verses inviting Walton to visit 
 Beresford. 
 
 "If the all-ruling Powers please 
 We live to see another May, 
 We'll recompense an Age of these 
 Foul days in one fine fishing day. 
 
 A day without too bright a Beam, 
 
 A warm, but not a scorching sun, 
 A southern gale to curl the stream, 
 
 And (master) half our work is done. 
 
 
 iThe Complete Angler, ed. Hawkins, p. 37. 
 
INTRODUCTION 55 
 
 We'll think ourselves in such an hour 
 Happier than those, though not so high, 
 
 Who, like Leviathans, devour 
 Of meaner men the smaller Fry. 
 
 This (my best Friend) at my poor Home 
 Shall be our Pastime and our Theme, 
 
 But then should you not deign to come 
 You make all this a flattering Dream. " 
 
 We cannot, perhaps, resist the hope that the poet 
 enjoyed in Walton's company more than one such 
 reprieve from the worry of debt, the drudgery of 
 hack-work, and the uncongenial task of forcing his 
 Muse to make faces at herself in burlesque. What 
 at times this worry and drudgery meant to him we 
 get a hint from verses like these : l 
 
 " Fy ! What a wretched World is this T 
 
 Nothing but anguish, griefs and fears, 
 Where, who does best, must do amiss, 
 Frailty the Euling Power bears 
 In this our dismal Vale of Tears. 
 
 II. 
 
 Oh ! who would live, that could but dye, 
 Dye honestly, and as he shou'd, 
 
 Since to contend with misery 
 Will do the wisest Man no good, 
 Misfortune will not be withstood. 
 
 Grant me then, Heav'n, a wilderness, 
 And there an endless Solitude, 
 
 iThe World: Poems, 1689, p. 291. 
 
56 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Where though Wolves howl, and Serpents hiss, 
 Though dang'rous, 'tis not half so rude 
 As the ungovern'd Multitude. 
 
 And Solitude in a dark Cave, 
 
 Where all things husht, and silent be, 
 
 Eesembleth so the quiet Grave, 
 That there I would propose to flee, 
 With Death, that hourly waits for me." 
 
 Such contemplative poems as "The Retirement," 1 
 "To my dear and most worthy Friend, Mr. Isaak 
 Walton," 2 "Contentment," 3 "To Mr. John Brad- 
 shaw, Esq.," 4 and "Poverty" 5 belong without 
 doubt to this latter period of the poet's life; to the 
 years, say, between 1670 and 1680. But his vivacity 
 is unexhausted; in an "Anacreontic," written 1680, 
 when he was "fifty Winters old," we find him 
 singing, 
 
 "Fill a Bowl of lusty Wine, 
 Briskest Daughter of the Vine; 
 Fill't untill it Sea-like flow, 
 That my cheek may once more glow. 
 
 Wine breeds Mirth, and mirth imparts 
 Heat and Courage to our hearts, 
 Which in old men else are lead, 
 And not warm'd would soon be dead." 
 
 In 1681, he published "The Wonders of the Peak," 
 a descriptive poem somewhat after the manner of 
 Hobbes' "De Mirabilibus Pecci," and dedicated to 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 133. * Ibid., p. 59. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 114. 6 Ibid., p. 303. 
 a Ibid., p. 331. 
 
INTRODUCTION 57 
 
 " Elizabeth, Countess of Devonshire, with all ac- 
 knowledgment and devotion. " The pictures in this 
 poem are often vividly clear, and the legends con- 
 nected with some of the " wonders " are told with 
 spirit and humor. Burlesque and real admiration 
 are quaintly mingled. The poet knew his public, 
 and here again, yielded to its taste. 
 
 In 1685-6 he published his translation of Mon- 
 taigne 's Essays, dedicating it to George Savile, 
 Marquis (or at that time Earl) of Halifax. It 
 ranks among the acknowledged masterpieces of 
 translation. 
 
 Cotton died in February, 1687, four years after 
 the death of his old friend Walton. The entry 
 "1686-1687, Feb. 16, Charles Cotton" appears in 
 the burial register of St. James, Piccadilly. A con- 
 temporary MS. diary (quoted by Oldys) records 
 that the poet died of a fever when in his fifty-sixth 
 year. 
 
 It seems almost certain from the evidence which 
 follows that the epistle, 1 addressed to the Earl of 
 
 , was written near the end of the poet's life. 
 
 He enjoyed at that time the close friendship of the 
 brilliant George Savile, Earl (afterwards Marquis) 
 of Halifax, to whom as we have seen he dedicated 
 his " Montaigne. " Bits of description of the Earl 
 of are entirely applicable to the Earl of Hali- 
 fax. The Earl was almost exactly of Cotton's age, 
 and Cotton in this epistle, says : 
 
 "We do on our last Quarter go," 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 274. 
 
58 INTRODUCTION 
 
 referring perhaps to both himself and the Earl, 
 adding, of himself, 
 
 "I may, perhaps, with much ado, 
 Eub out a Christmas more or two 
 Or if the Fates be pleas 'd, a Score, 
 But never look to keep one more. ' ' 
 
 He must have been at least fifty years of age which 
 supposition would place the poem sometime after 
 the year 1680 in order to have passed, or to have 
 been upon the point of passing into the "last quar- 
 ter " of life. But there is reason to believe that he 
 was some years older, for, a "Collection of Divert- 
 ing Sayings, Stories, characters, etc.," in verse and 
 prose, supposed to have been made by him about 
 the year 1686 and, after his death found in manu- 
 script in the library of the Earl of Halifax, seems 
 to fit remarkably well into the following quotation 
 from the epistle we are speaking of : 
 
 1 1 Some three Months hence, I make account 
 My Spur-galPd Pegasus to mount, 
 When, whither I intend to go, 
 My Horse, as well as I, will Know ; 
 But being got with much ado, 
 Out of the reach a Stage or two, 
 Though not the conscience of my shame, 
 And Pegasus falPn desperate lame, 
 I shake my stirrups, and forsake him, 
 Leaving him to the next will take him ; 
 Not that I set so lightly by him, 
 Would any be so kind to buy him ; 
 But that I think those who have seen 
 How ill my Muse has mounted been, 
 Would certainly take better heed, 
 
INTRODUCTION 59 
 
 Than to bid money for her Steed. 
 Being then on foot, away I go, 
 And bang the hoof, in cognito, 
 Though in condition so forlorn, 
 Little Disguise will serve the turn." 
 
 That in 1686 the poet was still living upon his estate 
 seems to appear from an item in Plat's "Natural 
 History of Staff ordshire " a work licensed to be 
 printed in April, 1686 which mentions the author's 
 "most worthy friend, the worshipful Charles Cot- 
 ton of Beresford, Esquire, " and "his pleasant man- 
 sion at Beresford. ' ' But only a year later, the poet 
 had died in obscure circumstances in London. The 
 touching epistle to Lord Halifax would seem then to 
 have been written on the eve of his final departure 
 from Beresford. The following lines from it furnish 
 their own comment upon the circumstances that had 
 fallen out for him, as well as upon his quality of 
 courage : 
 
 1 ' We do on our last Quarter go, 
 And that I may go bravely out, 
 Am trowling merry Bowl about, 
 To Lord, and Lady, that and this, 
 As nothing were at all amiss, 
 When after twenty days are past, 
 Poor Charles has eat and drunk his last. 
 
 No more Plum-porridge then, or Pye, 
 No Brawn with Branch of Eosemary, 
 No chine of Beef, enough to make 
 The tallest Yeoman's chine to Crack; 
 No bag-pipe humming in the Hall, 
 Nor noise of House-keeping at all, 
 
60 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Nor sign, by which it may be said, 
 This House was once inhabited. " 
 
 It was a farewell spoken with his old cheerful 
 smile, but it has a wistful cadence of regret. 
 
 In the act of administration of Cotton's effects, 
 one Elizabeth Bludworth was mentioned as his prin- 
 cipal creditor (Beresford Cotton, Esq.; the honor- 
 able Mary, Countess-Dowager of Ardglass, his 
 widow; Olive Cotton, Catherine Cotton, Jane Cot- 
 ton, and Mary Cotton, his natural and lawful chil- 
 dren first renouncing) and was dated 12 Septem- 
 ber, 1687. Beresford Cotton, his son and heir, was 
 living at Nottingham, 11 January, 1688, as the fol- 
 lowing baptismal entry in the parish register of 
 St. Mary shows: "Stanhope, son of Mr. Berris- 
 ford Cotton and Katherine." Beresford became a 
 captain in the army under William the Third ; Olive 
 married the well-known divine and writer, George 
 Stanhope, Dean of Canterbury; Katherine married 
 Sir Berkeley Lucy of Braxbourne ; Mary became the 
 wife of Augustus Armstrong; Jane married Beau- 
 mont Perkyns of Sutton Bonington, and was the 
 mother of Lucy, Countess of Northampton. 
 
 At the time of Cotton's death, he was at work 
 on a translation of "The Memoirs of Monsieur de 
 Pontis, who served in the French Army fifty-six 
 years, under Henry IV, Lewis VIII, and Lewis 
 XIV, Kings of France, containing many remarkable 
 passages relating to the War, the Court, and the 
 Government to those Princes. " He was engaged, 
 then, to the end of his life in supplying his public 
 
INTRODUCTION 61 
 
 with parallels to the evils of the time in England by 
 means of translations from the French. Since the 
 time of Oliver, royalists of a contemplative turn had 
 fallen back on history and philosophy for encourage- 
 ment, and example. In "Pastor Fido," 1647, a 
 copy of which Cotton is known to have possessed in 
 his youth, Sir Richard Fanshaw explains his pur- 
 pose in translating as being that of furnishing his 
 Prince with "the image of a gasping state (once 
 the most flourishing in the world) : A wild Boar 
 (the sword) depopulating the Country: the Pesti- 
 lence unpeopling the Towns: their gods themselves 
 in the merciless humane Sacrifices exacting bloody 
 contributions from both: . . . Because it seems 
 to me (beholding it at the best light) a Lantskip 
 of those Kingdoms (your Royall Patrimony), as 
 well in the former flourishing, as the purest dis- 
 tractions, thereof, I thought it not improper for 
 your Princely notice at this time, thereby to oc- 
 casion your Highness, even in your recreations, to 
 reflect upon the sad Originall, not without hope 
 to see it yet speedily made a perfect parallel 
 through-out; and also your self a great Instrument 
 of it." This purpose must have been Cotton 's like- 
 wise in his heroic poem, "The Battail of Yvry," 
 written about 1658, in which a French prince, traitor- 
 ously dispossessed of his rights, is shown trium- 
 phantly regaining them at last. The poem ends with 
 a couplet which is obviously an allusion to Cotton's 
 exiled Prince: 
 
 "Leaving Fair France unto his brighter Ray 
 May ev'ry injured Prince have such a day." 
 
62 INTRODUCTION 
 
 In this connection, Cotton's translation of "The 
 Moral Philosophy of the Stoics, " from the French 
 of Du Voix is significant. It was done, as seems 
 probable from the dedication to his friend and kins- 
 man, John Ferrers, a year or two before the Restora- 
 tion. And, indeed, the fine ode to "Winter," though 
 of course not a translation, seems to bear interpre- 
 tation as a political satire. Furthermore, Cotton, 
 in his dedication of the "Duke of Espernon," em- 
 phasizes the fact that "a more Illustrious Image 
 of Virtue, and Honour than is here represented in 
 the Person of the Duke of Espernon, in my little 
 Reading I have nowhere met with, a more exem- 
 plary Piety, a braver Courage, a more shining and 
 unblemished Loyalty, more inviolate Friendships, 
 nor a nobler Constancy in all the shocks of Fortune 
 . . . ' ' And finally, the translation of Montaigne 
 came at a time when the example of that gentle 
 skeptic might be expected to do much toward abat- 
 ing the fanaticism of a hundred warring factions. 
 Under the circumstances of the time, a safer and 
 more effectual way of criticism is hard to imagine, 
 or one more in accord with both Cotton's gentle- 
 ness and his courage. 
 
 Two years after the poet's death, an unauthor- 
 ized collection of his occasional poems was published. 
 This volume is to be considered at length in the fol- 
 lowing section. For the present, we may say of 
 these poems, what he himself has said of certain 
 passages in the life of the admirable Duke of Es- 
 pernon, that, though they are not "altogether to be 
 
INTRODUCTION 63 
 
 justified, " there are "none that may not be slipt 
 over amongst so many better pages, like a Counter- 
 feit piece in a great summe of current gold." 
 
THE POETEY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 The volume of miscellaneous verse, entitled 
 11 Poems on Several Occasions," was published in 
 1689, two years after the poet's death. The pub- 
 lisher's preface to Cotton's translation of the "Mem- 
 ories of the Sieur de Pontis," 1694, asserts that the 
 poet had himself made a collection of his poems for 
 the press, but that, owing to the " ungenerous pro- 
 ceeding" of a piratical publisher, the printing of this 
 authentic edition had been prevented. The collection 
 of 1689 shows haste in compilation; no fewer than 
 nineteen poems appear twice, and the typography 
 throughout is so careless, especially in respect to 
 the pointing, that one's impression in reading is fre- 
 quently confused, or blurred. Nevertheless, after a 
 careful consideration of the volume, evidences of de- 
 liberate intention in the arrangement of certain 
 groups of poems give rise to the surmise that here, 
 after all, we have the authentic collection referred to 
 in the preface to the ' ' Memories of the Sieur de Pon- 
 tis." This is a surmise, however, which cannot be 
 verified. 
 
