ppointments of increasing importance until he became chief
secretary to the Bengal government (1891-1896), acting home secretary to
the government of India (1896), and chief commissioner of Assam
(1896-1902). He retired in 1902, and soon became known as the leading
English champion of the Indian nationalists. In 1906 he entered
parliament as Liberal member for East Nottingham. He was the author of
_New India_ (1885; revised 1904-1907).

His brother, JAMES SUTHERLAND COTTON (1847- ), was born in India on
the 17th of July 1847, and was educated at Magdalen College school and
Trinity College, Oxford. For many years he was editor of the _Academy_;
he published various works on Indian subjects, and was the English
editor of the revised edition of the _Imperial Gazetteer of India_
(1908).

COTTON, CHARLES (1630-1687), English poet, the translator of Montaigne,
was born at Beresford in Staffordshire on the 28th of April 1630. His
father, Charles Cotton, was a man of marked ability, and counted among
his friends Ben Jonson, John Selden, Sir Henry Wotton and Izaak Walton.
The son was apparently not sent to the university, but he had as tutor
Ralph Rawson, one of the fellows ejected from Brasenose College, Oxford,
in 1648. Cotton travelled in France and perhaps in Italy, and at the age
of twenty-eight he succeeded to an estate greatly encumbered by lawsuits
during his father's lifetime. The rest of his life was spent chiefly in
country pursuits, but from his _Voyage to Ireland in Burlesque_ (1670)
we know that he held a captain's commission and was ordered to that
country. His friendship with Izaak Walton began about 1655, and the fact
of this intimacy seems a sufficient answer to the charges sometimes
brought against Cotton's character, based chiefly on his coarse
burlesques of Virgil and Lucian. Walton's initials made into a cipher
with his own were placed over the door of his fishing cottage on the
Dove; and to the _Compleat Angler_ he added "Instructions how to angle
for a trout or grayling in a clear stream." He married in 1656 his
cousin Isabella, who was a sister of Colonel Hutchinson. It was for his
wife's sister, Miss Stanhope Hutchinson, that he undertook the
translation of Corneille's _Horace_ (1671). His wife died in 1670 and
five years later he married the dowager countess of Ardglass; she had a
jointure of L1500 a year, but it was secured from his extravagance, and
at his death in 1687 he was insolvent. He