CHARLES COTTON. HEARTY, careless 'Charley Cotton' was born in 1630. His father, Sir George Cotton, was improvident and intemperate in his latter days, and left the poet an encumbered estate situated at Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, near the river Dove. This place will recall the words quoted by O'Connell in Parliament in reference to the then Lord Derby : 'Down thy fair banks, romantic Ashbourne, glides Charles studied at Cambridge; and after travelling abroad, married the daughter of Sir Thomas Owthorp in Nottinghamshire, who does not appear to have lived long. His extravagance keeping him poor, he was compelled to eke out his means by translating works from the French and Italian, including those of a spirit somewhat kindred to his own-Montaigne. At the age of forty, he obtained a captain's commission in the army, and went to Ireland. There he met with his second wife, Mary, Countess Dowager of Ardglass, the widow of Lord Cornwall. She possessed a jointure of £1500 a-year, secured, however, after marriage, from her husband's imprudent and reckless management. He returned to his English estate, where he became passionately fond of fishing,-intimate with Izaak Walton, whom he invited in a poem, although now eighty-three years old, to visit him in the country-and where he built a fishing-house, with the initials of Izaak's name and his own united in ciphers over the door; the walls, too, being painted with fishing scenes, and the portraits of Cotton and Walton appearing upon the beaufet. Poor Charles had a less fortunate career than his friend, dying insolvent at Westminster in 1687. Careless gaiety and reckless extravagance, blended with heart, sense, and sincerity, were the characteristics of Cotton as a man, and were, as is usually the case, transferred to his poetry. He squandered his pence and his powers with equal profusion. His travestie of the 'Eneid' is pronounced by Christopher North (who must have read it, however,) a beastly book. Campbell says, with striking justice, of another of Cotton's produc tions, ‘His imitations of Lucian betray the grossest misconception of humorous effect, when he attempts to burlesque that which is ludicrous already.' It is like trying to turn the 'Tale of a Tub' into ridicule. But Cotton's own vein, as exhibited in his 'Invitation to Walton,' his 'New Year,' and his 'Voyage to Ireland,' (which anticipates in some measure the style of Anstey in the New Bath Guide,') is very rich and varied, full of ease, picturesque spirit, and humour, and stamps him a genuine, if not a great poet. INVITATION TO IZAAK WALTON. 1 Whilst in this cold and blustering clime, 2 Whilst from the most tempestuous nooks 3 Whilst all the ills are so improved That even you, so much beloved, 4 In this estate, I say, it is Some comfort to us to suppose, That in a better clime than this, You, our dear friend, have more repose; 5 And some delight to me the while, Though Nature now does weep in rain, 6 If the all-ruling Power please We live to see another May, 7 We then shall have a day or two, 8 A day with not too bright a beam; 9 Then, whilst behind some bush we wait We'll prove it just, with treacherous bait, 10 And think ourselves, in such an hour, Happier than those, though not so high, Who, like leviathans, devour Of meaner men the smaller fry. 11 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. A VOYAGE TO IRELAND IN BURLESQUE. CANTO L The lives of frail men are compared by the sages Or unto short journeys, or pilgrimages, As men to their inns do come sooner or later, steeple, And though I was bred 'mongst the wonders o' th' Peak, And thought there was nothing so pleasant and brave: Come lend me the aids of thy hands and thy feet, They'll help both my journey, and eke my relation. "Twas now the most beautiful time of the year, The days were now long, and the sky was now clear, And May, that fair lady of splendid renown, Had dressed herself fine, in her flower'd tabby gown, When it grew something late, though I thought it too soon, With a pitiful voice, and a most heavy heart, Of over-grown, golden, and silver-scaled fishes; Thy trout and thy grayling may now feed securely, By pacing and trotting betimes in the even, Where the sign of a king kept a King and his queen: Next morn, having paid for boiled, roasted, and bacon, |