Cottle

Cottle, JOSEPH, bookseller and author, born in 1770, was well read in English literature when he started business in Bristol in 1791. He took kindly to Coleridge and Southey, to whom he was introduced by Robert Lovell, and offered them each 30 guineas for their poems; and in addition 50 guineas for Southey's Joan of Arc, with 1½ guineas to Coleridge for every additional 100 lines of poetry he might write. The poems thus arranged for appeared in 1796. Cottle also became responsible in a business, and partly in a pecuniary, sense for Coleridge's Watchman; and an introduction to Wordsworth led to his publication of the afterwards famous Lyrical Ballads (1798). Cottle was intrusted with the delicate duty of handing over De Quincey's generous donation of £300 to Coleridge, to whom he also addressed some serious expostulations as to his indulgence in opium, which drew replies from the poet. Cottle's injudicious and unmerciful exposure of Coleridge in his interesting but sometimes inaccurate Early Recollections (1837) has been condemned. He wrote several volumes of verse; the fourth edition of his Malvern Hills (1829) contains several prose essays. He retired from business in 1799, and died 7th June 1853.—His elder brother, AMOS SIMON COTTLE (1768-1800), educated at Bristol and Cambridge, wrote various works, including Icelandic Poetry (1797), which contains a poetical address to him from Southey.