 The volume may be considered as having two main 
 divisions. The first comprises, for the most part, 
 original poems; the second is made up altogether 
 of translations. The original poems, exclusive of 
 the repetitions referred to above, number 175; the 
 translations, 80. The original poems may be classi- 
 
 64 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 65 
 
 fied under the following types : Amorous lyrics, in- 
 cluding odes and elegies, number 59; Pindaric odes 
 of the Cowleyan variety, 7; sonnets, 10; songs, 10; 
 epigrams, 16; epitaphs, 5; burlesque epistles, and 
 descriptive and narrative burlesques (in which are 
 to be found much important biographical data), 17; 
 eclogues, 2; sets of lines, 9; satires, 3; convivial 
 lyrics, 3; paraphrases, 3; heroic poems, 2; one dia- 
 logue and one Christmas hymn; and finally, seven 
 important miscellaneous lyrics, including i ' The New- 
 year " and "The Retirement. " 
 
 The translations are from the Latin, the Italian 
 and the French. The French translations are of 
 particular interest, and a subsequent part of this 
 section is devoted to them. For the moment, it is 
 sufficient to remark that the headings of not a few 
 of the original poems point to French models, as 
 for instance, Les Amours, Estrennes, rondeau, viri- 
 lai; the word epigramme is used to indicate a poem 
 not identical with the English epigram, and the 
 phrase "stanzas irreguliers ' ' is employed as sub- 
 title for such poems as "The Retirement." 
 
 But before taking up the discussion of Cotton 's 
 indebtedness to the French, it will be best to con- 
 sider certain native influences. Some of these have 
 left only slight traces on his work. Traces of the 
 so-called "Metaphysical School' ' are rare, even the 
 Cowleyan odes being almost as simple and direct 
 as poetic expression can be. The conceit, when em- 
 ployed, lacks serious intention. It is generally a 
 playful touch, as in the last stanza of the song be- 
 ginning, "Join once again, my Celia, Join": 
 
66 POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 "Thanks, sweetest, now thou'rt perfect grown, 
 For by this last kiss I'm undone; 
 
 Thou breathest silent darts, 
 Henceforth each little touch will prove 
 A dangerous strategem in love, 
 
 And thou wilt blow up hearts. ' ' 
 
 Taking Cotton's poetry all in all, the conceit occurs 
 so infrequently that the influence of the metaphysi- 
 cal poets upon him is almost negligible. Likewise, 
 it may be said that the cynicism which was preva- 
 lent in his time left no deep impress on his work. 
 When he does give expression to that mood, the re- 
 sult is a rough badinage which has difficulty in 
 keeping its tone, and which invariably gives way in 
 the end to obvious good-humour. In "Love's Tri- 
 umph, " for example, he starts off bravely enough: 
 
 "God Cupid's Power was ne're so shown 
 Since first the Boy could draw a bow, 
 In all past Ages, as this one, 
 
 This love-sick Age we live in now; 
 Now He and She from high to low, 
 Or Lovers are, or would seem so." 
 
 He goes on, indeed, to malign these too easy lov- 
 ers, the young, the old, the foul, the fair; but in 
 the end, as the hearty ring of the denunciation has 
 all along suggested, he is discovered to be only mock 
 serious : 
 
 * * And yet there is, there is one prize, 
 Lock'd in an adamantine Breast; 
 Storm that then, Love, if thou be 'st wise, 
 A conquest above all the rest, 
 
POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 67 
 
 Her Heart, who binds all Hearts in chains, 
 Castanna's Heart untouched remains." 
 
 So it is, over and over again; the discord is but 
 preparation for the harmony. In brief, Cotton is 
 too much a realist, in the best sense of that term, to 
 be cynical ; he is too catholic in his sympathies, and 
 too humorous. This same manliness of temper 
 saved him, moreover, from another affectation of 
 his day, that of Platonic love. Here again, how- 
 ever, as in the case of the conceit and of the fash- 
 ionable attitude of cynicism, he is not above mak- 
 ing incidental use of the cult of Platonic love, and 
 its vagaries. He makes it serve his turn, now and 
 then, by way of graceful compliment. In the song, 
 already quoted from, "Join once again, etc.," we 
 find the following example : 
 
 "Each Kiss of thine creates desire, 
 Thy odorous Breath inflames Love's fire, 
 
 And wakes the sleeping coal : 
 Such a Kiss to be I find 
 The conversation of the Mind, 
 
 And whisper of the Soul. ' ' 
 
 In this stanza, the quaint blending of sensuous 
 and Platonic love, with its suggestion of double 
 entente, is worth observing, since it directs us to 
 Cotton's ultimate attitude toward love. 
 
 Among the native influences, under which he 
 wrote, by far the most important was the sensuous 
 hedonism of Carew. What in Carew especially 
 attracted Cotton was the value the hedonist at- 
 
68 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 
 tached to the fleeting and irrevocable present. 
 Carew sings in "Persuasions to Love," 
 
 "0 love me, then, and now begin it, 
 Let us not lose this precious minute ; 
 For time and age will work that wrack 
 Which time and age can ne'er call back." 
 
 And Cotton in the ode "To Ccelia" x strikes almost 
 precisely the same note : 
 
 "111 Husbandry in Love is such 
 A scandal to Love's pow'r, 
 We ought not to misspend so much 
 As one poor short-liv'd hour." 
 
 Carew writes again, 
 
 1 ' then, be wise, and whilst your season 
 Affords you days for sport, do reason; 
 Spend not in vain your life's short hour." 
 
 And Cotton, on his part, pleads, 
 
 "What such a love deserves, thou, sweet, 
 As knowing best, may'st best reward; 
 I, for thy bounty well prepared 
 With open arms my blessing meet. 
 Then do not, dear, our joys detard ; 
 But unto him propitious be 
 That knows no love, nor life, but thee. ' ' 
 
 This note is struck frequently by both Cotton and 
 Carew. But the evidences of Carew 's influence do 
 not stop with this. A somewhat casual survey of 
 Carew 's poems for points of resemblance between 
 him and Cotton has yielded the following possible 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 8. 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 69 
 
 comparisons (in point of theme) : Carew's " Secrecy 
 Protested" with Cotton's "Sonnet" (How should 'st 
 thou love, and not offend); Carew's "A Prayer 
 to the Wind" with Cotton's ode "Laura Sleeping"; 
 Carew's "Mediocrity in Love Rejected" with Cot- 
 ton's ode "To Chloris"; 1 Carew's "Good Counsel 
 to a Young Maid" and his second, "Good Coun- 
 sel to a Young Maid" with Cotton's "Old Tityrus 
 to Eugenia"; Carew's "To Her Absence, A Ship," 
 with Cotton's "The Tempest"; Carew's "To the 
 Painter" with Cotton's "To My Friend, Mr. Lely." 
 These comparisons include only obvious cases. 
 When subtle resemblances, such as the pace and turn 
 of verse, the pitch of emotion, and the poetic quality, 
 are taken into account the indebtedness of Cotton to 
 Carew is seen to be more than superficial. A reader 
 fresh from a perusal of Carew finds many echoes of 
 his music in the amorous lyrics of Cotton. 
 
 Now, let us turn to an important difference be- 
 tween them. Cotton is often, for a moment, as 
 hedonistic as Carew; but the mood with Cotton is 
 not a prevailing one. It is frequently recurrent, 
 but not persistent. Here, once more it must be said, 
 Cotton's keen sense of reality will not permit him to 
 rest secure with "this precious minute." He is 
 usually found poised somewhere between the im- 
 petuosity of desire and the cool circumspection of 
 good sense. In the ode "To Isabel," over against 
 the impetuosity of 
 
 "Then do not, dear, our joy detard;" 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 55. 
 
70 POETEY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 we find this expression of carefully evaluated feel- 
 ing: 
 
 "But when I vow to thee I do 
 
 Love thee above, or health, or peace, 
 Gold, joy, and all such toys as these, 
 'Bove happiness and honor too : 
 Thou then must know, this love can cease, 
 Nor change, for all the glorious show 
 Wealth and discretion bribe us to." 
 
 This mood is clearly different from the hedonism 
 of Carew; and with Cotton it is the predominating 
 mood. As may be seen from the following quota- 
 tion from Davenant's preface to Gondibert (1650), 
 this attitude of Cotton was not unrecognized in 
 the criticism of his day. "Love," says Davenant, 
 "in the Interpretation of the Envious, is Softness; 
 in the Wicked, good men suspect it for lust; and 
 in the Good, some spiritual men have given it the 
 name of Charity. And these are but terms to this 
 which seems a more considered definition, that in- 
 definite Love is Lust, and Lust when it is deter- 
 min'd to one is Love. . . . They who accuse 
 Poets as provokers of Love are enemies to Nature ; 
 and all affronts to Nature are offences to God, as 
 insolences to all subordinate officers of the Crown 
 are rudeness to the King. Love, in the most ob- 
 noxious interpretation, is Nature's Preparative to 
 her greatest work, which is the making of Life. 
 And since the severest Divines of these latter times 
 have not been asham'd publiquely to commend and 
 define the most secret dutys and entertainments of 
 Love in the Married, why should not poets civilly 
 
POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 71 
 
 endeavor to make a Friendship between the Guests 
 before they meet, by teaching them to dignifie each 
 other with the utmost of estimation? And Mar- 
 riage in Mankinde were as rude and unprepared 
 as the hasty election of other Creatures, but for 
 acquaintance, and conversation before it, and that 
 must be an acquaintance of Mindes, not of bodye; 
 and of the Minde Poesy is the most natural and de- 
 lightful Interpreter/' Let us compare with this, 
 the second stanza of Cotton 's "Estrennes to 
 Calista": 1 
 
 "Love is the Soul of Life, though that I know 
 Is calPd Soul too, but yet it is not so, 
 Not rational at least, untill 
 
 Beauty with her diviner light 
 Illuminates the groping will, 
 
 And shews us how to chuse aright 
 And that's first prov'd by th' objects it refuses, 
 And by being constant then to that it chuses." 
 
 Cotton's attitude toward love, then, it may be 
 repeated, was not that of the cynic who denied the 
 divinity of love altogether, nor was it that of the 
 Platonic idealist who detached worthy love en- 
 tirely from the sensuous. Cotton's attitude is ex- 
 pressed succinctly in his words, "Love is the soul 
 of life. ' ' His mood in its sensuousness has much in 
 common with that of Carew; but it is after all es- 
 sentially different, for he affirms that, 
 
 * ' Love by swift time, which sickly passions dread, 
 Is no more measur'd than 'tis limited;" 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 162. 
 
72 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 
 These two moods, one almost identical with the 
 prevailing mood of Carew, and the other almost dia- 
 metrically opposed to that poet's hedonism, Cot- 
 ton tries to harmonize. At least, if he does not 
 consciously try to harmonize them, he habitually 
 brings them into juxtaposition, as if he intended 
 thus to suggest a quality of love which otherwise 
 he found inexpressible. In a word, he tries to find 
 a point of stability between the impulse to see and de- 
 scribe things as they actually are, and the idealiz- 
 ing impulse to extenuate and veil. He attempts to 
 harmonize clean and sane knowledge both of himself 
 and of others with the intoxicating buoyancy of love. 
 These two antagonistic moods, dramatically contend- 
 ing for mastery, give warmth and vital interest to 
 the amorous lyrics of Cotton. 
 
 His translations from the French throw light 
 upon his significance as a lyrical poet. There is a 
 note in his work which is hard to account for, if 
 one considers only his immediate predecessors and 
 his contemporaries at home. That French litera- 
 ture, poetry and prose, appealed to him with unus- 
 ual power, there is much evidence to prove. His 
 interest in the French lyrists began probably a good 
 while before his journey to France in 1655, and 
 throughout his life thereafter he was employed 
 from time to time either in translating, or in adapt- 
 ing, from the French. 
 
 Desportes (1546-1606) and Bertaut (1552-1611), 
 two minor Ronsardists, are the earliest of the 
 French lyrists to find a place in his translations. 
 Each is represented by a single poem, the one from 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 73 
 
 Desportes an fipigramme of five stanzas, "Some 
 four years ago I made Phillis an offer," l and that 
 from Bertaut, a set of five stances, "Whilst wishing 
 Heaven in his ire. ' ' 2 
 
 A comparison of the translation of the Epi- 
 gramme of Desportes with its original reveals the 
 fact that the translation is hardly more than a 
 rough paraphrase. The well-bred restraint of the 
 original has given place in the translation to a tone 
 of rollicking bravado. Cotton has missed the spirit 
 of the original almost altogether. Here, as else- 
 where, in spite of his liking for the French, he is 
 essentially English: more than once in his transla- 
 tions he seems almost consciously to assert his pride 
 in his nationality by naming bluntly what he per- 
 haps takes to be, let us say, an insincere delicacy in 
 the French. It may be doubted whether "hearty, 
 cheerful Mr. Cotton" could ever have appreciated 
 at its full value the satiric verve and the subtle, 
 seemingly innocent malice of Desportes. There 
 were other qualities in the French lyrist which Cot- 
 ton could have appreciated. If he had translated 
 more from him, he might, when the occasion rose, 
 have rendered with much effect Desportes' tender 
 sensibility and picturesqueness. But he did not, 
 so far as his publications show, put himself in the 
 way of that opportunity. In only one respect does 
 it seem that this French lyrist may have influenced 
 Cotton's original work. Both are fond of the mili- 
 tary figure. Cotton's employment of it, as for in- 
 stance in the "Ode to Winter," may owe some- 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 165. 2 ibid., p. 147. 
 
