clxvi LIFE OF 



attainments, and united with them an extensive knowledge of 

 modern languages, particularly of French and Italian, 6 together 

 with the usual accomplishments of the age, is however unquestion- 

 able. It does not appear that he was intended for any profession, 7 

 and the early part of his life seems to have been passed in the 

 society of the wits and other literary men of his time. He was 

 himself ardently attached to literature ; but except a few poems, he 

 wrote nothing which was published until after the Restoration. 

 Before that period the little which is known of his pursuits has 

 been gleaned from the works of one or two of his friends, and 

 from his own verses ; but he probably went abroad before he 

 attained his twenty-fourth year, as he certainly had travelled in 

 France and Italy. 



That Cotton wrote many of the poems which were for the first 

 time collected and published after his decease, at an early period 

 of his life, 8 is not only proved by internal evidence, but it is placed 

 beyond dispute, by the subjoined verses addressed to him by Sir 

 Aston Cokayne : 



"TO MY MOST HONOURED COUSIN MR CHARLES COTTON THE 

 YOUNGER, UPON HIS EXCELLENT POEMS. 



Bear back, you crowd of wits, that have so long 

 Been the prime glory of the English tongue, 

 And room for our arch-poet make, and follow 

 His steps, as you would do your great Apollo. 

 Nor is he his inferior, for see 

 His picture, and you'll say that this is he ; 

 So young and handsome both, so tress'd alike, 

 That curious Lilly, or most skill'd Vandyke, 

 Would prefer neither. Only here's the odds, 

 This gives us better verse than that the Gods. 



6 It appears that Cotton's library contained some of the best Italian authors, as 

 Cokayne says in one of his effusions, p. 231, 



" D'Avila, Bentivoglio, Guicciardine, 

 And Machiavil the subtile Florentine, 

 In their originals, I have read through, 

 Thanks to your library, and unto you ; 

 The prime historians of late times ; at least, 

 In the Italian tongue allow'd the best." 



7 Cotton says in his " Voyage to Ireland : " " Indeed I had a small smattering of Law," 

 but his legal knowledge appears to have been gained from the performance of the duties 

 of a Justice of the Peace, as he adds : 



" Which I lately had got more by practice than reading, 

 In sitting o' tK Bench, whilst others were pleading." 



8 Among the poems attributed to the younger Cotton are an Elegy upon Henry Lord 

 Hastings, only son of Ferdinand Earl of Huntingdon, who died in June 1649, which 

 was printed in Brome's " Lachrymse Musarum, the Tears of the Muses, expressed in 

 elegies written by divers persons of nobility and worth " upon that young nobleman's 

 death, 8vo, 1650, when Cotton was only twenty years of age ; and a copy of verses 

 prefixed to Edmund Prestwich's Translation of the Hippolitus of Seneca in 1651. 



