LIFE OP COTTON. 



For if she be out of humour, 

 Straight, displeas'd I do presume her, 

 And would give the world to know 

 What it is offends her so ; 

 Or if she be discontented, 

 Lord, how am I then tormented! 

 And am ready to persuade her, 

 That I have unhappy made her; 

 But, if sick, then I am dying, 

 Meat and med'cine both defying. 



This lady, the delight of his heart, and the partner of 

 his sorrows, he had the misfortune to lose : but at what 

 period of his life is not certain. 



We MIGHT flatter ourselves, that his sun set brighter 

 than it rose ; for his second marriage which was with 

 the Countess Dowager of Ardglass, who possessed a 

 jointure of fifteen hundred a year, and survived him 

 might suggest a hope, that he might have been, 

 thereby, enabled to extricate himself out of the great- 

 est of his difficulties, and in reality to enjoy that 

 tranquillity of mind which he describes with so much 

 feeling in the Stances Irreguliers : But this supposi- 

 tion seems to be contradicted by a fact, which the 

 act of administration, of his effects upon his decease, 

 discloses, viz. that the same was granted " to Eliza- 

 Cc beth Bind worth, his principal creditrix; the ho- 

 6 nourable Mary Countess Dowager of Ardglass, his 

 c widow, Beresford Cotton, Esq., Olive Cotton, Ca- 

 u therine Cotton, Jane Cotton, and Mary Cotton, his 

 c * natural and lawful children, first renouncing." 



The above act bearing date the 12th day of Sep- 

 tember, 1687, fixes, perhaps, within a few days, the 

 day of his death : and describes him as having lived 

 in the parish of St. James, Westminster : it also as- 

 certains his issue, which were all by his first lady. 



There is a tradition current in his neighbourhood, 

 That he had, by some sarcastic expression in his writ- 

 ings, so offended an aunt of his, that she revoked a 

 clause in her will, whereby she had bequeathed to him 

 an estate of five hundred pounds a year : but as two 



