HISTORY OF STAFFORDSHIRE. [241 



the administration. In 1694 Mr. Beresford Cotton published the 

 " Memoirs of the Sieur de Pontis," translated by his father from 

 the French. 



From the foregoing narrative of the principal events of Mr. 

 Cotton's life, and of his literary productions, it is sufficiently evi- 

 dent that his character was inconsistent. At one time devoted to the 

 innocent pleasures of retirement, and at another emulous of distinc- 

 tion among the wits and humourists of the most immoral age upon 

 record in English history. With his natural gaiety, and that suavity 

 of manners which he acquired during his tour on the Continent, 

 and his occasional visits to London, Mr. Cotton became what was 

 then termed a man of wit arid pleasure ; he was consequently pro- 

 fuse in his expenditure, prodigal of his time, and careless of his 

 morals. Morality was in that age considered by the fashionable 

 part of the community as a relic of puritanism unworthy of an ac- 

 complished gentleman and are fined scholar; consequently, dissipa- 

 tion became the theme of panegyric with poets and buffoons : and 

 all the men of spirit of the day laughed at religion. That poor 

 Mr. Cotton sailed with the stream is but too clearly illustrated by 

 his life, his writings, and his death. In an epistle to one of his 

 poetical friends, he thus characterises himself: 



He always wants money, which makes him want ease ; 



He's always besieg'd, though himself of the Peace, 



By an army of duns, who batter with scandals, 



And are foernen more fierce than the Goths or the Vandals. 



Such is the inconsistency of the human character, that Mr. Cot- 

 ton's best productions were not published till after his decease. 

 In the volume of his poems published in 1689, there are indeed 

 some pieces containing a heterogeneous mixture of broad humour 

 with delicacy of sentiment, and some of them are moral and de- 

 votional. These smaller poems, by far the best productions of his 

 mind, had never been re-published till they were admitted into the 

 late edition of the English Poets, probably to fill up the volumes 

 for the benefit of the booksellers. But his ludicrous composi- 

 tions, particularly the " Virgil Travestie," passed through fifteen 

 editions from the year 1678, in which it was first published, to the 

 year 1771 ; a strong proof of the depravity of those ages, the mo- 

 ral taint of which is from time to time revived by the disgusting 

 ribaldry published by a description of men well described by one 

 of our reviewers by the characteristic epithet of " dirty publishers." 



Mr. Cotton's burlesque poems are founded upon the model of 



