WILLIAM COBBETT. 79 



• At eleven years of age, my employment was clipping off 

 box-edgings and weeding beds of flowers in the garden of the 

 lUshop of Winchester, at the Castle of Farnham, my native 

 town. I had alwavs been fond of beautiful gardens, and a 

 gardener, who had just come from the King's Gardens at Kew, 

 gave such a description of them as made me instantly resolve 

 to work in these gardens. The next morning, without saying 

 a word to any one, off I set, with no clothes except those 

 upon my back, and with thirteen halfpence in my pocket. 

 I found that I must go to Richmond, and I accordingly 

 went on from place to place, inquiring my way thither. 

 A long day (it was in June) brought me to Richmond 

 in the afternoon. Two pennyworth of bread and cheese 

 and a pennyworth of small beer which I had on the 

 road, and one halfpenny which I had lost somehow or 

 other, left threepence in my pocket. With this for my whole 

 fortune, I was trudging through Richmond in my blue smock- 

 frock and my red garters tied under my knees, when, staring 

 about me, my eye fell upon a little book in a bookseller's 

 window, on the outside of which was written. Tale of a Tub, 

 price 3d. The title was so odd that my curiosity was excited. I 

 had the threepence, but then I could have no supper. In I went 

 and got the little book, which I was so impatient to read that 

 I got over into a field at the upper corner of the Kew Garden, 

 where there stood a hay-stack. On the shady side of this I 

 sat down to read. The book was so different from anything 

 that I had read before ; it was something so new to my mind 

 that, though I could not at all understand some of it, it 

 delighted me beyond description, and it produced what I have 

 always considered a sort of birth of intellect. I read on till 

 it was dark, without any thought about supper or bed. When 



