33aafe Tfflnlton anfc Cbarles Cotton 45 



nature of Walton, who saw no wit in either " Scripture 

 jests or lascivious jests for the Devil will help a 

 man that way inclined to the first, and his own corrupt 

 nature which he always carries with him, to the latter." 

 And what does Piscator say to Venator ? " I would 

 you were a brother of the angle : for a companion 

 that is cheerful and free from swearing and scurrilous 

 discourse is worth gold. I love such mirth as does 

 not make friends ashamed to look upon one another 

 next morning." 



But that was hardly either the discourse or the mirth 

 that Charles Cotton favoured. " My delight," he tells 

 one of his friends, " is to toss the can merrily round." 

 And in one of his poems he writes : 



I speak it with tears, 



I've been a toss-pot these twenty good years, 

 And have drank as much liquor as made me a debtor. 



He was always over head and ears in debt, besieged 

 by duns for weeks together ; and they show you to 

 this day in Dovedale the cave in the limestone cliffs 

 where he used to hide from his persecuting creditors. 



But if Charles Cotton had neither the morals nor the 

 piety of his " father Izaak," he had good qualities of 

 his own which rendered him a lovable soul. A jolly, 

 generous, free-handed, big-hearted gentleman he was, 

 whose purse and cellar and larder were ever at the 

 disposal of a friend. That luckless poet Richard 

 Lovelace twice owed his release from prison to Charles 

 Cotton, the best friend he ever had, as he himself 

 admits. And when the once brilliant courtier and 