74 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 
 thing to Desportes. There had, however, been 
 plenty of precedent for it in English verse, at least 
 after the time of Spenser; though it should he re- 
 membered that, as Mr. Sydney Lee has shown, 
 Spenser himself owed much to the influence of the 
 writings of Desportes. With this possible excep- 
 tion of the employment of military imagery, it is 
 hard to find specific traces of the influence of Des- 
 portes upon Cotton's own work. 
 
 The translation from Bertaut, unlike that from 
 Desportes, is a conscientious translation, and serves 
 as an admirable illustration of the characteristic 
 qualities of this French poet, namely, his liking for 
 antithesis, paradox, and pointe: 
 
 "Whilst wishing Heaven in his ire 
 Would punish with some judgment dire 
 This heart to love so obstinate; 
 To say I love her is to lie, 
 Though I do love t' extremity, 
 Since thus to love her is to hate." 
 
 Through five stanzas variations are made upon 
 this paradox, in the end the powers being petitioned 
 to grant the lover, 
 
 "Both for my punishment and grace, 
 That, as I do, she love and hate." 
 
 This is a note that has been struck more than once 
 by Cotton himself. An example is this stanza from 
 "Les Amours": 1 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 380. 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 75 
 
 1 1 She, that I pursue, still flies me ; 
 Her that follows me, I fly ; 
 She, that I still court, denies me ; 
 Her that courts me, I deny. 
 Thus in one Web we're subtly wove, 
 And yet we mutiny in love." 
 
 And for another instance, take the third stanza from 
 Cotton's fine "Ode": 1 
 
 "And must I then be damn't from Bliss 
 For valuing the blessing more, 
 Be wretched made through Happiness, 
 And by once being rich more poor?" 
 
 This "Ode" is one which, in conception, is pecul- 
 iarly Cotton's own; yet, like "Les Amours" and the 
 ode "To Celia," it shows unmistakably, in detail, 
 the influence of Bertaut. 
 
 Bertaut and Desportes were evidently not great 
 favorites with Cotton. Their effect upon him seems 
 mainly a superficial effect upon his poetic practice, 
 and yet they had in one fundamental respect a close 
 resemblance to him. Like him, they were eclectic or 
 transitional poets, being in close touch with the pass- 
 ing school and at the same time foreshadowing the 
 abatement of poetic fervor which (under the influ- 
 ence of Malherbe) was soon to follow. Like him, 
 they were members of no school. At any rate, they 
 were the least typical of their school. There would 
 seem, thus, to have been a certain affinity between 
 these two poets and Cotton, and it is possible that 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 212. 
 
76 POETEY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 they may have influenced him in ways not easy 
 to trace. 
 
 The succeeding school to the Eonsardists had its 
 leader in Malherbe (1555-1628). He set going a re- 
 action against the Pleiade, or Eonsardists, express- 
 ing scorn for their subserviency to the classics, as 
 well as for what seemed to him their distraught en- 
 thusiasm. According to Balzac, Malherbe was the 
 first to teach the French that the secret of eloquence 
 lay in the choice of thought and expression, and in 
 the arrangement of words and ideas rather than in 
 the words and ideas themselves. In the interest of 
 simplicity and elegance he instituted reforms in ver- 
 sification, making the line instead of the stanza the 
 structural unit. Malherbe 's influence upon Cotton 
 may be said to have been a superficial one, in the 
 sense that it was an influence upon his manner rather 
 than upon his poetic conception. 
 
 The one short poem which Cotton selected for 
 translation from Malherbe, suggests at first glance 
 a distinct point of resemblance between the two 
 poets. It is an epigramme "Writ in Calista's 
 Prayer-Book. ' ' 1 The original is as follows : 
 
 "Tant que vous serez sans amour, 
 Calista, priez nuit et jour, 
 Vous n'aurez point mesericorde; 
 Ce n'est pas que Dieu ne soit doux: 
 Mais pensez-vous qu'il vous accorde 
 Ce qu'on ne peut de vous?" 
 
 The translation reads : 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 51. 
 
POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 77 
 
 "Whilst you are deaf to love, you may, 
 
 Fairest Calista, weep and pray, 
 And yet, alas ! no mercy find, 
 Not but God's mercifull, 'tis true, 
 But can you think he '11 grant to you 
 What you deny to all mankind !" 
 
 Here, somewhat as in translating from Desportes, 
 Cotton has evidently tried to heighten the effect of 
 the original by introducing an exclamation in the 
 third line and by giving in general more rhetori- 
 cal pointe to the epigramme. Otherwise, except 
 in translating the second line "Fairest Calista, 
 weep and pray," instead of "Pray night and day," 
 the translation is literal. 
 
 But the important point to notice in comparing 
 the two is the fact that here a note is struck common 
 to the poetry of both Cotton and Malherbe. It 
 sounds clearly in the last three lines of the transla- 
 tion, and in the corresponding lines of the original. 
 It is an appeal of the lover to what purports to be 
 merely good sense and justice, by means of a cer- 
 tain sweet disputativeness of the heart. Both 
 Malherbe and Cotton make frequent use of this ap- 
 peal; Malherbe in one instance, at least, has shown 
 himself to be fully conscious of his attitude : 
 
 "Quant a moi, je dispute avant que je m 'engage, 
 Mais quand je 1'ai promis, j'aime eternellement. " 1 
 
 And again, in another poem, after a number of 
 stanzas of almost deliberate disparagement of him- 
 
 i Poesies, p. 136. 
 
78 POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 self and his affection, Malherbe suddenly queries, 
 
 "Mais a quoi tendent ces discours 
 beaute qui de mes amours 
 Etes le port et le naufrage? 
 Ce que je dis contre ma f pi, 
 N'est-ce pas un vrai temoignage 
 Que je suis deja hors de moi?" l 
 
 This standing aloof from passion to view it 
 sanely, and thus to test its merits in the court of 
 good-sense, is characteristic of Malherbe, even in 
 his most fervid verses, those inspired by 
 "Calista," the Vicontesse d' Auchy. The same 
 point of view is taken by Cotton, also, time and 
 again. In these lines from Cotton's ode "To 
 Chloris" 2 we find an expression of it: 
 
 "Though I pretend to wrestle and repine 
 Your beauties sweet are in their height, 
 And I must still adore. " 
 
 So, too, in the following lines from the ode "To 
 Love, ' ' 3 after four stanzas of self -analysis, he makes 
 a confident appeal for justice, 
 
 "Raised to this height, I have no more, 
 Almighty Love, for to implore 
 Of my auspicious Stars, or Thee, 
 Than that thou bow her noble mind 
 To be as mercifully kind 
 As I shall ever faithful be." 
 
 1 Poesies, p. 142. 
 
 2 Poems, 1689, Stances Irreguliers, p. 12. 
 a Poems, 1689, p. 44. 
 
POETEY OF CHAELES COTTON 79 
 
 And again, at the end of "The Expostulation " l the 
 note is struck : 
 
 "Whence then can this change proceed? 
 Say; or whither does it tend? 
 That false heart will one day bleed, 
 When it has brought so true a Friend 
 To cruel and untimely end." 
 
 It might seem from these examples that here we 
 have discovered between Malherbe and Cotton an 
 identity of attitude, and perhaps of conception. 
 Both make a show of resisting love, as if to compel 
 the emotion to prove itself : if it survives that ordeal 
 they press their case as if to do so were almost com- 
 pulsory by nature, "like must of necessity respond 
 to like" and love, above all, finds itself helpless to 
 resist its kind. But a closer study of Cotton makes 
 one conclude that though he does indeed take this 
 attitude more than once, prompted no doubt by 
 Malherbe to its use as a poetic device, it is not a 
 deep nor a vitally characteristic attitude with him. 
 With Malherbe this mood is the prevailing one, and 
 though at times, in his most personal lyrics, it does 
 not seem to serve his purpose to the best advantage, 
 it does serve most admirably when, vicariously in- 
 spired, he gives play to that half -dramatic gift by 
 means of which he produced highly successful plaints 
 for his friends and patrons. Cotton, unlike the 
 French poet, had no aptitude for vicarious inspira- 
 tion; personal inspiration seems to have been abso- 
 lutely necessary for his best work. So that, among 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 3. 
 
80 POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 French lyrists, Eacan and Theophile, with their 
 natural egoism, found the deepest response in him. 
 But, nevertheless, upon Cotton's poetic style the 
 influence of Malherbe seems clearly marked. Mal- 
 herbe stood for simplicity in poetic expression. But 
 he was not an extremist even in this respect. 
 Eather, in attempting to reach his ideal, he took the 
 narrow path between preciosity on one hand and col- 
 loquialism on the other. So far as diction was con- 
 cerned, his simplicity meant hardly more than cur- 
 rent good usage, taken in a wide sense to include the 
 usage common to all classes. His poetic words were 
 to be also good prose words, and the specifically 
 poetic values attached to them, however they may 
 have been acquired, were not to be considered. In 
 a sense this attitude was truly simple and unaf- 
 fected, though it was not, of course, an elemental 
 simplicity and naturalness such as Wordsworth in 
 advocating simplicity seems sometimes to have had 
 in mind. This simplicity of Malherbe, however, was 
 the simplicity of Cotton. It is especially so in Cot- 
 ton's best work, as for instance in "The Eetire- 
 ment," and other poems addressed to Isaac Walton, 
 in "The New Year," the "Summer Day Quat- 
 rains, " and the "Ode to Winter." In these poems 
 the effect is produced by means of the harmonious 
 arrangement of simple elements. This is true in 
 spite of the fact that both Malherbe and Cotton make 
 frequent use of classical personifications. They ac- 
 cepted that convention as simply as they accepted 
 other conventions of current good usage. 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 81 
 
 Another phase of similarity between Malherbe 
 and Cotton may be mentioned here, though it is 
 hardly more than another aspect of what has just 
 been pointed out. Malherbe had what may be called 
 a keen illative sense; his poems progress step by 
 step toward a goal, and if the direction is not in 
 a straight line, the deviation is explicitly marked. 
 This method of construction gives clearness, or the 
 appearance of clearness, to his compositions. In 
 Cotton, one finds a reflection of this too ; though by 
 him it seems to be hardly as seriously employed as 
 by Malherbe. Cotton's egoism, one feels, is fre- 
 quently restive behind this mask of reasonableness. 
 At such moments, the effect produced is quaint and 
 touching. Beneath the clear-voiced ring of lines 
 rhetorically linked togther, one catches that peculiar 
 undertone of wistful eagerness which is one of Cot- 
 ton's most authentic notes. 
 
 To recapitulate, the two aspects of Cotton's verse 
 that may with some degree of certainty be ascribed 
 to the influence of Malherbe are, first, that plain, 
 matter-of-fact simplicity of much of his best poetry ; 
 and, secondly, that illative method of arrangement, 
 which, masking decorously the willful pulse of pas- 
 sion, gives at least the appearance of logical neces- 
 sity to a dilemma of sentiment. The influence of 
 Malherbe, perhaps because it affected mainly the 
 surface of Cotton's poetry, is not difficult to trace 
 in his work. A few instances of it may be found 
 in the following poems : ' l Elegy, " l " The New 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 11. 
 
82 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 
 Year," l the " Joys of Marriage," 2 "Epistle to John 
 Bradshaw, Esq." 3 and "Ode." 4 
 
 Maynard (1582-1646) was one of Malherbe 's chief 
 disciples. Malherbe himself said that Maynard 
 made excellent verses, but had unfortunately ap- 
 plied himself to a genre for which he was not 
 fitted: he wished to write epigrammes, but lacked 
 the power to succeed because he had not enough 
 pointe. Of the epigrammes of Maynard, Cotton 
 translated ten. If the large number seems to indi- 
 cate an affinity between the two poets, it consisted 
 in a desire to make use of a poetic form with 
 which Cotton had no greater success than Maynard. 
 Maynard 's gift was not that of the epigrammatist, 
 nor was Cotton's. Both could begin an epigramme 
 with promise, but neither was able to finish it with 
 the required pungency. For wit they frequently 
 substituted grossness. Neither had the peculiar in- 
 tellectual quirk of the epigrammatist. Cotton's best 
 work in this genre is illustrated by the "Epigram." 5 
 It is obviously in the manner of Maynard but it is 
 rather better than any of the translated epigrammes, 
 being more spirited in attack; and having more 
 pointe. Many of Cotton's amorous lyrics, also, take 
 an epigrammatic turn; for instance, the ode "To 
 Celia" 6 and the "Sonnet." 7 
 
 But, as in the case of Malherbe, the influence of 
 Maynard upon Cotton would seem to have been only 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 33. Ibid., p. 337. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 36. e Ibid., p. 143. 
 
