I pity, from my soul, unhappy men,
Compelled by want to prostitute their pen;
Who must, like lawyers, either starve or plead,
And follow, right or wrong, where guineas lead!
But you, Pompilian, wealthy, pampered heirs,
Who to your country owe your swords and cares,
Let no vain hope your easy mind seduce,
For rich ill poets are without excuse;
'Tis very dangerous tampering with the Muse,
The profit's small, and you have much to lose;
For though true wit adorns your birth or place,
Degenerate lines degrade the attainted race.
No poet any passion can excite,
But what they feel transport them when they write.
Have you been led through the Cumaean cave,
And heard the impatient maid divinely rave?
I hear her now; I see her rolling eyes;
And panting, 'Lo! the God, the God,' she cries:
With words not hers, and more than human sound,
She makes the obedient ghosts peep trembling through the ground.
But, though we must obey when Heaven commands,
And man in vain the sacred call withstands,
Beware what spirit rages in your breast;
For ten inspired, ten thousand are possess'd:
Thus make the proper use of each extreme,
And write with fury, but correct with phlegm.
As when the cheerful hours too freely pass,
And sparkling wine smiles in the tempting glass,
Your pulse advises, and begins to beat
Through every swelling vein a loud retreat:
So when a Muse propitiously invites,
Improve her favours, and indulge her flights;
But when you find that vigorous heat abate,
Leave off, and for another summons wait.
Before the radiant sun, a glimmering lamp,
Adulterate measures to the sterling stamp,
Appear not meaner than mere human lines,
Compared with those whose inspiration shines:
These, nervous, bold; those, languid and remiss;
There cold salutes; but here a lover's kiss.
Thus have I seen a rapid headlong tide,
With foaming waves the passive Saone divide;
Whose lazy waters without motion lay,
While he, with eager force, urged his impetuous way.
CHARLES COTTON.
Hearty, careless 'Charley Cotton' was born in 1630. His father, Sir George Cotton, was improvident and intemperate in his latter days, and left the poet an encumbered estate situated at Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, near the river Dove. This place will recall the words quoted by O'Connell in Parliament in reference to the present Lord Derby:—
'Down thy fair banks, romantic Ashbourne, glides
The Derby dilly, with its six insides.'
Charles studied at Cambridge; and after travelling abroad, married the daughter of Sir Thomas Owthorp in Nottinghamshire, who does not appear to have lived long. His extravagance keeping him poor, he was compelled to eke out his means by translating works from the French and Italian, including those of a spirit somewhat kindred to his own—Montaigne. At the age of forty, he obtained a captain's commission in the army, and went to Ireland. There he met with his second wife, Mary, Countess Dowager of Ardglass, the widow of Lord Cornwall. She possessed a jointure of £1500 a-year, secured, however, after marriage, from her husband's imprudent and reckless management. He returned to his English estate, where he became passionately fond of fishing,—intimate with Izaak Walton, whom he invited in a poem, although now eighty-three years old, to visit him in the country—and where he built a fishing-house, with the initials of Izaak's name and his own united in ciphers over the door; the walls, too, being painted with fishing scenes, and the portraits of Cotton and Walton appearing upon the beaufet. Poor Charles had a less fortunate career than his friend, dying insolvent at Westminster in 1687.
Careless gaiety and reckless extravagance, blended with heart, sense, and sincerity, were the characteristics of Cotton as a man, and were, as is usually the case, transferred to his poetry. He squandered his pence and his powers with equal profusion. His travestie of the 'Aeneid' is pronounced by Christopher North (who must have read it, however,) a beastly book. Campbell says, with striking justice, of another of Cotton's productions, 'His imitations of Lucian betray the grossest misconception of humorous effect, when he attempts to burlesque that which is ludicrous already.' It is like trying to turn the 'Tale of a Tub' into ridicule. But Cotton's own vein, as exhibited in his 'Invitation to Walton,' his 'New Year,' and his 'Voyage to Ireland,' (which anticipates in some measure the style of Anstey in the 'New Bath Guide,') is very rich and varied, full of ease, picturesque spirit, and humour, and stamps him a genuine, if not a great poet.
INVITATION TO IZAAK WALTON.
1 Whilst in this cold and blustering clime,
Where bleak winds howl, and tempests roar,
We pass away the roughest time
Has been of many years before;
2 Whilst from the most tempestuous nooks
The dullest blasts our peace invade,
And by great rains our smallest brooks
Are almost navigable made;
3 Whilst all the ills are so improved
Of this dead quarter of the year,
That even you, so much beloved,
We would not now wish with us here: