99 expression before, preparing a fifth edition of his pastoral, Walton had invited him to contribute those "Instructions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream,' which Cotton, he himself tells us, wrote in about ten days, and sent back to his friend. In the same year in which the joint Compleat Angler appeared, Cotton had finished building the little fishing-house which still stands among its trees, in a bend of the Dove, sacred to anglers and ancient friendship. Mr. New's illustrations make unnecessary any more modern description than Cotton's own (Part II., Chap. III.) and indeed the place is to this day so pleasant that one may still say of it in Walton's words that "the pleasantness of the river, mountains and meadows about it, cannot be described; unless Sir Philip Sidney, or Mr. Cotton's father were alive again to do it." Cotton survived his old friend but four years, dying of a fever on some date uncertain during 1687, but said to be February 13. He is entirely remembered to-day by his association with Walton, and his translation of Montaigne, which have carried down to us the tradition of his handsome person and courtly manners, but which have hardly won due recognition for his poetry. Without declaring it, with Sir Aston Cock"the nihil ultra of the English tongue," we may still ayne, feel that it has charms and excellencies, real if modest, which make forgetfulness of it unjust, and which justify Cotton's long-neglected claim to a recognised place among English poets, a claim which a new edition of his poems might establish; though it is to be feared, that he would shine best in a judicious selection. His bane was fluency, and not seldom we have to plod through deserts of mediocre verse before we reach any poetry worth while. But the poetry is there, and when with Cotton the moment of literary projection did come, the product had a charming inevitability, and is marked by a rare excellence of simplicity, to which Coleridge has paid a tribute in the Biographia Literaria. The following verses from the "Contentation," one of the several poems "directed" to Walton, may be taken as an example : 'Tis contentation that alone Can make us happy here below, A very little satisfies An honest and a grateful heart; That man is happy in his share, And honest labour makes his bed. Who free from debt, and clear from crimes, Who from the busy world retires Who with his angle and his books This man is happier far than he, To crooked and forbidden ways. The world is full of beaten roads, Untrodden paths are then the best, It is content alone that makes Nor was Cotton's muse always so mild, as this manly rebuke of Waller, censure so well-deserved, will show : To Poet E. W., occasioned for his writing a Panegyric on Oliver Cromwell. From whence, vile Poet, didst thou glean the wit, Where couldst thou paper find was not too white, A flatterer of thine own slavery? At once that made thy prince and country bleed? Where was thy reason then, when thou began Which shall be when or wheresoever read, |