fto 



OF CO I ION. 



university to his father's, he addicted himself to thr 

 lighter kinds of study, and the improvement of a 

 talent in poetry, of \vhich he found himself pos- 

 sessed; and also, that he might travel abroad, for, 

 in one of his poems*, he says he had been at Roan. 

 His father having married a lady of a Derbyshire 

 family ; and she being the daughter and heiress of 

 Edward Beresford, of Bercsford and Enson in Stafford* 

 shire, and of Bently in the county of Derby ; it may 

 be presumed, that the descent of the family seat at 

 Beresford to her, might have been the inducement with 

 her husband to remove, with his family, from their 

 first settlement at Ovingden, to Beresford, a village 

 near the Peak in Derbyshire, and in the neighbourhood 

 of the Dove,- a river that divides the counties of 

 Derby and Stafford, and of which the reader will be 

 told so much hereafter. 



And, here, we may suppose the younger Mr. 

 Cotton, tempted by the vicinity of u river plentifully 

 stored with fish of the best kinds, to have chosen 

 Angling for his recreation ; and, looking upon it to be, 

 what Walton rightly terms it, an art, to have applied 

 himself to the improvement of that branch of it, 

 Jishing with an artificial fly. To this end, he made 

 himself acquainted 'with the nature of aquatic insects, 

 with the forms and colours of the several flies that 

 are found on or near rivers, the times of their ap- 

 pearance and departure, and the methods of imi- 

 tating them with furs, silks, feathers, and other ma- 

 terials ; in all which researches, he exercised sucU 

 patience, industry, and ingenuity, and succeeded sp 

 \vell, that having, in the following Dialogues, com- 

 municated to the^publick the result of his experience, 

 he must be deemed the great improver of this elegant 

 recreation, and a benefactor to his posterity. 



There is reason to think, that, after his leaving the 

 university, he was received into his father's family ; 

 for we are told that his father, being a man of bright 

 parts, gave him themes arid authors whereon to ex* 



* The Wonders of the Peak, 



