WILLIAM COBBETT.* Li these elegant but rather expensive volumes, Mr.
Smith has given us a very readable life of a very remarkable man. Fas- tidious critics might call it a merely tolerable life of a rather in- tolerable man ; but as biographies go, we are inclined to speak better of it. Cobbett himself, with all his faults, is a far more
promising subject than the host of amiable mediocrities for whom widows, sons, and nephews raise ponderous monuments less lasting than brass; and although Mr. Smith is palpably a victim to lues Bosivelliana, he can on occasion show that he is by no means high-gravel blind to what he very properly calls the "headstrong ineptitude" of his hero. Thick-and-thin admirers of the latter might perhaps assert that Mr. Smith Boswellises no
more than a biographer of Cobbett ought to Boswellise, just as thick-and-thin admirers of Wilkes declared that he squinted no more than a gentleman ought to squint. But thick-and-thin admirers of Cobbett are becoming as rare, or rarer, than Waterloo men ; and the famous Register and its editor, which less than half a century ago were as familiar in the mouths of Englishmen as household words, have themselves become the "shadow of a name." We venture to think that Mr. Smith has not taken sufficient heed of this fact. A large portion of his work has lost all interest for the present generation of readers, and all that he has told us in two volumes might have been told much better in one. But with half- a-dozen exceptions, which do but prove the rule, this criticism will apply to every biography in the world ; and in spite of Plutarch and Tacitus, in spite, too, we may add, of Southey's Nelson and Mr. Carlyle's Life of Sterling, the time seems further 'off than ever when it shall be taken as an axiom in literature that brevity, in due proportion, is as much the soul of biography as it is admitted to be of wit. Mr. Smith errs, therefore, with the majority, and we will say no more about it,—
" Defendit numerns, junctaeque nmbone phalanges."
We cannot, however, help thinking that quite as just and quite as vivid a notion of Cobbett can be gained from Lord Dalling's brilliant sketch of the "Contentious Man" as can be gained from this biography. There are several points, indeed, where
the essayist differs from the biographer on matters of fact,—and here we are inclined to think that more credence should be given to the latter. Lord Dalling, for instance, dwells with some vivacity upon the fact that Cobbett was a butcher, as well as a bankrupt, but we can find no vestige of the butcher's shop in Mr. Smith. Again, and this story has been repeated very recently, Lord Dalling says that M. de Talleyrand was one of Cobbett's pupils during his first residence in America; but this Mr. Smith shows to be a mistake, and as the refutation comes from Cobbett's own pen, and is written in his raciest style, we may he allowed, perhaps, to quote it. We may say, parenthetically, that in spite of our disparaging remarks on its length, Mr. Smith's book is completely saved from being dull by the numerous extracts which it gives us from one of the liveliest writers who ever wielded a pen. Cobbett's notion that Talley- -rand was a spy was unfounded, and the latter's account of this interview would be amusing enough, but as recorded by Cobbett it explodes very clearly the mistake which Lord Dalling makes :— "At last," he says, "this modern Judas and I got seated by the same fire-side. I expected that he wanted to expostulate with me on the severe treatment he had met with at my hands. I had called him an apostate, a hypocrite, and every other name of which he was deserving ; I therefore leave the reader to imagine my astonishment, when I heard him begin with complimenting me on my wit and learning. Having carried this species of flattery as far as he judged it safe, he asked me, with a vast deal of apparent seriousness, whether I had received my education at Oxford or at Cambridge. Hitherto I • William Cobbeti ; a Biography. By Edward Smith. London: Sampson Low and Co. 1878. had kept my countenance pretty well, but this abominable stretch of hypocrisy, and the placid mien and silver accent with which it was pronounced, would have forced a laugh from a Quaker in the midst of meeting. I do not recollect what reply I made him, but this I recollect well,—I gave him to understand that I was no trout, and consequently was not to be caught by tickling. This informa- tion led him to something more solid. He began to talk about business. I taught English ; and as luck would have it, this was the very commodity that Bishop Perigord wanted. He knew the English language as well as I did, but be wanted to have dealings with me in some way or other. I did not care to take him as a scholar. I told him that being engaged in a translation for the press, I could not possibly quit home. This difficulty the lame fiend hopped over in a moment. Ile would gladly come to my house. I did not want a French spy to take a survey either of my desk or my house. My price for teaching was six dollars a month ; he offered me twenty, but I refused; and before I left him, I gave him clearly to understand that I was not to be purchased."
We have neither space nor inclination to dwell on the events of Cobbett's life. His political writings made an immense noise in their day, but they have long ago lost their resonance. They are models, indeed, of controversial invective, but are deplorably deficient in that width of view and depth of principle which can alone give lasting value to such compositions. The invectives of a "political saint " like Demosthenes, even after the lapse of more than two thousand years, are fraught with interest and instruction. But Cobbett was anything rather than a " poli- tical saint." He deserves the title as little as Wilkes or Swift did. He was stiff in his opinions, and could defend them with mar- vellous skill. He was oftener in the right than the wrong; and he did the Fourth Estate much service. But his judgment was so frequently blinded by prejudice and passion, that although he assumed with persistent vehemence the name of "patriot," it is doubtful whether he deserved Abetter than the editor of the North Briton, or than the author of the Drapier's Letters. At the same time, his claims to be called an English classic are as indisput- able as those of the great Dean himself; and it is upon those claims, and upon that curiously-blended temperament which secured Cobbett happiness, while it denied him peace, that we have now to make a few remarks.
