A SPEECH MADE TO THE LORD GENERAL MONCK, AT CLOTHWORKERS-HALL, IN LONDON, THE 13TH' of NAY then let me come too with my address, Great hero of three nations! whose blood From pious and from pow'rful grandsire kings, With whose blood royal you've enrich'd your veins, And by continued policy and pains Have equall'd all their glory; so that now And what great men still reach'd at, stoops to you. By fraud or force to greatness, or t' acquire And wilful breach of trusts, and oaths, nor place You are for making princes, and can find Of three long captiv'd kingdoms, who were thrown Who now they find did ruin and befool 'em. The settled orders of the church or state, To throw down rulers from their lawful seat, We fought not for religion, for 'tis known, Nor did we fight for laws, nor had we need ; Nor yet for liberties; for those are things freedom, And our full parliaments, that did get and breed 'em, you're wise; You have Briareus' hands, and Argus' eyes; some, Whe'r true or false, this age and those to come, Herein you've far out-done him; he did fight This age's glory, wonder of all after, If you would free the son, as he the daughter. THE LIFE OF CHARLES COTTON. BY MR. CHALMERS. THIS poet was the son of Charles Cotton, esq. of Beresford, in Staffordshire, a man of considerable fortune and high accomplishments. Lord Clarendon says, 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 delightfulness 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 upon his mind; which being improved by domestic afflictions, and those indulgencies to himself which naturally attend those afflictions, rendered his age less reverenced than his youth had been; and gave his best friends cause to have wished that he had not lived so long.." His son, who inherited many of these characteristics, was born on the 28th of April, 1630, and educated at the university of Cambridge, where he had for his tutor Mr. Ralph Rawson, whom he celebrates in the translation of an ode of Johannes Secundus. At the university he is said to have studied the Greek and Roman classics with distinguished success, and to have become a perfect master of the French and Italian languages. It does not appear, however, that he took any degree, or studied with a view to any learned profession; but after his residence at Cambridge, travelled into France and other parts of the continent. On his return, he resided during the greater part of his life at the family seat at Beresford. In 1656, when he was in his twenty-sixth year, he married Isabella, daughter of sir Thomas Hutchinson, knight, of Owthorp, in the county of Nottingham, a distant relation, and took her home to his father's house, as he had no other establishment. On his father's death, in 1658, he succeeded to the family estate, encumbered by those imprudencies noticed by lord Clarendon, from which it does not appear that he was ever able to relieve it. Who was the son of sir George Cotton, of Hampshire, and married the only child of sir John Stanhope, of Elvaston, by his first wife, Olive, heiress of Edward Beresford, esq. of Beresford. — Topographer, vol. III. Suppl. 25. C. 2 Continuation of the Life of Lord Clarendon. The other particulars of Cotton's life are taken from the Biog. Brit, and from sir John Hawkins' account of him prefixed to the Second Part of the Complete Angler. C |