 3 Ibid., p. 120, 129. T Ibid., p. 146. 
 * Ibid., p. 212. 
 
POETEY OF CHAELES COTTON 83 
 
 superficial. Cotton's Muse was peculiarly hospita- 
 ble to any influence that came her way. At the same 
 time that he was, in all probability, experimenting 
 in his verses with the cynicism of Maynard, he was 
 also imitating the delicate flattery, real and affected, 
 of the Hotel de Rambouillet. The influence of this 
 latter coterie of poets has left marked though as 
 in the case of Malherbe and Maynard, also super- 
 ficial traces in Cotton's work. 
 
 About 1608, Catherine de Vivonne, or as she was 
 called later Madame de Rambouillet, displeased with 
 the coarseness of the life at the French court, with- 
 drew herself from it, and assembled about her at the 
 Hotel de Rambouillet a famous coterie. For the 
 present purpose it is not necessary to give an ex- 
 tended account of the group of men and women, who, 
 catching her spirit, dedicated themselves to the culti- 
 vation of refined amusement and polished conversa- 
 tion. During half a century, however, they exerted 
 a wide influence upon social ideals and manners, 
 and though at length, the absurdity of some of their 
 aspirations, that, in particular, of Platonic love, 
 became glaringly apparent, they presented for the 
 most part an example of fair and decorous social 
 life. 
 
 Naturally, this ancillary court of Madame de 
 Rambouillet sought to express itself in vers de 
 societe. Voiture (1598-1648) and Benserade 
 (1612-1691) were the most brilliant of these 
 coterie versifiers. Their function consisted in the 
 composition of witty, impromptu verses, in honor 
 of the polite life of the Hotel de Rambouillet. Their 
 
84 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 
 opportunity was such as could be furnished by any 
 salient trifle, a novelty of personal adornment, for 
 instance, or a clever jeu d' esprit. The object of 
 their art was compliment so delicately shaded that 
 at first glance it failed to catch the eye as compli- 
 ment, and pleased insensibly. Of such art, pret- 
 tiness, ingenuity, and above all gayety were the 
 essential graces. Both Voiture and Benserade per- 
 formed their task successfully: Voiture in partic- 
 ular did so exquisitely well that he is still remem- 
 bered as the model for this kind of poetical concetti. 
 Cotton translated little from these experts in 
 preciosity, nothing, in fact, but an epigramme of 
 Benserade, 1 and that epigramme happens not to be 
 peculiarly characteristic of their work. That he 
 translated nothing at all from Voiture may be ac- 
 counted for by the fact that the latter 's work was 
 not published until 1695. But Voiture 's work was 
 finished by 1648, and it is probable that Cotton came 
 in the way of it during his residence in France, in 
 1655. Though Cotton translated very little from 
 these poets, there is no lack of evidence that he 
 knew of their work, and for a time, was much in- 
 fluenced by it. Among his lyrics there are a num- 
 ber obviously in the manner of the coterie. These 
 are "Her Name" 2 "Her Hair," 3 "To Cupid," 4 
 "Her Sigh," 5 "Ccelia's Ague," 6 and "A Valedic- 
 tion. " 7 In general these poems have as their ob- 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 630. 5 Ibid., p. 407. 
 
 2 Ibid., p. 367. . Ibid., p. 418. 
 8 Ibid., p. 385. 7 ibid., p. 420. 
 4 Ibid., p. 472. 
 
POETEY OF CHAELES COTTON 85 
 
 ject the turning of well-bred compliment, and they 
 accomplish their task with a vivacity and grace 
 comparable to that of their models. They show, in 
 particular, the unmistakable influence of Voiture. 
 In "Her Sigh," for one instance, the light grace 
 of the classical allusion (stanza III) is strongly sug- 
 gestive of Voiture : 
 
 "When Thisbe's Pyramus was slain 
 This sigh had fetched him back again, 
 And such a sigh from Dido's chest 
 Wafted the Trojan to her Breast." 
 
 In these poems of Cotton, also, the pretty du- 
 plicity of Platonic love is affected in a way which is 
 characteristic of Voiture. In "Her Hair" (stanza 
 II) these lines occur; 
 
 "Me thinks I'm now all sacred fire, 
 And wholly grown 
 
 Devotion : 
 
 Sensual Love's in chains, 
 And all my boiling veins 
 Are blown with sanctifi'd desire." 
 
 Of the same sentiment and treatment, the last four 
 stanzas of "A Valediction" furnish another good 
 example. The Platonic cult had of course been in 
 vogue for a long time in both France and England ; 
 but these touches in Cotton may be confidently 
 ascribed to the influence of Voiture, because of their 
 employment as means incidental to the real object 
 and appeal of the poem that of delicately veiled 
 flattery. 
 
 Furthermore, Voiture 's method of amplification 
 
86 POETEY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 by means of antithesis is also found in these verses 
 of Cotton. Those ' l To Cupid ' ' A furnish perhaps the 
 best example. Stanza II may serve as illustration. 
 
 "Surrender without more ado, 
 I am both King and subject too, 
 I will command, but must obey, 
 I am the Hunter and the Prey, 
 I vanquish, yet am overcome, 
 And sentencing, receive my doom." 
 
 The mere fact that antithesis has been used is not, 
 of course, the significant thing ; but the manner of its 
 employment, for the purpose of light, crisp amplifi- 
 cation, suggests at once the coterie. 
 
 To turn again to a comparison of general effects, 
 an interesting resemblance exists between Voiture's 
 Stances " Sur sa Maitresse rencontree en habit de 
 g argon, sur un soir de Carnaval," 2 and Cotton's 
 "Amoret in Masquerade." 3 In these poems the 
 theme is identical ; the poet feels strangely attracted 
 by a boy who proves to be his mistress in disguise. 
 The treatment is the same in both poems, being in- 
 genious and pretty, and conveying that indefinable 
 vivacity which is the perfection of this sort of verse, 
 rising as it does from a sincere desire to please. 
 
 Finally, there is in Cotton's volume another in- 
 dication of the influence of these coterie poets. 
 Among his original poems are found two rondeaux 
 and a virelai. The importance of this fact becomes 
 plain when it is remembered that these and other 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 472. 8 Poems, 1689, p. 156. 
 
 2 (Euvres, p. 102. 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 87 
 
 artificial forms had been for the most part discarded 
 by the French themselves toward the end of the fif- 
 teenth century, and were revived only about 1640, 
 by the coterie. 1 
 
 Voiture wrote some thirty rondeaux in the com- 
 mon form; aabba, aab, (refrain), a abb a, 
 (refrain). Neither of Cotton's rondeaux conforms 
 to this rime scheme. The first differs also from 
 those of Voiture in being anything but gallant. The 
 second is in keeping with the spirit of Voiture, and 
 even in respect to technique compares favorably with 
 his. 
 
 The presence of these forms among Cotton's 
 lyrics is significant as helping to show how closely 
 he was in touch with French poetic movements. 
 No other of his contemporaries except Patrick 
 Carey, 2 who had lived most of his life in France, 
 made any use of these French forms. After Cotton 
 they were no longer used for strictly poetic pur- 
 poses by English poets until the comparatively 
 recent work of Austin Dobson, Edmund Gosse, and 
 their imitators. 
 
 1 The Pleiade, in setting about the improvement of French verse, 
 had rejected thesa forms because they felt that the language needed 
 the discipline furnished by the adoption of classical and Italian 
 forms. And later when Malherbe, in turn, sought to withstand this 
 tendency of the Pleiade, he did not revert, as might naturally have 
 been expected, to the older native forms, but urged merely the per- 
 fecting of the language and forms as they existed. The archaic 
 diction and the loose structure of the mediaeval poets was as dis- 
 tasteful to him as the extravagance of the Ronsardists. Thus the 
 Provencal forms, as well as the rondeau, and other Northern forms, 
 had been discarded by French lyrical poets for more than a century. 
 
 2 Patrick Carey: Trivial Poems and Triolets, 1651. 
 
88 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 
 So far as it has been dealt with as yet, the influ- 
 ence of the French lyrists on Cotton seems to have 
 been mainly superficial. Here and there in his work 
 we find a poem which, in part or as a whole, sug- 
 gests the manner of Desportes, of Bertaut, of Mal- 
 herbe, of Maynard, or of the coterie poets. Now 
 and then, indeed, even a poetic idea seems to have 
 been caught from one or other of them. But in 
 such cases Cotton seems to be only experimenting 
 with an idea that for the moment has caught his 
 fancy. Of the poets so far mentioned, Malherbe 's 
 influence seems, all in all, to have been the most im- 
 portant. It was not a vital influence, to be sure, 
 but it was a pervasive one. It accounts for much 
 of the simplicity and directness of Cotton's verse, 
 and for its free, clear movement. But two other 
 poets are now to be mentioned whose influence upon 
 Cotton was preeminently important, because of a 
 real poetic kinship that existed between him and 
 them. These two are Theophile de Viaud and Hon- 
 orat de Racan. 
 
 Theophile de Viaud (1590-1626), like Desportes, 
 Bertaut, and also Racan, was an eclectic. In read- 
 ing him, says Julleville, one is reminded often of 
 Malherbe, now and then of Regnier, sometimes of 
 Ronsard and of Desportes. 1 He refused to bend 
 his spirit to meet the requirements of either school, 
 and tried, as he himself said, to harmonize in his art 
 "la douceur de Malherbe et Pardeur de Ronsard." 
 
 i Langue et Litterature Frangaise, Par M. Petit de Julleville, vol. 
 iv, p. 61. 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 89 
 
 He was at his best, perhaps, when he "medit de la 
 passion et affecte P egoisme": 
 
 "Car (he says) c'est une fureur de chercher 
 
 qu'en nous-meme 
 Quelqu' un que nous aimons et quelqu' un qui 
 
 nous aime. 
 
 Le coaur le mieux donne tient tou jours a demi. 
 Chacun s'aime un peu mieux tou jours que son 
 
 His poetic theory consisted only in the practice of 
 naturalness and simplicity; "Les plus excellents 
 traits de la poesie sont a bien peindre une naivete." 
 In respect to form, he went even farther than Mal- 
 herbe in the direction of simplicity, or perhaps bet- 
 ter, of naturalness. Toward the end of his poetic 
 life, he gave up the use of conventional classical 
 mythology altogether, as Malherbe never did, and 
 in general cultivated an artistic independence that 
 could not always be distinguished from an innate 
 dislike of discipline. He bitterly condemns those 
 poets, who 
 
 "Grattent tant le frangois qu'ils le dechirent tout, 
 Blasmant tout ce qui n'est facile qu'a leur goust; 
 Sont un mois a cognoistre, en tastant la parole, 
 Lors que Paccent est rude ou que la rime est molle, 
 Veulent persuader que ce qu'ils font est beau 
 Et que leur renommee est f ranche du tombeau, 
 Sans autre fondement sinon que tout leur age 
 S'est laisse consommer en un petit ouvrage, 
 Que leurs vers dureront au monde precieux, 
 Parce qu'en les faisant ils sont devenus vieux. 
 . . . Mon ame," (he adds) "imaginant, n'a point 
 la patience 
 
90 POETEY OF CHAKLES COTTON 
 
 De bien polir les vers et ranger la science. 
 La regie me desplaist, j escris conf usement : 
 Jamais un bon esprit ne fait rien qu aisement. ' ' l 
 
 These lines express at once the strength and the 
 weakness of Theophile; he had much more poetic 
 power than Malherbe, but he lacked that poet's 
 genius for taking infinite pains. Theophile affected 
 rather the bel air, le ton cavalier, as a protest 
 against the pedant and the grammarian. 2 
 
 Cotton translated three of Theophile 's poems, 
 his beautiful Stances "Quand tu me vois baiser tes 
 bras," 3 a sonnet, "Chere Isis, tes beautez ont 
 trouble la nature, ' ' 4 which Cotton has turned into 
 an "ode," and an Elegie, "Depuis ce triste jour qu' 
 un adieu malheureux. ' ' 5 
 
 These translations follow their originals closely, 
 and reproduce remarkably well their spirit; though 
 they undergo a distinct change of manner in cross- 
 ing the channel. The translation of the following 
 lines is unusually literal : 
 
 "La rose en rendant son odeur, 
 Le soleil donnant son ardeur, 
 Diane et le char qui la traine, 
 Une Nai'ade dedans 1'ean, 
 Et les Graces dans un tableau, 
 Font plus de bruict que ton haleine." 6 
 
 1 CEuvres Completes de Thgophile, Par M. Alleaume, Paris, 1856, 
 "Elegie, a une dame," pp. 218, 219. 
 
 2 The"ophile, Fragments d'une Histoire Comique (CEuvres, vol. ii, 
 p. n). 
 
 Theophile, CEuvres, vol. i, p. 209 Cotton's trans. ( Poems : 542 ). 
 * Ibid., vol. ii, p. 53 Cotton's trans. (Poems: 573). 
 s Ibid., vol. ii, p. 62 Cotton's trans. (Poems: 575). 
 Theophile, Stance*, vol. i, 209. 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 91 
 
 "In breathing her perfume the Rose, 
 In shooting forth his heat the Day, 
 The Chariot, where Diana goes, 
 And Naiads, when in Flpuds they play, 
 The silent Graces in a Picture, too, 
 Make more of noise, than thy soft Breathings 
 do." 1 
 
 In the succeeding lines from the same poem, the 
 difference between the two poets begins to appear. 
 Theophile says simply, in his third stanza, 
 
 "Le sommeil, aise de t 'avoir, 
 Empesche tes yeux de me voir 
 Et te retient dans son empire 
 Avec si peu de liberte 
 Que ton esprit tout arreste 
 Ni murmure ny respire." 
 
