IZAAK WALTON'S COMPANION

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 90, 13 October 1923, Page 19

IZAAK WALTON'S COMPANION

i! The Poems of Charles Cotton—l63o--1587. Edited, with an introduction and notes, by John Beresford. London: Kichard Cobden-Sanderson.

Those who refresh themselves by reading " The Compleat Angler " will remember the pleasant talk—not all about angling—between" Viator " and " Piscator," remember also the peace and beauty of the country and the incidents, piscatorial and other, that were placed in such charming rural settings. "The Compleat Angler" is essentially an English work, and, moreover, affords a welcome temporary retreat for 20th century readers from the bustle and .progress of their times. Charles Cotton is known perhaps less as a. poet than the author of Part 11. of '-' The ;-C6mpleat Angler " —which, however, is a technical work, "- being directions how to angle for a trout or grayling in a clear stream." This Part 11., as .Mr. Beresford remarks in his' introduction to this work, is beautiful prose, but it is but an imitation of Walton's famous first and main part of the "Angler "; whereas Cotton's poems, were they better known, would be recognised as his.real contribution to English literature." Mr. Beresford thinks that even if Cotton benefited from his association with Walton, he has also suffered, because, although the lustre of Isaak Walton's name has cast a faint reflected glow upon that of Charles Cotton, it has also tended to obscure the true genius of his associate, which lay in poetry. It is shown by the editor that among the admirers of Cotton's poetry were Coleridge, Wordsworth, and Charles Lamb; but until now, in this present volume, there does not appear to have been a compleat edition of Cotton's poems. Many of them have been published in selections from Cotton's day to our' own. His " Virgil Travestie," the burlesque on Books I. and IV. of the "Aeneid." for instance, went through many editions. This is the work to which Pepys in his " Diary "-refers as "a pretty burlesque poem, extraordinarily good.' r a book ha found in a shop in St. Paul's Churchyard.

Cotton himself came of a very old English family descended from Sir Richard Cotton, Comptroller of the Household and Privy Councillor to Edward VI. The poet was- born in 1630, at Beresford Hall, on the, borders of Staffordshire and Derbyshire. He was the friend of the talented Richard Lovelace, who died in a garret, and who was greatly helped in his poetry by Cotton, who himself was pursued by what he calls " obstreperous creditors.' 1 Indeed, he used to take refuge from duns in a cave in the most romantic part of the Beresford Hall grounds, overlooking the river Dove. In one of his poems to Izaak Walton he describes the hiding place—

Bebved caves! from doe-star heats

And hotter persecution safe retreats

Cotton appears to: have taken no part in politics, but hie was no doubt an ardent Royalist, and he has something to say about the Protector (as much as jv'as prudent) in his , writings. He went to London sometimes, Cromwell ga.Ve him a warrant fc 0 travel"to France,"and I'he also made a journey, which he describes in a long and witty poem as '■' Ar.Voyr age to Ireland in" Burlesque," although the poem carries tha reader no further than the coast of Wales. But he loved home life at Beresford Hall better than travel, for in the opening to this " Voyage '' he writes:

Aud now,- farewell, Doye. where I've caught such. Tirave dishes.. ■. ' ' , . Of overgrown, golden, and silver seal'd flshea; Itiy trout -and .thy .grayling.may now-feed securely, I've left none behind me can take 'em co surely; . . .. -. .. i'eed on, then, and breed on, until the next Hut if''l return I, expect my arrear. .;

Cotton's times were not our times; If modern readers' of his verse find some of his expression and similes a' trifle coarse for their tastes, they should remember his environment arid set off against what offends them his pure Jove of Nature and sincere veneration for theGod of Nature and all His'works/ Cotton was no Puritan or gloom-generator. He appears to have thoroughly enjoyed the pleasures of the table and the society of good sportsmen. He was unquestionably a religious. man, realising in his morning quatrains:

The world is now a busy awara. All doing good, or doing harm: Buc let's take heed our acts bo true lor Heaven's eyes nee all we do.

Aone can that piercing sight" evade It penetrates tfie darkest shade And sin, though it could scape the eye Would be discovered by the cry. • Cotton's poems of nature will by manybe much preferred, to his sonnets, love lyrics and other works. The man is best seen a 3 he was, perhaps, in the poem entitled "The Retirement." I n that occurs the following self-revealine stanzes irreguliers" :— Howd h^'H^-'^M" 6 *" t hin ßß here; now beautiful tne fields appear! How cleanly do we feed and lie! Lord! What good hours do we keep' „;, -How quietly we sleep! . What peace! What unanimity! ilow innocent from the lewd fashion Lord? wSldtSTfe *L ,' a lone, OUVer"tiOn! "hat an over-happy one faliould I think myself to be, Might I in this desert plage. Which most men by th«r voice disgrace Live bufc undisturbed and free! "*""-=> Here in this despised recesb', Would I maugre 'Winter's' cold,' And the Summer's worst "excess Try to live out to sixty luil-years old. - -iiid all the while without an envious eve On any thriving under. Fortune* smile

Contented live, and then contented qis

Mr. Beresford has done a good service to English literature by jlis collection and arrangement of-Cotton's poems. "He shows in his notes what a formidable task that was, and the reader may well believe it, for all the grateful and graceful acknowledgments of the help received^ from many authorities, including Professor Sainfabury, Messrs. J. C oquire, John Drinkwater, J. Middleton Hurry, Edmund Blunden 1010 'Williams Geoffrey Fry, Edmund Gosse and H. J. Ellis. Mr. Cobden Sanderson, too, i g entitled to some crec.it for the admirable format in which the collected poems'appear.