LIFE OF THE AUTHOR xix 



to me that if he had a strong point it must be 

 cricket. A week later I read an extraordinarily 

 graphic account of a race — not the skimpy 

 summary to which one is accustomed, but a 

 detailed picture of the struggle from first to last. 

 You were made to see what each horse and 

 jockey were doing from the moment the flag fell 

 — this was in the days of the flag — till the winner 

 had been weighed in. * I wonder who wrote 

 that ? ' I asked a friend. ' Oh, that was Martin 

 Cobbett,' came the reply, and ever since I have 

 looked anxiously for this pen-and-ink realisations 

 of famous events." 



His great endurance and resolute industry 

 (''The Cobbetts," he remarked, **are stayers") 

 also formed invaluable qualifications for one of 

 the most continuously arduous callings on the 

 face of the earth. In his work he drew on his 

 staying powers to almost any extent, without 

 grudge or stint. At the same time he took the 

 extra trouble — for a trouble and nuisance it very 

 often is — to do everything possible in his scanty 

 leisure to keep healthy and fit. Regarded as 

 mere mechanical writing, leaving out his obliga- 

 tion to watch, remember, and form his own 

 opinion of all he discoursed on, the amount of 

 labour he undertook and carried through, always 

 against time, was excessively heavy. Those who 

 read his writings of the country, or who heard 

 him talk about it — the half of what he knew never 



