Introduction 



contribute those " Instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling 

 in a clear stream," which Cotton, he himself tells us, wrote in about 

 ten days, and sent back to his friend. In the same year in which 

 the joint Compleat Angler appeared, Cotton had finished building 

 the little fishing-house which still stands among its trees, in a bend 

 of the Dove, sacred to anglers and ancient friendship. Mr. New's 

 illustrations make unnecessary any more modern description than 

 Cotton's own (Part II., Chap. III.) and indeed the place is to this 

 day so pleasant that one may still say of it in Walton's words that 

 " the pleasantness of the river, mountains and meadows about it, 

 cannot be described ; unless Sir Philip Sidney, or Mr. Cotton's 

 father were alive again to do it." 



Cotton survived his old friend but four years, dying of a fever on 

 some date uncertain during 1687, but said to be February 13. 



He is entirely remembered to-day by his association with Walton, 

 and his translation of Montaigne, which have carried down to us the 

 tradition of his handsome person and courtly manners, but which 

 have hardly won due recognition for his poetry. Without declaring 

 it, with Sir Aston Cockayne, " the nihil ultra of the English tongue," 

 we may still feel that it has charms and excellencies, real if modest, 

 which make forgetfulness of it unjust, and which justify Cotton's 

 long- neglected claim to a recognised place among English poets, a 

 claim which a new edition of his poems might establish ; though it 

 is to be feared, that he would shine best in a judicious selection. 

 His bane was fluency, and not seldom we have to plod through 

 deserts of mediocre verse before we reach any poetry worth while. 

 But the poetry is there, and when with Cotton the moment of 

 literary projection did come, the product had a charming inevitability, 

 and is marked by a rare excellence of simplicity, to which Coleridge 

 has paid a tribute in the Biographia Liter aria. The following verses 

 from the " Contentation," one of the several poems " directed " to 

 Walton, may be taken as an example : 



"Tis contentation that alone 



Can make us happy here below^ 

 And when this little life is gone^ 



Will lift us up to heav'n too. 

 Ixxx 



