LIFE OF COTTON. 357 



1689, a bookseller's publication, tumbled into tlie 

 world without preface, apology, or even correction, 

 that will be spoken of hereafter ; and a Translation, 

 from the French of the Memoirs of the Sieur de Pon- 

 f/s, published, in 1694, by his son, Mr. Beresford 

 Cotton, and by him dedicated to the then Duke of 

 Orinond, as having been undertaken, and completed, 

 at the request of the old Duke, his grace's grand- 

 father. 



It is, too much, to be feared, that the difficulties he 

 laboured under, and in short the straitness of his cir- 

 cumstances, were the reasons that induced Mr. Cot* 

 ton to employ himself in writing ; and, in that, so 

 much more in translation than original composition. 

 For, first by the way they are greatly mistaken, 

 who think that the business of writing for booksellers 

 is a new occupation ; it is known, that Greene, Pea- 

 cham, and Howel, for a great part of their lives, sub- 

 sisted almost wholly by it : though perhaps Mr. Cot- 

 ton is the first instance, of a gentleman by descent, 

 and, the inheritor of a fair estate, being reduced by a 

 sad necessity to write for subsistence. But, secondly 

 whether through misfortune, or the want of ceconomy, 

 or both it may be collected from numberless passages 

 in his writings, that Mr. Cotton's circumstances were 

 narrow ; his estates incumbered with mortgages ; and 

 his income less than sufficient for his maintenance in 

 the port and character of a gentleman : why, else, 

 those querulous exclamations against the clamours of 

 creditors, the high rate of interest, and the extortions 

 of usurers, that so frequently occur in his poems ? 

 From which several particulars, it seems a natural, and 

 at the same time a melancholy inference, that he was; 

 not to say an author a translator, probably, for hire; 

 but, certainly, by profession. 



It is of all employments, one of the most painful, 

 to enumerate the misfortunes arid sufferings of worthy 

 and deserving men ; and, most so, of such as have 

 been distinguished for either their natural or acquired 

 endowments: but truth, and the laws of biographic 

 history, oblige all that undertake that kind of writing. 



