62 IZAAK WALTON AND HIS FRIENDS 



live out to sixty full years old," he wrote in "The 

 Eetirement." 



No stone, monument, or tablet of any sort or 

 kind has ever been erected or put up in memory 

 of Cotton : — 



" No marble columns or engraven brass 

 To tell the world that such a person was." 



Apart from his connection with Walton, I think 

 that Cotton has good reason to be remembered. 



Cotton's Poems on Several Occasions were 

 published after his death in 1689. As to the ode 

 "Winter," written by him, the poet Wordsworth 

 says in his preface to his Miscellaneous Poems: 

 " The middle part of this ode contains a most lively 

 description of the entrance of Winter, with his 

 retinue, as a palsied King,^ and yet a mihtary 

 monarch, advancing for conquest with his army, 

 the several bodies of which, and their arms and 

 equipment, are described with a rapidity of detail 

 and a profusion of fanciful comparisons which 

 indicate on the part of the poet extreme activity 

 of intellect and a correspondent hurry of delightful 

 feeling." 



Cotton's widow, and his eldest son, Beresford 

 Cotton, and also his four daughters — Olive, 



^ In the twenty-eighth stanza of " Winter," which contains fifty-three 

 stanzas, the line occurs : "The Entry of their Palsied King." In this 

 collection of poems there are two poems on Winter besides one on the 

 Great Frost. 



