clxx LIFE OF 



Thou hast at once abused thyself and us ; 

 He's stout that dares flatter a tyranne thus. 



Put up thy pen and ink, muzzle thy muse, 

 Adulterate hag fit for a common stews, 

 No good man's library ; writ thou hast 

 Treason in rhyme has all thy works defaced : 

 Such is thy fault, that when I think to find 

 A punishment of the severest kind, 

 For thy offence, my malice cannot name 

 A greater; than, once to commit the same. 



Where was thy reason then, when thou began 

 To write against the sense of God and man ? 

 Within thy guilty breast despair took place, 

 Thou wouldst despairing die in spite of grace. 

 At once thou art judge, and malefactor shown, 

 Each sentence in thy poem is thine own. 



Then, what thou hast pronounced go execute, 

 Hang up thyself, and say, I bid thee do it ; 

 Fear not thy memory, that cannot die, 

 This panegyric is thy elegy, 

 Which shall be when, or wheresoever read, 

 A living poem to upbraid thee dead." 



Though ardent Royalists, both Cotton and his father seem to 

 have escaped the persecutions to which the Cavaliers were exposed, 

 as their names have not been found in connection with any public 

 event during the Commonwealth ; nor do they appear to have 

 been obliged to purchase safety by compounding for their estates. 

 Of Cotton's acquaintances at this period, the most remarkable, 

 with reference to this work, was Isaak Walton, his adopted father 

 in the art of Angling, who became one of his intimate friends, and 

 whose esteem is strong evidence of Cotton's moral worth. Walton 

 was also known to his father, for in speaking of the Lives of Donne 

 and Wotton, Cotton observes, 



" How happy was my father, then, to see 

 Those men he lov'd, by him he lov' d to be 

 Rescued from frailties and mortality." 



Literature and the pleasures of society did not, however, entirely 

 engross his time ; for besides his favourite pursuit of Angling, 

 which he followed before he was seventeen, 7 he amused himself in 

 gardening and planting. Upon the latter subject, he not only 

 afterwards wrote a treatise, 8 but proved that his knowledge was 

 practical, by planting his own grounds near Beresford Hall ; 9 and 



7 Cotton says in his part of "The Complete Angler," in 1676: "I will tell you 

 nothing, I have not made myself as certain of as any man can be in thirty years' 

 experience, for so long I have been a dabbler in that art." P. 406. 



8 Vide postea. 



9 "Viator. It [Beresford Hall] appears on a sudden, but not before 'twas looked for. 

 It stands prettily, and here's -wood about it too, but so young as appears to be of your 

 own planting. 



" Piscator. It is so." Cotton's part cf " The Complete Angler," p. 420. 



