Note 26 — Chapter II · A Conference at Supper between the Angler, the Painter, and the Host.

That this friendship, so happily begun between the two poets, was a lasting one we have undoubted evidence in Mr. Cotton’s Elegy ‘To the Memory of my worthy Friend Coll. Richard Lovelace,’ appended to a posthumous edition of Lovelace’s Lucasta, printed in 1659, the year after his death. In this collection of poems is one addressed by Lovelace ‘To the noblest of our Youth, and best of Friends, Charles Cotton, Esquire, being at Beresford, at his house in Staffordshire;’ in which is the following testimony of gratitude for Mr. Cotton’s having contributed to his necessities, when he was in prison.

‘What fate was mine, when in mine obscure cave,

‘Shut up almost close prisoner in a grave,

‘Your beams could reach me through the vault of night,

‘And canton the dark dungeon with light.’—Ed.