LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. 231 



These are the whole of Mr Cotton's writings, published 

 in his lifetime. Those that came abroad after his decease, 

 were Poems on several Occasions, 8vo. 1689, a bookseller's 

 publication, tumbled into the world without preface, apology, 

 or even correction, that will be spoken of hereafter; and a 

 translation from the French of the Memoirs of the Sieur de 

 Pontis, published in 1694, by his son, Mr Beresford Cotton, 

 and by him dedicated to the then Duke of Ormond, as 

 having been undertaken, and completed, at the request ef 

 the old duke, his grace's grandfather. 



It is too much to be feared, that the difficulties he 

 laboured under, and, in short, the straitness of his circum- 

 stances, were the reasons that induced Mr Cotton to employ 

 himself in writing; and, in that, so much more in transla- 

 tion than original composition. For, first, by the way, they 

 are greatly mistaken, who think that the business of writing 

 for booksellers is a new occupation ; it is known, that 

 Greene, Peacham, and Howel, for a great part of their lives 

 subsisted almost wholly by it ; though perhaps Mr Cotton 

 is the first instance of a gentleman by descent, and the 

 inheritor of a fair estate, being reduced by a sad necessity 

 to write for subsistence. But, secondly, whether through 

 misfortune, or want of economy, or both, it may be collected 

 from numberless passages in his writings, that Mr Cotton's 

 circumstances were narrow ; his estates encumbered with 

 mortgages ; and his income less than sufficient for its 

 maintenance in the part and character of a gentleman : why, 

 else, those querulous exclamations against the clamour of 

 creditors, the high rate of interest, and the extortion of 

 usurers, that so frequently occur in his poems ? From 

 which several particulars, it seems a natural, and, at the 

 same time, a melancholy inference, that he was not to 

 say an author a translator, probably, for hire ;. but, 

 certainly, by profession. 



It is, of all employments, one of the most painful, to 

 enumerate the misfortunes and sufferings of worthy and 

 deserving men ; and, most so, of such as have been dis- 

 tinguished for their natural or acquired endowments : but 

 truth, and the laws of biographical history, oblige all that 

 undertake that kind of writing, to relate as well the adverse, 

 as the prosperous events in the lives of those whom they 

 mean to celebrate ; else, we would gladly omit to say, that 

 Mr Cotton was, during the whole of his life, involved in 

 difficulties. Lord Clarendon says of his father, that " He 



