238] A TOPOGRAPHICAL 



During several years Mr. Cotton confined his literary efforts to 

 translations from the French, or imitations of celebrated authors 

 who wrote in that language, and in this respect he was allowed to 

 excel his contemporaries. His translation of ' The History of the 

 Life of the Duke d'Espernon," was printed in folio and published 

 in the year 1670, but notwithstanding the partiality of Charles II. 

 and his polite and witty courtiers to every French production of 

 genius, Mr. Cotton obtained but little profit from this work. 



His agreeable manners and literary attainments had however 

 increased the number of his friends, one of whom presented him 

 with a Captain's commission in a regiment of infantry. He went 

 over to Ireland with his regiment in 1670, and some adventures 

 which he met with during his march, and while on his voyage, 

 gave rise to his first humourous poem, which he entitled "A Voyage 

 to Ireland." This ludicrous production consists of three cantos 

 written in the anapestic measure, or what the Monthly Reviewers 

 have not inaptly termed "wheelbarrow verse." In this poem he 

 characterizes the Mayor of Chester as a superficial majn, easily 

 caught by shew. This head of an ancient Corporation was par- 

 ticularly struck, on coming out of Church, with the richness of 

 Captain Cotton's regimentals, and especially with a gold belt 

 which encircled the loins of the hero. In consequence of the lustre 

 of the Captain's habiliments, the admiring Mayor invited him to 

 supper, and regaled him sumptuously. The military poet gives a 

 brief account of part of their conversation in the following lines : 



I answer'd, My country was fam'd Staffordshire, 

 That in deeds, bills, and bonds, I was ever writ squire j 

 That of lands I had both sorts, some good and some evil, 

 But that a great part on't was pawn'd to the Devil. 



As his appointment to a captainship was conferred in a time of 

 profound peace, when the nations of Europe, after being harassed 

 by ruinous wars, wished for a continuance of repose, there was no 

 reasonable prospect of preferment, emolument, or fame. To a gen- 

 tleman of Mr. Cotton's liberality, his pay was inadequate to his ex- 

 penditure, he therefore resigned his commission, and returned to the 

 calm retirement of Beresford-hall, and his pleasant recreations of 

 alternate composition and angling. His residence on the banks of 

 a beautiful river which abounded with fish, was peculiarly adapted 

 to the solitary amusement of angling, and as an author can always 

 render his most trivial recreations interesting to others by the 

 graces of fine writing, Mr. Cotton gratified the admirers of the 



