CHARLES COTTON. 



cxcvn 



Sut we may make it pleasant too, 

 If we will take our measures right. 



And not what Heav'n has done, undo 

 By an unruly appetite. 



Tis Contentation that alone 

 Can make us happy here below, 



And when this little life is gone, 

 Will lift us up to Heav'n too. 



A very little satisfies 



An honest, and a grateful heart, 

 And who would more than will suffice, 



Does covet more than is his part. 



That man is happy in his share, 

 Who is warm clad, and cleanly fed, 



Whose necessaries bound his care, 

 And honest labour makes his bed. 



Who free from debt, and clear from crimes, 

 Honours those laws that others fear, 



Who ill of princes in worst times 

 Will neither speak himself, nor hear. 



Who from the busy world retires, 



To be more useful to it still, 

 And to no greater good aspires, 



But only the eschewing ill. 



Who, with his angle, and his books, 

 Can think the longest day well spent, 



And praises God when back he looks, 

 And finds that all was innocent 



This man is happier far than he 

 Whom public business oft betrays, 



Through labyrinths of policy, 

 To crooked and forbidden ways. 



The world is full of beaten roads, 



But yet so slippery withall, 

 That where one walks secure, 'tis odds 



A hundred and a hundred falL 



Untrodden paths are then the best, 

 Where the frequented are unsure, 



And he comes soonest to his rest, 



Whose journey has been most secure. 



It is Content alone that makes 

 Our pilgrimage a pleasure here, 



And who buys sorrow cheapest, takes 

 An ill commodity too dear. 



But he has fortunes worst withstood, 

 And happiness can never miss, 



Can covet nought, but where he stood, 

 And thinks him happy where he is." 



Several stories are related of Cotton's pecuniary distress, but 

 though it is unquestionable that he generally laboured under 

 embarrassments, and that he hints that he had occasionally 

 concealed himself from his creditors, yet there ' is no better 

 authority for the following anecdotes than tradition. Sir John 

 Hawkins states that " a natural excavation in the rocky hill on 

 which Beresford Hall stands, is shown as Mr Cotton's occasional 

 refuge from the pursuit of his creditors ; and but a few years since 

 the granddaughter of the faithful woman who carried him food while 

 in that humiliating retreat, was living ; " 9 and he adds, that during 

 Cotton's confinement on one occasion in a prison in the city, he 

 inscribed these lines on the walls of his apartment : 



"A prison is a place of cure 

 Wherein no one can thrive ; 

 A touchstone sure to try a friend, 

 A grave for men alive." l 



Cotton's literary merits do not appear to be sufficiently appreci- 

 ated at the present day, probably because the works by which he 

 is best known are not calculated to create respect for his abilities, 

 and because there is no popular or selected edition of his poems. 

 As his prose writings consist almost entirely of translations 



Life of Cotton, 382-3. 



1 Ibid. 



