Poems On several Occasions. Written By Charles Cotton, Esq;
London: 1689: Printed for Tho. Basset, at the George in Fleet-street; Will. Hinsman and Tho. Fox, in Westminster-Hall, 1689. First edition.
Printed: 1689 1630-1687 Octavo, 72 x 45 inches First edition A4, B-Z8, Aa-Zz8 Bound in full contemporary calf ruled in blind a good unsophisticated copy Another oddly isolated and under-valued poet is Charles Cotton, whose posthumous volume of Poems on Several Occasions (1689) appears to have aroused little contemporary interest, and who was probably little known by the time of Addison and Pope, except for his burlesque poems and The Wonders of the Peak Yet there is more and better poetry in the 1689 volume than is to be found in any other minor poet of the Restoration: if this was not recognized at the time it must have been because Cotton's natural vein was out of fashion There was still a public for the natural that was at the same time low; but by 1689 the polite reader expected a good deal more sophistication and artificiality than Cotton usually gave him He had to wait until the beginning of the nineteenth century for genuine recognition; and then Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Lamb testified freely to the pleasure his poetry gave them" (Sutherland)
. Item #118FPrice: $2,000.00