 Cotton substitutes Morpheus for "sleep," and, with 
 bold strokes of his brush, almost altogether over- 
 lays the delicate limning of the original, thus : 
 
 "Morpheus, glad of the surprise, 
 In his black Empire thee detains, 
 And hides from seeing me thine eyes 
 With so dull, so heavy chains, 
 That thy soft slumber J d-charmed spirits lye 
 Dumb, without murmurs at his Tyranny." 
 
 For the same note of difference, compare the fol- 
 lowing, the twenty-first line of Theophile 's Elegie, 
 
 "Ainsi que le soleil est suivy de la nuict," 
 with its corresponding line in the translation, 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 544. 
 
92 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 "For, as black night pursues the glorious Sun," 
 
 and this, the sixty-ninth line of the original, 
 * 'Tomber d'un precipice et voir mille serpens" 
 
 with Cotton's paraphrase of it, 
 
 "And there a thousand ugly Serpents see, 
 Hissing t' advance their scaly Crests at me." 
 
 In these cases, it would seem that Cotton cared very 
 little for the lightness and ease of the French, and 
 tried deliberately to give his translations a more 
 robust vigor, or else that he made the translations 
 before he came to appreciate fully the real power 
 of the French. 
 
 These examples, however, taken by themselves are 
 in danger of giving a wrong impression of the differ- 
 ence between Theophile and Cotton. Whereas, in 
 the case of Malherbe, the resemblance was a matter 
 of form rather than of spirit, in this case it is 
 rather one of spirit than of form. In reading these 
 translations, with their originals in mind, one is 
 struck time and again, in spite of an obvious differ- 
 ence in manner and detail, with the happy success 
 of the reproduction in substance. Substantially, the 
 impression given is true. Where Cotton deviates 
 from his original, it is evidently for the sake of 
 what at the time seemed to him an increase of vigor. 
 Sometimes, in these cases, there is a clear echo of 
 an Elizabethan gusto and grandiloquence quite alien 
 to Theophile. For this reason I should date these 
 translations early; before Cotton came really to 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 93 
 
 understand Theophile. That he did come to under- 
 stand him later, and that he tried, in the best sense, 
 to imitate him, I believe the following citations will 
 tend to prove. Compare Theophile 's ' ' La Solitude * ' 
 (OEuvres, vol. i, 176) with Cotton's "The Surprise " 
 (Poems: 392); the translation from Theophile 
 (Poems: 542) with Cotton's original poem, "The 
 Visit " (Poems: 395). And as showing in temper 
 the same influence, though I cannot in these instances 
 make specific comparisons with poems of The- 
 ophile, take the following: "Day-Break" (Poems: 
 339) ; "Ode, Is't come to this, that we must part" 
 (Poems: 212); "To Chloris" (Poems: 439); "Tak- 
 ing Leave of Chloris" (Poems: 440), and "The 
 Tempest" (Poems: 374). l Especially convincing 
 seems the comparison of Cotton's "Elegies" with 
 those of Theophile. 
 
 Attention should be called, also, in noting the 
 resemblance between them, to the moralizing vein 
 found in both Theophile and Cotton. See The- 
 ophile's "Ode" (CEuvres, vol. i, 190); "Ode, A 
 Monsieur de Montmorency ((Euvres, vol. i, 161) ; and 
 "Consolation, A Mademoiselle de L." ((Euvres, 
 vol. i, 212) ; in these the gentle stoicism expressed 
 is strongly suggestive of the spirit of Cotton's 
 poems addressed to Isaac Walton, and of that set 
 of verses "To John Bradshaw, Esq." 2 Here as 
 elsewhere, of course, the same allowance must be 
 
 1 In this last case, however, the conception is rather to be at- 
 tributed to Desportes, than to Theophile; but the manner resembles 
 Theophile. 
 
 2 Poems, 1689, p. 59. 
 
94 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 
 made for subtle differences of manner. Theophile 
 is keenly delicate both in drawing and coloring; 
 Cotton is comparatively rough and bold. But the 
 spirit of their erotic verses is essentially the same. 
 Both are fervidly sensuous, and yet both have 
 a tendency to abate the effect of their impetuous 
 egoism; bits of conversational detail are slipped 
 in to mitigate the fervor of the verse, as if the man 
 of the world tried thus to moderate an expression 
 of feeling too serious for conventional life. This 
 note is often, in the poetry of both, very touching 
 in its suggestion of humorous deprecation. 
 
 In an epistle, ^ Monsieur du Farcis, Theophile 
 in declaring his inability to write love verses by 
 vicarious inspiration or in the abstract as Malherbe 
 had done, explains what his forte is : 
 
 "Ces termes esgarez" (he says) "offencent mon 
 
 humeur, 
 
 Et ne viennent qu'au sens d'un novice rimeur 
 Qui reclame Phebus; quant a moy, je V abjure 
 Et ne recognois rien pour tout que ma nature." 
 
 The note of individualism, so often to be found in 
 Cotton in combination with fervor of feeling and pic- 
 turesqueness of expression, seems attributable in 
 part at least to the encouragement and example of 
 Theophile. 
 
 From Racan, the lyrist who had with Theophile, 
 and even more subtly perhaps than the latter, a 
 vital influence upon Cotton's work, Cotton trans- 
 lated but two lyrics. One of these is the erotic 
 ode, "Ungrateful cause of all my harms, " l and the 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 618. 
 
POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 95 
 
 other, a " Bacchic Ode, Now that the Day's short 
 and forlorn." * The first of these suggests at once 
 a comparison with one of Cotton's original lyrics, 
 that "To Chloris." The following stanzas may 
 serve to illustrate. The first is from Racan's Ode, 
 as translated by Cotton, 
 
 "In Bloody Fields where Mars doth make 
 With his loud thunder all to shake 
 Both Earth, and Heaven to boot ; 
 Man's power to kill me I despise, 
 Since Love, with Arrows from your eyes, 
 Had not the pow'r to do 't." 2 
 
 The one that follows is from Cotton's original lyric, 
 "To Chloris," 
 
 "Yet, when I rush into these Arms, 
 Where Death and Danger do combine, 
 I shall less subject be to harms 
 Than to those killing eyes of thine." 3 
 
 The other translation, the "Bacchic Ode," re- 
 sembles in general such bacchanalian poems of Cot- 
 ton as the "Chanson a Boire," 4 "Clepsydra," 5 and 
 the odes, "Come, let us drink away the time," 6 and 
 "The Day is set did Earth adorn." 7 These po- 
 ems, like the "Bacchic Ode" from Racan, are not 
 merely drinking songs. They have and it is the 
 
 1 Poems, 1689, p. 319. 
 
 2 Racan's Ode, as translated by Cotton. 
 
 a "To Chloris," an original poem; Poems, 1689, p. 439. 
 * Poems, 1689, p. 74. 
 s Ibid., p. 105. 
 Ibid., p. 443. 
 7 Ibid., p. 446. 
 
96 POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 
 
 most striking thing about them an undertone of 
 seriousness, at times even of melancholy. They em- 
 phasize the vanity of taking too much thought of the 
 morrow, and insist upon the preciousness of the fleet- 
 ing present. "He ne'er can recover/' says one of 
 Cotton's songs, "the day that is over"; let him not 
 then neglect the pleasure of good-fellowship, the 
 gracious invitation of 
 
 "Plump Autumn's wealthy overflow." 
 
 It is tender and thoughtful sentiment rather than 
 the love of good-cheer which characterizes these 
 convivial songs. Bons vivants both Cotton and 
 Racan no doubt were, but in spite of their love of 
 sensuous pleasure they were at heart unaffectedly 
 pious as well as tender. 
 
 In these respects the two poets were most sug- 
 gestively alike, and in some added respects as well. 
 Both had an abundance of force and poetic gift; 
 both were impatient if not careless workmen. But 
 alike as they are in the elements of poetic feeling, 
 in poetic manner they seem at times almost dia- 
 metrically opposed. They suggest certain cases of 
 friendship, now and then encountered, in which two 
 persons of totally different manner agree in an essen- 
 tial attitude toward things. Cotton is for the most 
 part vigorous in phrasing, so vigorous that his 
 effects are sometimes almost brusque; his lines 
 march boldly. Racan, on the other hand, is gentle 
 and restrained, his pervasive appeal being that of 
 the most delicately toned sentiment and emotion. 
 Yet, even with this aspect of Racan in mind, one 
 
POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 97 
 
 may find verses of Cotton which rival those of the 
 French lyrist in delicacy. "Ccelia's Fall," l and the 
 "Epitaph on M. H." 2 are poems in which Cotton 
 shows a fineness of feeling and expression at least 
 equal to that of Racan. 
 
 Another point of likeness between these two poets 
 is their attitude toward nature. Both were sincere 
 lovers of nature, though neither was attracted by it 
 as something worth while apart from human feeling. 
 Human emotion in the presence of nature impressed 
 them more than beautiful colors and shapes. In the 
 case of both, however, truth of sentiment, simply and 
 naturally expressed, gives to their slightest touches 
 of description a delightful freshness and charm. An 
 illustration of this attitude may be found in the fol- 
 lowing (the last three) stanzas of Racan 's "The 
 Country Life": 
 
 "Crois-moi, retirous-nous hors de la multitude, 
 Et vivons desormais loin de la servitude 
 De ces palais dores ou tout le monde accourt. 
 Sous un chene eleve les arbrisseaux s'emmient; 
 Et devant le soleil tous les astres s'enfuient, 
 De peur d'etre obliges de lui faire la cour. 
 
 Apres qu'on a suivi sans aucune assurance 
 Cette vaine faveur qui nous pait d' esperance, 
 L'envie, en un moment, tous nos dessein detruit; 
 Ce n'est qu'une fumee; il n'est rien de si frele. 
 La plus belle moisson est sujette a la grele, 
 Et souvent elle n'a que des fleurs pour du fruit. 
 Agreables deserts, sejour de Pinnocence, 
 Ou, loin des vanites, de la magnificence, 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 519. 2 Ibid., p. 354. 
 
98 POETEY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 Commence mon repos et finit mon tourment, 
 Vallons, fleuves, rochers, plaisante solitude, 
 Si vous futes temoins de mon inquietude, 
 Soyez-le desormais de mon contentement. ' ' 
 
 With these stanzas from Eacan may be compared, 
 in particular, the eighth and tenth divisions of Cot- 
 ton's ode, The Eetirement: 
 
 VHI. 
 
 "Oh, my beloved Eocks! that rise 
 To awe the Earth, and brave the Skies ; 
 From some aspiring Mountain's crown 
 
 How dearly do I love, 
 Giddy with pleasure, to look down, 
 And from the Vales to view the noble heights above ! 
 
 X. 
 
 "Lord! would men let me alone, 
 What an over-happy one 
 Should I think myself to be, 
 Might I in this desert place, 
 Which most men by their voice disgrace, 
 Live but undisturbed and free ! 
 
 Here in this despis'd recess 
 Would I manage Winter's cold 
 And the Summer's worst excess, 
 Try to live out to sixty full years old, 
 
 And all the while 
 Without an envious eye, 
 On any thriving under Fortune's smile, 
 Contented live, and then contented die." 
 
 Here, it is to be remarked, Cotton is the more 
 vigorous; Eacan the more gentle and restrained. 
 But after all, this difference between the two in point 
 
POETRY OF CHARLES COTTON 99 
 
 of execution may be largely a difference of national 
 idiom. Cotton is the English, so to speak, of Racan, 
 and Racan is the French of Cotton. 
 
 It can scarcely be doubted, in recapitulating the 
 influence of the French lyrists upon Cotton, that the 
 general clearness and simplicity of his poetry are 
 due in a considerable measure to their combined 
 influence. But in these respects Malherbe's influ- 
 ence was, perhaps, the predominating one, an influ- 
 ence which was, however, pervasive rather than deep. 
 Other superficial tendencies in Cotton may be traced, 
 in part at least, to these French lyrists: his fond- 
 ness for military imagery to Desportes, for mytho- 
 logical allusion to Malherbe, for pointe to Maynard, 
 and for amplification by antithesis to Voiture. But 
 it was in Theophile de Viaud and in Racan that he 
 found vital encouragement. Between him and these 
 two there is real kinship. Like him, they are poets 
 of compromise, assimilating and adapting every- 
 thing suitable to their purpose. Like him, though 
 careless workmen, they are in feeling and concep- 
 tion genuinely poetic. Theophile 's fervor and pic- 
 turesqueness, and Racan 's tender sensibility must, 
 to judge by what seems most distinctive in Cotton 's 
 own work, have appealed to him strongly. The 
 poetic point of view in all three is the same. It is 
 that of simple-hearted, almost naive egoism, an 
 egoism that, having no misgivings, expresses itself 
 frankly, and yet is tempered by a sincere desire to 
 be found worthy of what is so egoistically sought. 
 It has an insistence at once so natural and tender 
 at times so wistful that one easily condones 
 
100 POETRY OF CHAELES COTTON 
 
 its selfishness. It is an attitude toward love very 
 different from the cynical attitude of most of Cot- 
 ton's contemporaries at home, and, whether he de- 
 rived it from these French lyrists or not, he held it 
 in common with them. 
 
