COTTON, CHARLES, a celebrated writer of burlesque verses in the reigns of Charles II. and James II. His most noted piece is a travesty of the first and fourth books of the Aeneid, entitled Scarronides, which is generally regarded as excelling Scarron's famous production. He also executed a burlesque translation of several of Lucian's dialogues under the title of The Scoffer Scoff'd, and wrote a more serious poem entitled The Wonders of the Peak. The exact period of Cotton's birth and death is nowhere recorded, but it is probable that he died about the time of the Revolution. He seems to have been in opulent circumstances, although on account of inserting a humorous description of his grandmother's ruff in the travesty of Virgil, he lost an estate worth £400 a-year which the old lady had previously designed to bequeath to him.