Gifted as Cobbett was with first-rate abilities, an iron con- stitution, and a practically unlimited capacity for work, and supplemented as these advantages were by his exceptional temperance and simple tastes, it is curious to think that he mismanaged his pecuniary affairs as stupidly as any prodigal. And this seems all the more curious, when we reflect that his years of temptation were marked by the strictest economy. It is true that the crash, when it came, was caused by the grievous incapacity of his partner. But although Cobbett's farm at Bottley, of which there is a charming description in this book, by Miss Mitford, can hardly fail to suggest a comparison with Abbotsford, Cobbett had not Scott's excuses. He was essentially a working partner, yet we hear, with surprise, that for six years he did not take the trouble to look at his balance. That he had some misgivings about the stability of his ventures, may be inferred from the warning which he gave to his partner to abstain from all allusions to business topics when Mrs. Cobbett was in the room. But he never seems to have seriously thought about the matter, and when the bad news reached him in Newgate, it failed to break the idyllic calm and really noble industry of his prison life. A still greater proof of the gay indifference, for we cannot call it magnanimity, with which Cobbett faced his money troubles, is to be found in a few lines written in his fifty-ninth year :—
" In January, 1821, my family, after having for years been scattered about like a covey of partridges that had been sprung, and shot at, got once more together, in a hired lodging at Brompton ; and our delight and our mutual caresses' and our tears of joy, experi- enced no abatement at our actually finding ourselves with only three shillings in the whole world ; and at my having to borrow from a friend the money to pay for the paper and print off the next Satur- day's Register."
Making due allowance for the fact that Cobbett was not over- sensitive where money was concerned, it is impossible to refuse our admiration to such gallant Stoicism as this. And to what did Cobbett owe this priceless quality ? To two things mainly, —to his unbroken industry and unbroken health. For Cobbett was a man after Professor Huxley's own heart, and when his household gods lay shattered round him, it never occurred to him to look for consolation to the source where the Vicar of Wakefield looked for it. Health and industry were the main- springs of Cobbett's happiness—and that his life, in spite of its many rubs, was a happy one, no reader of his .Bural Bides can doubt ;—he has left us in these Bides the secret by which he secured the enjoyment of both; and in days when so much speculation is rife about the effects of diet, it may not be un- interesting to glance at this secret. We can fancy the cynical smile with which the writer of the following passage would have greeted Mr. Mortimer Collins's praise of "lobster and Devon- shire cream," and Prince Bismarck's approval of "sauerkraut boiled in champagne :"—
" I hardly ever eat more than twice a day, when at home, never ; tuid I never, if I can well avoid it, eat any meat later than about one or two o'clock in the day. I drink a little tea or milk-and-water at the usual tea-time (about 7 o'clock) ; I go to bed at eight, if I can ; I write or read from about four to about eight, and then, hungry as a hunter, I go to breakfast, eating as small a parcel of cold meat and bread as I can prevail on my teeth to be satisfied with. I do just the same at dinner-time. I very rarely taste garden-stuff of any sort. If any man can show me that he has done, or can do, more work, bodily and mentally united ; I say nothing about good health, for of that the public oan know nothing ; but I refer to the work ; the public know, they see what I can do, and what I actually have done, and what I do ; and when any man has shown the public that he has done, or can do, more, then I will advise my readers to attend to him .on the subject of diet, and not to me. As to drink, the less the better; and mine is milk-and-water, or not sour small-beer. I like the milk- and-water best, but I do not like much water ; and if I drink much milk, it loads and stupifies and makes me fat."
We have but scant space left wherein to speak of Cobbett's claims to be ranked among the English Classics. It is enough to say, perhaps, that no competent critic has ever gainsaid them. His nervous, racy, and ever lucid style would be a suffi- cient passport by itself. But Cobbett's matter is often as good as his manner. His description of rural sights and sounds is nothing less than masterly, and if his inimitable pictures of this kind were removed from the worm-eaten frames of political invective in which they are now set, and were suitably illus- trated, we should have a book which, in its own way, would be second to none in the language. We append a specimen of these sketches, and hope that Mr. Smith's biography will have the effect of calling renewed attention to a man who, in Lord Dalling's words, "must be considered by every Englishman -who loves our literature or studies our history as one of the most remarkable illustrations of his time ":— " On we trotted up the pretty green lane ; and indeed, we had been coming gently and gently uphill for a good while. The lane was between highish banks and pretty high stuff growing on the banks, so that we could see no distance from us, and could receive not the smallest hint of what was so near at hand. The lane had a little turn towards the end ; so that out we came, all in a moment, at the very edge of the hanger.' And never, in all my life, was I so surprised and so delighted. I pulled up my horse, and sat and looked ; and it was like looking from the top of a castle down into the sea, except that the valley was land, and not water. Those who had so strenuously dwelt on the dirt and dangers of this route had said not a word about the beauties, the matchless beauties, of the scenery. There, hangers are woods on the side of very steep hills. The trees and tmderwood hang, in some sort, to the ground, instead of standing on it. Hence, these places are called Hangers. From the summit of that which I had now to descend, I looked upon the villages of Hawkley, Great ham, Selborne, and some others. From the south-east, round southward, to the north-west, the main valley has cross-valleys running out of it, the hills on the side of which are very steep, and in many parts covered with wood. The bills that form these cross-valleys run out into the main valley, like piers into the sea. Two of these pro- montories, of great height, are on the west side of the main valley. The ends of these promontories are nearly perpendicular, and their tops so high in the air, that you cannot look at the village below without something like a feeling of apprehension. The leaves are all off, the hop-poles are in stack, the fields have little verdure ; but while the spot is beautiful beyond description even now, I must leave to imagination to suppose what it is, when the trees and hangers and hedges are in leaf, the corn waving, the meadows bright, and the hops upon the poles."
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