248 LIFE OF COTTON. 



and so qualified in his person and education, that for many yesrs 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 super-structure of learn- 

 ing 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 argument; 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 gentlemen ; such a 

 pleasantness and gaiety of humour, such a sweetness and gentleness 

 of nature, and such a civility and ddightfulness 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 

 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 those suits, made some impression on his 

 mind; which, being improved by domestic afflictions, and those in- 

 dulgences to himself which naturally attend those afflictions, rendered 

 hi* age less reverenced than his youth had been, and gave his best 

 friends cause to have wished that 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 an 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 re- 

 quisite in the character of a gentleman, we know not : it is, however, 

 certain, that in the university he improved his knowledge of the Greek 

 and Roman classics, and became a perfect master of the French and 

 Italian language*. 



But whatever were the views of his father in placing him at Cam- 

 bridge, we find not that he betook himself, in earnest, to the pursuit 

 of any lucrative profession : it is true, that in a poem of his writing, 

 be hints that he had a smattering of the Law, which he had gotten 



More by practice than reading: 



By sitting o' ill' bench i while others were pleading. 



But it is rather probable, that, returning from the university to his 

 father's, he addicted himself to the lighter kinds of study, and the im- 

 provement of a talent in poetry, of which he found himself possessed; 

 and also that he might travel abroad ; for, in one of his poems, * he 



(1) Probably, in his more advanced years, at session*, as a justice of the 

 peace in his county. 

 <*) The Wond*r$ of the Peak. 