THE POETRY OF NATUEE AND OF 
 MEDITATION 
 
 In spite of what Cotton has said about the "cold 
 and blustering climate of the Peak" his beloved 
 Beresford Dale was a bit of Arcadia. Its color and 
 warmth, and its atmosphere of soft holiday-calm 
 must have served as the setting for the "Invitation 
 to Phillis," the theme of which is that of Marlowe's 
 exquisite lyric, 
 
 "Come with me and be my love 
 And thou shalt all the pleasure prove. " 
 
 He set himself too great a task in attempting 
 if he did attempt to rival Marlowe. But his ampli- 
 fication has a beauty of its own; the variations, 
 though superabundant, have remarkable fluency and 
 grace : 
 
 "Thy Summer 's bower shall over-look 
 The subtil windings of the brook, 
 
 From this thy sphear thou shalt behold 
 Thy showy Ewes troop o'er the mold 
 
 Who yearly pay my Love a-piece 
 A tender Lamb, and silver Fleece. 
 
 And when Sol's Rayes shall all combine 
 Thine to out-burn, though not outshine, 
 
 Then, at the foot of some green Hill, 
 101 
 
102 MATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 Where crystal Dove runs murm'ring still, 
 Will angle for the bright-ey 'd Fish 
 
 To make my Love a dainty dish ; 
 Or, in a cave by Nature made, 
 
 Fly to the covert of the Shade, " 
 
 The companion piece to this, the "Entertainment 
 to Phillis," is written in the same vein, expressing 
 the same naive and indiscriminate satisfaction in 
 beauty whether of art or of nature. The note which 
 has been struck with most perfect success by Mar- 
 lowe in the well-known couplet, 
 
 "A belt of straw and ivy-buds, 
 With coral clasps and amber studs, " 
 
 Cotton here elaborates with the zest of youth: 
 
 "Within my Love will find each room 
 New furnished from the Silk- worm's loom; 
 Vessels of the true antick mold, 
 Cups cut in Amber, Myrrh, and gold; 
 Quilts blown with roses, Beds with down 
 More white than Atlas' aged Crown; 
 Carpets where Flowers waxen grow, 
 Only thy sweeter steps to strew, 
 Such as may emulation bring 
 To the wrought mantle of the Spring. 
 There silver lamps shall silent shine, 
 Supply 'd by Oyls of Jessamine, 
 And mists of odours shall arise 
 To air thy little Paradise. 
 I have such Fruits, too, for thy taste, 
 As teeming Autumn never grac't; 
 Apples as round as thine own eyes; 
 Or, as thy Sister Beauties prize, 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 103 
 
 Smooth as thy snowy skin, and sleek 
 And ruddy as the Morning's cheek; 
 Grapes, that the Tyrian purple wear, 
 The spritely matrons of the year, 
 Such as Lyaeus never bare 
 About his drowsy brows, so fair, 
 So plump, so large, so ripe, so good, 
 So full of flavor and of blood. 
 There's water in a Grot hard by, 
 To quench thee, when with dalliance dry, 
 Sweet as the milk of Sand-red Cow, 
 Brighter than Cynthia's silver Bow, 
 Cold as the Goddess' self e'er was, 
 And clearer than thy looking-glass." 
 
 These poems obviously suggest the spirit of such 
 lyrists as Barnfield and Breton, and in a less degree 
 that of Herrick ; they foreshadow the abundant fancy 
 and the unabashed hedonism of Keats. The poign- 
 ancy of Keats is lacking, but in these poems of Cot- 
 ton there is almost if not quite equal sympathy with 
 sensuous joy. 
 
 But this idyllic charm was not the only debt that 
 Cotton owed the Elizabethan lyrists. The bracing 
 naturalism of Shakespeare's " Winter" appealed to 
 him with perhaps even greater power. The " Sum- 
 mer-Day Quatrains" present a series of genre 
 sketches that in vividness are almost unsurpassed. 
 Let the following stanzas serve for example and com- 
 parison; the first from Shakespeare's lyric, 
 
 "When icicles hang by the wall 
 And Dick the Shepherd blows his nail 
 And Tom bears logs into the hall 
 And milk comes frozen home in pail," 
 
104 NATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 and these two from Cotton's " Evening Quatrains, " 
 
 "The Cock now to the roost is prest, 
 For he must call up all the rest ; 
 The sow's fast pegg'd within the Sty 
 To still her squeaking progeny. 
 
 Each one has had his supping mess, 
 The cheese is put into the Press, 
 The Cans and Bowls clean scalded all 
 Rear'd up against the Milk-house Wall." 
 
 Again, in this stanza from the "Night Quatrains," 
 there is the same direct and graphic realism: 
 
 "The Fire's new rak't and Hearth swept clean 
 By Madge the dirty Kichin-quean, 
 The Safe is lock't, the Mouse-trap set, 
 The Leaven laid, and Bucking wet." 
 
 It is interesting to note, whether the fact is sig- 
 nificant or not, that a Scotch poet, Alexander Hume 
 (1560-1609), almost a hundred years before, had 
 taken the same theme as that of Cotton's "Summer- 
 day Quatrains" and treated it in the same manner. 
 In "The Day Estivall" * Hume wrote: 
 
 "The burning beams down from his face 
 
 Sae fervently can beat, 
 That man and beast now seek a place 
 To save them frae the heat. 
 
 The breathless flocks draw to the shade 
 And f reshure of their fold ; 
 
 i Veitch, Feeling for Nature in Scottish Poetry, vol. i, p. 332. 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 105 
 
 The startling nolt as they were mad, 
 Run to the rivers cold. 
 
 The laborers that timely raise, 
 
 All weary, faint, and weak 
 For heat, down to their houses gaes, 
 
 Noon-meat and sleep to take. 
 
 The caller wine in cave is sought, 
 Men's brotheing beasts to cool; 
 
 The water cold and clear is brought, 
 And sallad steeped in ule." 
 
 And Cotton follows, in the "Noon Quatrains": 
 
 "The Day grows hot, and darts his rays 
 From such a sure and killing place, 
 That this half -world are fain to fly 
 The danger of his burning eye. 
 
 His early glories were benign, 
 Warm to be felt, bright to be seen, 
 And all was comfort, but who can 
 Endure him when meridian? 
 
 The grazing herds now droop and pant, 
 E'en without labour fit to faint, 
 And willingly forsook their meat 
 To seek out cover from the heat. 
 
 The lagging ox is now unbound, 
 From larding the new turn 'd up ground, 
 Whilst Hobbinol, alike overlaid, 
 Takes his coarse dinner to the shade. 
 
 Cellars and grottoes now are best 
 To eat and drink in, or to rest, 
 And not a soul above is found 
 Can find a refuge underground. " 
 
106 NATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 Both poets do justice, with vivid realism in detail, 
 to the successive phases of a summer day the fresh- 
 ness of sunrise, the withering heat of noon, the 
 pause of evening, and the suspension of night, as 
 symbolized by the sky, the earth, and the occupa- 
 tions of town and country. Whether the English 
 poet was directly indebted to his Scotch predeces- 
 sor is, of course, impossible to say. 
 
 These genre pictures of Cotton are often framed, 
 so to speak, in the gilt of mythology. To cite one 
 of the best of them : 
 
 "Hark! Hark! the watchful Chanticleer 
 Tells us the day's bright harbinger 
 Peeps o'er the eastern hills, to awe 
 And warn Night's sovereign to withdraw. 
 
 The Morning Curtains now are drawn, 
 And now appears the blushing dawn; 
 Aurora has her roses shed, 
 To strew the way Sol's steeds must tread. 
 
 Xanthus and .^Ethon harness 'd are, 
 To roll away the burning Car, 
 And, snorting flame, impatient bear 
 The dressing of the charioteer. " 
 
 The effect of the combination of mythological 
 splendor with intense realism is comparable to 
 that produced by certain contemporary Dutch 
 painters, the so-called " stuff-painters " who be- 
 stowed much care on the luster of their silks and 
 satins, as if thereby to invest scenes of peaceful 
 domestic life with pictorial splendor. But to this 
 effect Cotton, in concluding each set of quatrains, 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 107 
 
 adds a touch of contemplative reflection, and in the 
 blending of all of these elements mythology, real- 
 ism and meditation recalls to mind Carlyle's 
 "Glorious summer twilights when the Sun like a 
 proud Conqueror and Imperial Taskmaster turned 
 his back, with his gold-purple emblazoning, and all 
 his fire body-guard (of Prismatic colours) ; the tired 
 brick-makers of this clay earth each might steal a 
 little frolic, and those meek stars would not tell of 
 them." 
 
 The "Ode to Winter," to judge by its title, might 
 be expected to be a companion-poem to the "Sum- 
 mer-day Quatrains." But the inspiration of the 
 two poems is from quite different sources. In the 
 "Ode to Winter," we have, instead of a series of 
 sketches, charming in themselves, a poem much more 
 direct, and keen of purpose. Winter is represented 
 as a proud conqueror, a mortal enemy, who with his 
 perfectly appointed host sweeps over the sea, at- 
 tended by storm and wreck, 
 
 "To ravish from our fruitful fields 
 All that the teeming season yields," 
 
 and who, at last, binds the earth in shining chains 
 of ice. When his force is seen to be irresistible, 
 the poet retreats into a fortress, 
 
 "Where all the Eoarers of the North 
 Can neither Storm nor Starve us forth. ' ' 
 
 Safely shut in, he defiantly bids, 
 
 ". . . Old Winter take his course, 
 And roar abroad till he be hoarse, 
 
108 NATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 And his Lungs crack with Ruthless Ire, 
 It shall but serve to blow our Fire." 
 
 The poem ends with a stanza which gives rise to 
 an interesting question. If the composition is con- 
 sidered as one merely of fancy and sentiment this 
 stanza seems an unhappy excrescence. It reads as 
 follows : 
 
 "Or let him [Winter] Scotland take and there 
 Confine the plotting Presbyter, 
 Has Zeal may frieze, whilst we kept warm 
 With love and wine, can take no harm." 
 
 This stanza suggests that its explanation as well as 
 that of the entire poem may possibly be found in the 
 state of public affairs about the time it was written. 
 The poem, indeed, bears with remarkable detail 
 interpretation as a political satire. It will be re- 
 called that it was only about mid- winter, 1655-6, that 
 the people of England and Wales became aware that 
 they were, and had been for some time, under a new 
 system of home-government, called Government by 
 Major Generals. The Commonwealth, under stress 
 of circumstances, had been forced step by step to- 
 ward a military despotism. The country was now 
 divided into twelve military districts, each under a 
 major-general, with a force supported by a tax of ten 
 per cent, on royalist estates. Masson, in his Life of 
 Milton, says: "What with the vigilance of the ma- 
 jor-generals in their districts, what with edicts of 
 the Protector and the Council for the direction of 
 the major-generals, the public order now kept over 
 all England and Wales was wonderfully strict. At 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 109 
 
 no time since the beginning of the Commonwealth 
 had there been so much of that general decorum of 
 external behavior which Cromwell liked to see. 
 Cock-fights, dancing at fairs, and other such amuse- 
 ments, were under ban. ' ' l Then, the Protector be- 
 gan concerning himself with "the plotting Presby- 
 ter. " Eoyalists, such as Cotton, were now coming 
 to feel that their cause had only to withstand a 
 siege until the real spirit of the nation should reas- 
 sert itself. The royalist poet, therefore, might well 
 sing as follows, in a spirit far from that of stoical 
 resignation, 
 
 1 1 Then let the chill Sirocco blow, 
 And gird us round with hills of snow ; 
 Or else go whistle to the shore, 
 And make the hollow mountains roar, 
 
 Whilst we together jovial sit 
 Careless, and crown 'd with mirth and wit; 
 Where, though bleak winds confine us home, 
 Our fancies round the world shall roam. 
 
 We '11 drink the wanting into wealth, 
 And those that languish into health, 
 The afflicted into joy, th' opprest 
 Into security and rest. 
 
 The worthy in disgrace shall find 
 Favor return again more kind, 
 And in restraint who stifled lie 
 Shall taste the air of liberty/' 
 
 The poem when considered as symbolical of the 
 political condition becomes at once, as a whole, more 
 
 i Masson, Life of Milton, vol. v, p. 51. 
 
110 NATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 significant, and more artistic. Wordsworth, it will 
 be recalled, found this ode merely a highly success- 
 ful employment of fancy in the treatment of nature 
 and of sentiment. But evidently, from what he said 
 of it, the value of the composition as a whole did not 
 appeal to him strongly. He probably had difficulty, 
 as Mr. A. H. Bullen did also, with the concluding 
 stanza cited above. 
 
 Moreover, difficulty has been felt with the word 
 "Vanished" in the following couplet from stanza 
 xxv. The edition of 1689 reads, 
 
 "Vanished the Count rys of the Sun 
 The fugitive is hither run." 
 
