(London: printed for Thos. Basset, 1689).

RARE FIRST EDITION ISSUED IN 1689. Including, on page 14, a poem dedicated to  my dear and most worthy friend, Isaac Walton. Cotton and Walton co-authored what is perhaps the most famous fishing book of all time, entitled THE COMPLEAT ANGLER. Cotton s reputation as a burlesque writer may account for the neglect his poems were met with in the 18th and 19th centuries, but their excellence was not, however, overlooked by good critics. Coleridge praises the purity and unaffectedness of his style in the  Biographia Literaria , and Wordsworth gave a copious quotation from the  Ode to Winter . The  Retirement is printed by Walton in the second part of the Compleat Angler.
Over two hundred poems, sonnets, odes and epitaphs are printed here, including  On Tobacco , a damning poem to the pernicious weed, a debauch of such a stinking kind. Item #25510

First edition. 8vo, bound in full contemporary calf. 729, advertisement pp. A desirable copy in this rare period binding.