viii THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF 



so long" {Clarendon's Life, v. i., p. 36, Oxford ed., 1827). I 

 give the above extract as, mutatis mutandis, it is a portrait of the 

 son, and shows the paternal example which in good and evil he 

 much resembled. 



Our Cotton was born in 1630, so that he was thirty-seven years 

 younger than Walton. His youth, spent near the Dove, deve- 

 loped his innate taste for the art, his skill in which, as well as in 

 treatino^ of it, has won for him more honorable fame than all his 

 other writings. He was an angler before his seventeenth year, 

 for in 1676 he had had thirty years' experience. We know little 

 of his education, except that he was sent to Cambridge about 

 1649, and was the pupil of Mr. Ralph Rawson, to whom he ad- 

 dressed a dedication of an ode of Johannes Secundus, which he 

 liad translated, receiving some affectionate verses in return. He 

 travelled in France and Italy some years before his first marriage 

 with Isabella, daughter of Sir Thomas Hutchinson, of whom he 

 speaks affectionately in his satirical poem on the " Joys of Mar- 

 riage." 



" Yet with me 'tis out of season, 

 Thus to complain without reason, 

 Since the best and sweetest fair 

 Is allotted to my share : 

 But, alas ! I love her so 

 That my love creates my woe ; 

 For if she be out of humor. 

 Straight displeased I do presume her, 

 And would give the world to know. 

 What it is oflends 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, I then am dying. 

 Meat and med'cine both defying." 



Poor lady, she had often too much reason to be out of hun)or, and 

 complimentary rhyme was a less proof of affection than his ob- 

 scene verses were of the contrary. She died, after bearing him 

 eif^ht children, five of whom survived him, about 1670. 



The pecuniary embarrassments which he inherited with the 



J 



