LIFE OF COTTON. 253 



indeed, little less than this is to be inferred from the testimony of the 

 noble Marquis to whom it is dedicated : who concludes a letter of his 

 to Mr. Cotton with this] elegant encomium, " Pray believe, that he 

 who can translate such an author, without doing him wrong, must 

 not only make me glad, but proud of being his very humble servant, 

 HALIFAX." 



These are the whole of Mr. Cotton's writings, published in his life- 

 time. Those that came abroad after his decease, were, Poems on se- 

 veral 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 of 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 circumstances, were the reasons 

 ih.u induced Mr. Cotton to employ himself in writing ; and, in that, 

 so much more in translation 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 the want of economy, or both, it may be col- 

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

 circumstances were narrow; his estates incumbered with mortgages; 

 and his income less than sufficient for its maintenance in the part, 

 and character of a gentleman : why, else, those querulous exclama- 

 tions against the clamour of creditors, the high rate of interest, and 

 the extortions 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 distinguished for either their natural or ac- 

 quired endowments : but truth, and the laws of biographical history, 

 oblige all that undertake that kind of writing, to relate as well the ad- 

 verse, 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 was engaged in law-suits, and had wasted 

 his fortune :" and it cannot be supposed but that his son inherited, in 

 some degree, the vexation and expense of uncertain litigation, toge- 

 ther with the paternal estate ; and might, finally, be divested of great 

 part of it: farther we may suppose, that the easiness of his nature, 

 and a disposition to oblige others, amounting even to imbecility, laid 

 him open to the arts of designing men, and gave occasion to those 

 complaints of ingratitude and neglect which we meet with in his 

 eclogues, odes, and other of his writings. 



