78 RISEN BY PERSEVERANCE. 



and wealth, all became nothing in my eyes, and from that 

 moment (less than a month after my arrival in England) I 

 resolved never to bend before them.' 



Cobbett, in his native place, and following the employ- 

 ments of his ancestors, must inevitably have been a 'village 

 Hampden.' On looking at a little smock-frocked boy, in 

 nailed shoes and clean coarse shirt, such as he had been, 

 he very naturally remarks : ' If accident had not taken me 

 from a similar scene, how many villains and fools, who have 

 been well teased and tormented, would have slept in peace 

 by night, and fearlessly swaggered about by day ! ' Cobbett 

 -eceived so little school learning that, in his case, it may be 

 almost truly said 'reading and writing came by nature.' 

 From eight years of age he was engaged in such rural 

 occupations as picking hops and hautboys, weeding in 

 gardens, and driving away the birds, and following the 

 hounds, or getting upon horseback as often as he could, or 

 digging after rabbits' nests, rolling down the sand-hills, and 

 whipping the little efts that crept about in the heath. And 

 this is the education which, upon reflection, he preferred. 

 None of his own young children were ever sent from home 

 to school. Reading and writing came to them from imitation. 

 Throughout all Cobbett's writings (crotchets notwithstanding), 

 excellent hints are scattered upon this important subject, but 

 especially in his Advice to Young Afen. His controversy with 

 the educators as a sect, was merely one of sound. No man 

 could prize the advantages of education so highly as one who 

 owed all he knew to himself, and who had pursued knowledge 

 unremittingly, and under considerable difficulties. His first 

 start from home he has described himself in this memorable 

 passage : — 