 The poet is here speaking of the approach of winter 
 from over seas. The word may, it is true, be only 
 a misprint for "banished," but, assuming that it 
 is not, may the poet not mean to suggest involuntary 
 retreat by force of natural law? If so, he may be 
 supposed to wish to suggest to the reader that the 
 protectorate would ultimately vanish before the re- 
 turning sun of royalty. To conceive of winter as 
 coming from the south is at best awkward, unless one 
 supposes a symbolical intention in the poem. It 
 may be recalled that during 1655-6 there was much 
 successful military and naval activity in the "Coun- 
 tries of the Sun." In April, 1655, Blake chastised 
 the deys of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli ; and in May, 
 Penn and Venables were sent to make reprisals in 
 the Spanish West Indies. Thus, the disturbing con- 
 ception of winter as approaching from the south, 
 and moving toward Scotland, seems explained by the 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 111 
 
 political situation the succession of events being, 
 first, the successful operations abroad in the south 
 during the summer months of 1655, secondly, the 
 realization by the English in mid-winter of the 
 trend of affairs at home, and finally the preparations 
 that were making in regard to the spiritual needs 
 of Scotland. However, the use of "fugitive" in the 
 second line of the above quotation may give some 
 additional difficulty. But perhaps it means, in ac- 
 cord with the above suggestion, that the conqueror 
 is already a fugitive from the countries of the sun, 
 and will be a fugitive from England, too, when, in 
 season, the sun of royalty returns. 
 
 On purely poetical grounds, however, this fine 
 "Ode to Winter" may claim appreciation. As 
 Wordsworth has said, the rapidity of detail and the 
 profusion of fanciful comparisons "indicate on the 
 part of the poet extreme activity of intellect and 
 a corresponding hurry of delightful feeling." The 
 following stanzas will illustrate the truth of this 
 judgment and show how vividly the scenes of the 
 poem have been realized. Winter approaches over 
 the sea: 
 
 IX. 
 
 "See, where a Liquid Mountain rides, 
 Made up of innumerable Tides, 
 And tumbles headlong to the strand, 
 As if the Sea would come to Land. 
 
 X. 
 
 A Sail, a Sail I plainly spy, 
 Between the Ocean and the Sky, 
 
112 NATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 An Argosy, a tall-built ship, 
 With all her Pregnant Sails a-trip. 
 
 XI. 
 
 Nearer and nearer she makes way, 
 With Canvas Wings into the Bay; 
 And now upon the Deck appears 
 A crowd of busy mariners. 
 
 XV. 
 
 Nearer she comes, and still doth sweep 
 The Azure Surface of the deep, 
 And now at last the Waves have thrown 
 Their Eider on our ALBION. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 Under the Black cliffs 7 spumy base 
 The sea-sick hulk her freight displays, 
 And as she walloweth on the Sand, 
 Vomits her burthen to the Land. 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 With Heads erect, and plying oar, 
 The ship-wreck 'd mates make to the Shoar; 
 And dreadless of their danger, climb 
 The floating Mountains of the brine. ' ' 
 
 How graphic that last stanza is! One would 
 hardly expect from an inlander such specific treat- 
 ment of the sea in storm. Cotton has, however, an- 
 other picture of storm at sea worthy of a place be- 
 side this one ; it is entitled ' ' The Storm. " l The fol- 
 lowing lines describe the tempest at its height: 
 
 i Poems, 1689, p. 199. 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 113 
 
 "Wave rode on wave, and every wave a sea. 
 
 Of our small bark, gusts rush'd the trembling sides 
 
 Against vast billows that contained whole tides, 
 
 Which in disdainful fury beat her back 
 
 With such a force as made her stout sides crack, 
 
 'Gainst others that in crowds came rolling in, 
 
 As if they meant their liquid walls between 
 
 T ' engage the wretched hulk and crush her flat, 
 
 And make her squeeze to death her dying freight. 
 
 Sometimes she on a mountain's ridge would ride, 
 
 And from that height her gliding keel then glide 
 
 Into a Gulf yawning, and deep as Hell, 
 
 Whilst we were swooning all the while we fell. ' ' l 
 
 Cotton must have been one of the first among 
 English poets to find poetic satisfaction in these 
 titanic disturbances of nature. The appeal of the 
 sublime, however, can hardly be said to have been 
 what affected him. He does not identify himself in 
 spirit with an overwhelming force in nature and 
 achieve victory over it by virtue of obedient ac- 
 ceptance. Shelley frequently shows such transcend- 
 ant humility and strength of soul. But for Cotton, 
 mankind belongs to one order; nature to another, 
 and a distinct, order of being. He represents a war 
 of elements ; man is an onlooker, and may be a pas- 
 sive sufferer. There are, indeed, in his descriptions 
 occasional touches of what has been called the "pa- 
 thetic fallacy"; but they are incidental to the main 
 effect and without serious poetical intention. Cot- 
 ton is too naive a realist to identify the spirit of 
 man with the physical forces of nature. He merely 
 describes what his eyes see, suggests the attendant 
 
 i Of. Donne, The Storm, Muses' Library, vol. ii, p. 1. 
 
114 NATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 emotions of the observer, and adds the meditative 
 accompaniment which a lively fancy supplies him. 
 But it is noteworthy, none the less, that he is among 
 the first of English poets to triumph over the ter- 
 ror of storm at sea, and over the benumbing cold of 
 winter by simple strength of heart and unsubdua- 
 ble liveliness of fancy. It was this manly virtue, 
 no doubt, which caused Charles Lamb to call him 
 the "hearty, cheerful Mr. Cotton. " 
 
 From this aspect of the poet characterized, also, 
 by Lamb, as his "rough magnanimity, " we pass to 
 consideration of his meditative poetry. It perhaps 
 derives in part from the "bold and insolent vein" 
 of such Elizabethan meditative poems as a "Fare- 
 well to the Vanities of the World " which has been 
 variously attributed to Dr. Donne, Sir Henry Wot- 
 ton, and Sir Walter Ealeigh : 
 
 "I would be great, but that the sun doth still 
 
 Level his rays against the rising hill; 
 
 I would be high, but see the proudest oak 
 
 Most subject to the rending thunder- stroke ; 
 
 I would be rich, but see men, too unkind, 
 
 Dig in the bowels of the richest mind ; 
 
 I would be wise, but that I often see 
 
 The fox suspected whilst the ass goes free; 
 
 I would be fair, but see the fair and proud, 
 
 Like the bright sun, oft setting in a cloud ; 
 
 I would be poor, but know the humble grass 
 
 Still trampled on by each unworthy ass : 
 
 Rich, hated; wise, suspected; scorned, if poor, 
 
 Great, feared ; fair, tempted ; high, still envied more ; 
 
 I have wished all, but now I wish for neither ; 
 
 Great, high, rich, wise, nor fair, poor I'll be rather. " 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 115 
 
 With these lines may be compared the following 
 stanzas of Cotton's * ' Contentation. " The two 
 passages are rather closely parallel, both in topic 
 and in point-of-view, though they express an ob- 
 vious difference of temper : 
 
 ' 1 Is it true happiness to be 
 
 By undiscerning Fortune plac't, 
 In the most eminent degree 
 Where few arrive, and none stand fast? 
 
 Titles and wealth are Fortune's Tayle, 
 Wherewith the Vain themselves ensnare ! 
 
 The great are proud of borrowed spoils 
 The Miser's plenty breeds his care. 
 
 The one supinely yawns at rest, 
 Th' other eternally doth toyle, 
 
 Each of them equally a beast, 
 
 A pampered Horse, or lab 'ring Moyl. 
 
 Excess of ill-got, ill-kept pelf 
 
 Doth only Death and Danger breed, 
 
 Whilst one rich Worlding starves himself 
 With what would thousands others feed. 
 
 Nor is he happier than these 
 
 Who in a moderate estate, 
 Where he might safely live at ease, 
 
 Has lusts that are immoderate. 
 
 For he, by these desires misled, 
 Quits his own vine's securing shade 
 
 T' expose his naked, empty head 
 To all the Storms Man's peace invade." 
 
 The parallel might be followed out at greater 
 length. It is not the likeness, however, but the dif- 
 
116 NATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 f erence between the two poems, considered as wholes, 
 which is important for the present purpose. The 
 final mood of the " Farewell " is expressed as fol- 
 lows: 
 
 "Then here I'll sit and sigh my hot love's folly, 
 And learn to affect an holy melancholy; 
 And if contentment be a stranger then, 
 I'll ne'er look for it but in heaven, again." 
 
 But Cotton could not "affect an holy melan- 
 choly"; the world's disease was as plainly evident 
 to him as to the other, but he saw clearly, also, that, 
 
 1 ' There are no ills but what we make, 
 
 By giving Shapes and names to things ; 
 Which is the dangerous mistake 
 That causes all our Sufferings. 
 
 We call that sickness, which is health ; 
 
 That persecution, which is Grace ; 
 That poverty, which is true Wealth, 
 
 And that Dishonour, which is praise. 
 
 Providence watches over all, 
 And that with an impartial eye, 
 
 And if to misery we fall 
 
 'Tis through our own infirmity." 
 
 "Unaffectedly pious" is one of the phrases which 
 Mr. A. H. Bullen has applied to Cotton, and per- 
 haps a truer one could not be found for this aspect 
 of his personality. Clear recognition of the hard 
 facts of life, and cheerful determination to withstand 
 them, combine in these poems of meditation to pro- 
 duce that "gravely noble mood" which, as Lowell 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 117 
 
 says, ' ' shows a knowledge of what goodness is that 
 no bad man could have acquired. " It is not a little 
 significant to find this cavalier poet and his great 
 Puritan contemporary in substantial agreement upon 
 an important point. Cotton declares that man 
 happy, 
 
 "Who from the busie World retires 
 
 To be more useful to it still 
 
 And to no greater good aspires, 
 
 But only the eschewing ill," 
 
 and Milton with a distinction of phrase that is only 
 his, but with no greater sincerity, expresses the same 
 thing: 
 
 . . . "God doth not need 
 Either man's work or his own gifts; who best 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best; his state 
 Is kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed, 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest; 
 They also serve who only stand and wait. ' ' 
 
 In most of Cotton's poetry, the two phases of his 
 work just discussed namely, his realistic descrip- 
 tion of nature and his meditation on the meaning 
 of life are kept apart, or if found in combination 
 they appear successively. The effect of the latter 
 method is that of somewhat disparate moods linked 
 together by rather a loose bond of contiguity. A 
 fundamental law of association does bind them to- 
 gether, but as a matter of artistic execution the com- 
 position leaves something to be desired. This criti- 
 cism is true of both the "Ode to Winter" and the 
 "Summer-day Quatrains." But there is one poem 
 
118 NATURE AND MEDITATION 
 
 of which it cannot be said. This is "The Retire- 
 ment, " the poem with which Walton chose to adorn 
 his book. In it Cotton has made harmonious the 
 varied emotions arising from his contemplation of 
 nature and of life. Here he seems to be giving ex- 
 pression to the full compass of his feeling: to the 
 pleasure he took in cleanly household offices, in the 
 freshness of green fields, and in the happiness of 
 days passed by the side of his "beloved Nymph! 
 Fair Dove, Princess of Kivers ' ' ; but fused with these 
 sensuous pleasures is the deeper satisfaction he 
 sometimes found in meditation, when, at moments, 
 he rose to almost Wordsworthian clairvoyance and 
 felt the presence of a power in life and nature "to 
 chasten and subdue.'' At such a time he sings: 
 
 "Farewell, thou busy World, and may 
 
 We never meet again ; 
 Here I can eat, and sleep and pray, 
 And do more good in one short day 
 Than he who his whole age outwears 
 Upon thy most conspicuous theatres, 
 Where nought but vice and vanity do reign. 
 
 Good God! how sweet are all things here! 
 How beautiful the fields appear! 
 How cleanly do we feed and lie! 
 Lord! what good hours do we keep! 
 
 How quietly we sleep! 
 What peace ! what unanimity ! 
 How innocent from the lewd fashion 
 Is all our business, all our conversation! 
 
 Oh, how happy here's our leisure ! 
 Oh, how innocent our pleasure ! 
 
NATURE AND MEDITATION 119 
 
 Oh, ye valleys, oh, ye mountains, 
 Oh, ye groves and crystal fountains, 
 
 How I love at liberty 
 By turn to come and visit ye ! 
 
 0, Solitude, the soul's best friend, 
 
 That Man acquainted with himself dost make, 
 
 And all his Maker's wonders to intend; 
 
 With thee I here converse at will, 
 
 And would be glad to do so still ; 
 
 For it is thou alone that keep'st the soul awake. " 
 
 It is by this poem, representing him at his best, 
 that we choose to remember Cotton, agreeing with 
 Walton that it cannot fail to make any ' 1 reader that 
 is blest with a generous soul" love him the better. 
 The clean vigor and firm simplicity of the lines en- 
 sure their own appreciation. 
 
INDEX 
 
 A. 
 
 Agincourt, 8. 
 
 Alliteration, 21. 
 
 Anacreontic, An, 56. 
 
 Angler, The Complete, first part, 1, 3, 51-52; second part, 12-14, 19, 
 
 51-55. 
 
 Antithesis, Cotton's use of, 74, 86. 
 Amoret in Masquerade, 86. 
 Ardglass, Countess Dowager of (Cotton's second wife), 48, 51, 60. 
 
 Bacchic Ode, 95. 
 
 Balzac, 76. 
 
 Bancroft, Thomas, 19. 
 
 Barnfield, 103. 
 
 Barrowashe (estate), 27. 
 
