224 LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON, 



author, in the Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon, written by 

 himself, and lately published. That of Mr Cotton here 

 follows : 



" Charles Cotton was 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 conversation ; the superstructure of learning not raised to 

 a considerable height ; but having passed some years in 

 Cambridge, arid then in France, and conversing always with 

 learned men, his expressions were ever proper and signifi- 

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

 ment ; so that he was thought by those who were 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 gentle- 

 men ; such a pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a 

 sweetness and gentleness of nature, and such a civility and 

 delightfulness in conversation, that no man in the court or 

 out of it appeared a more accomplished person : all these 

 extraordinary qualifications being supported by as extraor- 

 dinary 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 those suits, made some 

 impression on his mind ; which, being improved by domestic 

 afflictions, and those indulgences to himself which naturally 

 attend those afflictions, rendered his age less reverenced than 

 his youth had been, and gave his best friends cause to have 

 wished he had not lived so long." 



The younger Mr Cotton was born on the 28th day of 

 April, 1630 ; and having, as we must suppose, received such 

 a school education as qualified him for a university, he was 

 sent to Cambridge, where also his father had studied ; he 

 had for his tutor Mr Ralph Rawson, once a fellow of Brazen- 

 nose college, Oxford, but who had been ejected from his 

 fellowship by the Parliament visitors, in 1648. This person 

 he has gratefully celebrated in a translation of an Ode of 

 Johannes Secundus. 



What was the course of his studies, whether they tended 

 to qualify him for either of the learned professions, or to 

 furnish him with those endowments of general learning and 

 polished manners which are requisite in the character of a 



