WILLIAM COBBETT. 75 



most pleasant of philosophical writers, William Cobbett was the 

 most egotistical of men. He referred every thing to himself ; and no 

 wonder, he had been the architect of his own fortunes, and he had 

 felt his own powers ; he had overcome obstacles, which, in the eyes 

 of the generality of mankind, are insuperable; and all this by 

 reliance upon himself. 



As a politician and a statist, he was not a superior man. His 

 views were contracted : the causes of many of his opinions were 

 personal, either to himself or to others; and hence his political 

 harangues and his political writings are more declamatory than 

 sound. He was led away from the strict Vine of argumentation, by 

 trains of thought generated by his own private experience, unsup- 

 ported by application to generals ; and though many of his views 

 were rational, he marred their effect by a want of oneness and 

 simplicity. Still, with their manifold imperfections, his political 

 views were deserving attention, as coming from a man of vigorous 

 and observant mind, and who made it his study to test popular 

 opinion. They differed widely from our own in very many points; 

 and we have frequently expressed our disapprobation of them ; but 

 this does not blind us to the fact that they were sincere, and the 

 unavoidable result of his position. To Mr. Hunt, with whose name 

 he was at one time coupled, he was as superior as light is to dark- 

 ness ; and when party prejudice has subsided, the Author, in many of 

 his works, will be a favourite, although the living man was detested. 



One of the most beautiful and most characteristic traits of 

 William Cobbett, was his love of Nature. Here the amiabilities of 

 his disposition had room to luxuriate ; and surely, if the enjoyment 

 springing from this source be a proof of a finely organised mind, of a 

 mind attuned to the influence of the gentler sensibilities, then was 

 Cobbett a man filled with all the elements of social and private hap- 

 piness. He delighted, even as a child, in the spring shower, the 

 summer sunlight, the autumnal repose, and in the chill breath of 

 winter. To him, the lake, the mountain, and the field, the rural 

 road, the quiet grassy mound, and the *' silver streamlet" had a 

 voice of welcome. Dearly did he love to feel their soothing in- 

 fluences; and few men have more pleasingly described them. It is 

 related by Coleridge, that, when once talking with John Thelwall, 

 seated in a beautiful recess, in the Quantocks, he said, " Citizen 

 MM. No. 7. K 



