clxviii LIFE OF 



Jonson, Chapman, and Holland I have seen, 

 And with them too should have acquainted been. 

 What needs this catalogue? Th' are dead and gone, 

 And to me you are all of them in one." 



"TO MY COUSIN MR CHARLES COTTON THE YOUNGER. 



In how few years have you rais'd up an high 

 Column of learning by your industry, 

 More glorious than those pyramids that old 

 Canopus view'd, or Cair doth yet behold ! 

 Your noble father (that for able parts 

 Hath won an high opinion in all hearts) 

 May like the elder Scaliger look down 

 With admiration on his worthy son. 

 Proceed, fair plant of ex'ellencies, and grow 

 So high to shadow all that are below." 



Colonel Lovelace, who addressed an ode 1 to Cotton's father, 

 and wrote an elegy on his aunt, Cassandra, inscribed " The 

 Triumphs of Philamore and Amoret, to the noblest of our youth 

 and best of friends, Charles Cotton, Esquire, being at Beresford, 

 at his house in Staffordshire, from London." 2 In these verses he 

 laments Cotton's absence, and thus affectionately anticipates his 

 return ; 



" But all our clouds shall be o'erblown when thee 

 In our horizon, bright, once more we see; 

 When thy dear presence shall our souls new dress ; 

 And spring an universal cheerfulness, 

 When we shall be o'erwhelm'd in joy, like they 

 That change their night for a vast half-year's day. 

 Then shall the wretched few that do repine 

 See and recant their blasphemies in wine ; 

 Then shall they grieve that thought I've sung too freo 

 High and aloud of thy true worth and Thee : 

 And their foul heresies and lips submit 

 To th' all-forgiving breath of Amoret ; 

 And me alone their anger's object call, 

 That from my height so miserably did fall ; 

 And cry out my invention thin and poor, 

 Who have said nought, since I could say no more." 



The most remarkable lines are, however, the following, because 

 they seem to corroborate Aubrey's statement that Cotton had 

 relieved Lovelace in his distress : 3 



" What fate was mine when in my obscure cave 

 Shut up almost close prisoner in a grave 

 Your beams could reach me through this vault of night, 

 And canton the dark dungeon with light ! 

 Whence me, as gen'rous Spahy's, you unbound, 

 Whilst I know myself both free and crown'd." 



1 Lucasta. edit. 1649. " The Grasshopper, To my noble friend, Mr Charles Cotton." 

 P- 34- 



2 Lucasta. Posthume Poems of Richard Lovelace, Esq., 8vo, 1659. 



3 " Lovelace died in 1658, in a mean lodging in Gunpowder Alley, near Shoe Lane. 

 Aubrey's statement is, that ' George Petty, haberdasher in Fleet Street, carried twenty 



shillings to him every Monday morning from Sir Many, and Charles Cotton, Esq., 



for months, and was never repaid.' " Athen. Oxon. ed. Bliss, vol. iii. pp. 462, 463. 



