CHARLES COTTON, ESQ. vii 



found him weary of me." Surely these extracts may warrant 

 us in doubting such " a spot in a feast of charity," as Walton's 

 familiar intimacy with one whose profligate disposition was known 



to him. 



Cotton's family was both ancient and honorable in the county 

 of Sussex, his ancestor having been Sir Richard Cotton, Comp- 

 troller of the Household and Privy Councillor to Edward the 

 Sixth. Charles Cotton, the father of our fly-fisher, having mar- 

 ried the heiress, settled at Beresford. He seems to have been a 

 man of parts and accomplishments, in Walton's good judgment, 

 for his marginal note in the Fishing-house says : '• the pleasant- 

 ness of the river, mountains, and meadows about it, cannot be 

 described unless Sir Philip Sidney or Mr. Cotton's father were 

 alive to do it." The Earl of Clarendon, in his Autobiography, 

 characterizes him as '' a gentleman born to a competent fortune, 

 and so qualified in his person and education, that for many years 

 he continued the greatest ornament of the town, in the esteem of 

 those who had been best bred ; his natural parts were very great, 

 his wit flowing in all the parts of his conversation ; the super- 

 structure not raised to a considerable height, but having passed 

 some years in Cambridge and then in France, and conversing 

 always with learned men, his expressions were ever proper and 

 significant, and gave great lustre to his discourse upon any argu- 

 ment ; so that he was thought by those not intimate with him, to 

 have been much better acquainted with books than he was ; he 

 had all those qualities which in youth raise men to the reputation 

 of being fine gentlemen ; such a pleasantness and gaiety of 

 humor, such a sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a 

 civility and delightfulness in conversation, that no man in court 

 or out of it appeared a more accomplished person, all these 

 extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraordinary 

 a clearness of courage and fearlessness of spirit, of which he 

 gave too often manifestation. Some unhappy suits in law, and 

 waste of his fortune in these suits, made some impression on his 

 mind ; which being impaired by domestic afflictions, and those 

 indulgences to himself which naturally attend these afflictions, 

 rendered his age less reverenced than his youth had been, and 

 frave his best friends cause to have wished that he had not lived 