 Beaumont, 6. 
 
 Benserade, 83-84. 
 
 Bentley Hall, 9, 27. 
 
 Beresford (Hall, and estate), 8; description of, 12-16, 17, 27, 41, 43, 
 
 47, 51, 59. 
 Beresford, Edward (great-great-grandfather of poet), 9. 
 
 , Olivia (great-grandmother), 9. 
 
 , Thomas, hero of Agincourt, 9. 
 
 , Humphrey, son of Thomas, 9. 
 
 Beresfords, the Irish, Earls of Tyrone, Marquises of Waterford, 9. 
 
 Berkeley, Lord, 40. 
 
 Bertaut, 72-76, 88. 
 
 Blaise de Montluc, Mareschal of France, the Commentaries of, 46. 
 
 Bradshaw, epistle to John, 16, 32, 40, 47, 56, 82, 93. 
 
 Breton, 103. 
 
 Brome, Alexander, 6; epode addressed to, 29. 
 
 , Henry, 45, 47. 
 
 , Richard, 19. 
 
 Bullen, Mr. A. H., 18, 110, 116. 
 Burlesque, 3, 4, 29, 30, 33, 51, 57, 65. 
 Burlesque upon Burlesque, 51. 
 Burns, Robert, 1. 
 Butler, Samuel, 30. 
 
 121 
 
122 INDEX 
 
 c. 
 
 Calendar of State Papers (1675), 50. 
 
 Carew, Thomas, 7, 67-72. 
 
 Carey, Patrick, 87. 
 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 107. 
 
 Chanson a Boire, 95. 
 
 Charles II, 28. 
 
 Chesterfield, Earl of, 39, 40. 
 
 Clarendon, Lord, 7. 
 
 Classical imagry, 80, 89, 106. 
 
 Clepsydra, 95. 
 
 Clifton, Sir Clifford, 32, 36-39. 
 
 Coelia's Ague, 84. 
 
 Coelia's Fall, 97. 
 
 Cokaine, Sir Aston, 6, 17, 18, 19, 27. 
 
 Coleridge, 1. 
 
 Collection of Diverting Sayings, Stories, Characters, etc., 58. 
 
 Come, let us drink away the time, 95. 
 
 Come, live with me and be my love (Marlowe), 20, 101. 
 
 Complete Gamester, the, 45. 
 
 Contentment, 56. 
 
 Conceit, use of the, 65-66. 
 
 Contentation, 115. 
 
 Corneille, 45. 
 
 Coterie poets, 83-88. 
 
 Cotton, Sir Richard (great-grandfather), 4. 
 
 , Sir George (grandfather), 5. 
 
 , Charles, Esq. (father), 5, 6, 7, 18; death of, 27. 
 
 , Charles, the poet, appreciators among the poets, 1-3; rea- 
 sons for neglect of him in his own day, 3-4; ancestry, 4-9; 
 traditions of his family, 9-12; birth of, 10; ancestral estate, 
 12-16; early education, 17-19; death of mother, 17; first pub- 
 lished verses, 19-23; love affair and marriage, 23-27; politics, 
 28; beginning of burlesque writing, 29-30; financial difficulties, 
 30-32, 34-39; reputation for intemperance, 32-34; military 
 service, 39-40; death of wife, 41; "voyage" to Ireland, 43-44; 
 hack-work, 45-46 ; marriage to Countess of Ardglass, 48-50 ; 
 publication of "Second Part" of "Angler," 51; friendship of 
 Walton and Cotton, 52-56; death of Cotton, 57-60; adminis- 
 tration of effects, 60; his children, 60; political purpose of cer- 
 tain of his works, 60-62; publication of "Poems on Several 
 Occasions," 64; native influences upon his poetry, 65-72; French 
 influence, 72-100; his poetry of nature, 101-114; poetry of 
 meditation, 114-119. 
 Beresford (son), 60. 
 Olive (daughter), 60. 
 Catherine (daughter), 60. 
 Jane (daughter), 60. 
 Mary (daughter), 60. 
 Stanhope (grandson), 60. 
 
 "Cotton's Hole," 16. 
 
 Country Life, The (Racan), 97. 
 
INDEX 123 
 
 Cromwell, Oliver, 29, 61, 109. 
 Cynicism, absence of in Cotton, 67. 
 
 D. 
 
 Darby shire, John, 11. 
 
 , Anne, 11. 
 
 Davenant, Sir William, 6, 47, 70. 
 
 D'Avila, 19, 42. 
 
 Day is Set did Earth Adorn, The, 95. 
 
 Denham, Sir John, 4, 19. 
 
 De Mirabilibus Peed (Hobbes), 56. 
 
 Desportes, 72-76, 77, 88. 
 
 Dobson, Austin, 87. 
 
 Donne, 7; Walton's Life of, 46, 114. 
 
 E. 
 
 Eclogue, Damon C. 0. Thyrsis R. R., 22. 
 
 Elegy, 81. 
 
 Elizabeth, Duchess of Devonshire, 57. 
 
 Elizabeth, Queen, 5. 
 
 Elizabethan lyrists, 103. 
 
 Entertainment to Phillis, The, 20. 
 
 Epigram, use of, 82. 
 
 Epigramme, Writ in Calista's Prayerbook (Malherbe), 76. 
 
 Espernon, Duke of, preface to translation, 34, 35, 41, 42, 62. 
 
 Estrennes to Calista, 24, 71. 
 
 Expostulation, The, 79. 
 
 F. 
 
 Fair One of Tunis, 46. 
 
 Fanshaw, Sir Richard, 61. 
 
 Farewell to the Vanities of the World, 114. 
 
 Fenny Bentley (estate), 8. 
 
 Ferrers, John, 62. 
 
 Fishing house, the, 13, 14, 52. 
 
 Flatman, Thomas, 46. 
 
 Fletcher, 6. 
 
 France, Cotton's trip to, 25, 27, 72. 
 
 French lyrists, influence of, 27, 65, 72-100. 
 
 a 
 
 Glapthorne, Henry, 6. 
 
 Gilbert, Archbishop of Canterbury, 42. 
 
 Good Counsel to a Young Maid (Carew), 69. 
 
 Gondibert, 6, 70. 
 
 Gosse, Edmund, 87. 
 
 H. 
 
 Hastings, Lord, 19. 
 
 Hedonism, of Cotton and Carew, 67-72; of Keats, 103. 
 
124 INDEX 
 
 Her Hair, 84. 
 
 Her Name, 84. 
 
 Herrick, 5, 18, 19, 103. 
 
 Her Sigh, 84-85. 
 
 His Amours, 74-75. 
 
 Hippolytus (Seneca), translation of, 20. 
 
 History of England (Macaulay), 19. 
 
 Horatius (Corneille), translation of, 45. 
 
 Hutchinson, Isabella (wife of Cotton), 23, 25; death of, 41. 
 
 , Sir Thomas (father of Isabella), 23. 
 
 , Catherine (mother), 23. 
 
 , Mrs. Stanhope, 45. 
 
 Hume, Alexander, 104. 
 
 Idealism of Cotton, 72. 
 
 Illative method of arrangement, in Cotton and Malherbe, 81. 
 
 Ingram, Sir Thomas, 34. 
 
 Ireland, voyage to, 43. 
 
 J. 
 
 Join once again, my Celia, join, 65. 
 Jonson, Ben, 6. 
 Joys of Marriage, The, 28, 82. 
 Julleville, 88. 
 
 Keats, 103. 
 
 Lachrymae Musarum (Richard Brome), 19. 
 
 Lamb, Charles, 2, 114. 
 
 Laura Sleeping, 21, 69. 
 
 Laura Weeping, 21. 
 
 Lee, Mr. Sidney, 74. 
 
 Litany, The, 28. 
 
 Lives (Walton), 3, 53. 
 
 Love, Cotton's poetical attitude toward, 67-72. 
 
 Lovelace, 5. 
 
 Love's Triumph, 66. 
 
 Lowell, 2, 3, 116. 
 
 Macaulay, 19. 
 
 Marlowe, 20, 101. 
 
 Malherbe, 27, 75-82, 87, 88, 90. 
 
 Mandeville, Lord, 40. 
 
 Marvell, Andrew, 4, 19. 
 
 Masson, 108. 
 
 Maynard, 82, 83, 88. 
 
INDEX 125 
 
 Mediocrity in Love Rejected (Carew), 69. 
 
 Memoirs of Monsieur de Pontis, etc., 60. 
 
 "Metaphysical School," 65, 66. 
 
 Milton, 4; Masson's Life of, 108, 117. 
 
 Monmouth, Duke of, 40. 
 
 Montaigne, 1, 3, 57, 62. 
 
 Moral Philosophy of the Stoics (Du Voix), Cotton's translation 
 
 of, 62. 
 
 Montr oss, 21. 
 Musarum Delicice (Mennis and Smith), 30. 
 
 N. 
 
 Natural History of Staffordshire (Plat.), 59. 
 New Year, The, 2, 80. 
 Notes and Queries, 45. 
 
 Occasional Poems, 20. 
 
 Ode, 82. 
 
 Old Tityrus to Eugenia, 69. 
 
 0. 
 
 P. 
 
 Paradox, use of, 74. 
 
 Pastor Fido, 61. 
 
 Pepys, Samuel, 30, 33, 40. 
 
 Persuasions to Love (Carew), 68. 
 
 Pike Pool, 15. 
 
 Piscator, 12, 13, 14, 15, 53-55. 
 
 Platonism, absence of in Cotton's poetry, 24, 67, 71 ; imitation of, 85. 
 
 Pleiade, The, 87. 
 
 Poems of Diverse Sorts (Sir Aston Cokaine), 18. 
 
 Poems on Several Occasions, 1, 64, 65. 
 
 Poverty, 47, 56. 
 
 Prayer to the Wind, A (Carew), 69. 
 
 Prestwick, Edwin, 20. 
 
 Q. 
 
 Quatrains, Evening, 104. 
 
 -, Night, 104. 
 
 -, Summer Day, 27, 80, 103, 104, 107, 117. 
 
 R. 
 
 Racan, Honorat, 27, 80, 88. 
 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 114. 
 Rambouillet, Madame de, 83. 
 
 , Hotel de, 83. 
 
 Rawson, Ralph (Cotton's tutor), 22. 
 Realism, in Cotton, 24, 67, 69. 
 Re"gnier, 88. 
 
126 INDEX 
 
 Restoration, the, 28, 62. 
 
 Retirement, The, 12, 16, 52, 56, 65, 80, 98, 118. 
 
 Retreat, The, 25. 
 
 Ronsard, 88. 
 
 Ronsardists, the, 72-76, 87. 
 
 Russell, Sir William (father of the Countess of Ardglass), 48. 
 
 Savile, George, Marquis of Halifax, 57, 59. 
 
 Scarronides, or the first book of Virgil Travestie, 29, 30, 39, 43. 
 
 Schelling, Professor Felix E., 4. 
 
 Selden, 7. 
 
 Separation, The, 23. 
 
 Seventeenth Century Lyrics (Schelling), 4. 
 
 Sheerness, burning of, by Dutch, 39. 
 
 Shelley, 113. 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 8. 
 
 Simplicity, of Cotton and Malherbe, 80, 81 j of Theophile, 89. 
 
 Song of Montr oss, 21. 
 
 Sonnet, How shouldst thou love and not offendf 69. 
 
 Spenser, 74. 
 
 Stanhope, Olive Beresford (grandmother), 9. 
 
 , Olive (mother), 9. 
 
 , Sir John (grandfather), 8, 10, 11. 
 
 , Sir John, of Elvaston (grandfather of Isabella Hutchin- 
 
 son), 23. 
 Storm, The, 112. 
 
 T. 
 
 Tempest, The, 69. 
 
 Tixall Library, 34. 
 
 To Chloris, 69, 95. 
 
 To Coelia, 68, 75, 82. 
 
 To Cupid, 84, 86. 
 
 To her absence, A ship (Carew), 69. 
 
 To Isabel, 69. 
 
 To my Friend, Mr. Lely, 69. 
 
 To the Painter (Carew), 69. 
 
 Translations, by Cotton, 65. 
 
 V. 
 
 Valediction, A, 84, 85. 
 
 Vaughn, Chief Justice, 7. 
 
 Vers de Societe, 83-88. 
 
 Viator, 12, 13, 14, 15, 54. 
 
 Viaud, Theophile de, 27, 80, 88-94. 
 
 Virelai, 65, 86, 87. 
 
 Virgil Travesty, the, first book, 1, 3, 29; fourth book, 43. 
 
 Voiture, 27, 83-88. 
 
 Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque, 32, 33, 43-45. 
 
INDEX 127 
 
 w. 
 
 Wake, Mr. H. F., 34. 
 
 Waller, 4, 29. 
 
 Wallis, Mr. Alfred, 45. 
 
 Walton, Isaak, 1, 3, 7, 8, 13, 14, 18, 46, 51-55, 80, 119; lines to, 
 
 56, 93, 118. 
 Winter, Ode to (Cotton), 27, 62, 73, 107-112, 117. 
 
 , Shakespeare's, 103. 
 
 Wonders of the Peak, 56. 
 Wordsworth, 1, 2, 3, 27, 80, 111. 
 World, The, 47, 55. 
 Wotton, Sir Henry, 114. 
 
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