chosen member for the borough of Oldham, which seat he held until June
18, 1835, when his long, active, and disturbed career was closed by
death, leaving her whom he had loved at the wash-tub, amid the snows of
New Brunswick, his honored widow.
His character was unique. He was the most emphatic of writers, perhaps
the most voluminous. He was foremost in the crew of haters; he was the
paragon of turncoats. Sentiments uttered at one period were denied at
another. At one time he wrote of Paine as follows: "He has done all the
mischief he can in the world, and whether his carcass is at last to
be suffered to rot on the earth or to be dried in the air is of very
little consequence. Whenever or wherever he breathes his last, he will
excite neither sorrow nor compassion; no friendly hand will close his
eyes."[129] Later in life, on his second visit to America, he exhumed
the bones of the man he had thus reviled, and bore them in idolatrous
custody to the land of his birth.
[129] Life of Thomas Paine: Political Censor, No. V., Sept., 1796:
Porcupine's Works, Vol. IV. pp. 112, 113.
Besides his multitudinous political writings, which in number remind
us of the cloud of "locusts warping on the eastern wind," he produced
several works of great and deserved popularity,--a Grammar of the
French Language, written while he rocked the cradle of his first
child,--a Grammar of the English Language,--a little volume, "Advice to
Young Men,"--and a series of sketches entitled "Rural Rides," in which
he gave unmixed pleasure to friend and foe.
I have dwelt thus long upon the life and character of Cobbett, as
a proper introduction to the picture of his marvellous industry,
which I am able to present in his own language. The labor which he
accomplished testifies; but in his writings he often refers to it with
peculiar pride. He tells us how he learned grammar. Writing a fair
hand, he was employed as copyist by the commandant of the garrison
where he first enlisted. In his autobiography he says: "Being totally
ignorant of the rules of grammar, I necessarily made many mistakes.
The Colonel saw my deficiency, and strongly recommended study. I
procured me a Lowth's Grammar, and applied myself to the study of it
with unceasing assiduity. The pains I took cannot be described. I
wrote the whole Grammar out two or three times; I got it by heart;
I repeated it every morning and every evening; and when on guard, I
imposed on myself the task of saying it all over once, every time I was
posted sentinel."[130] Would that all posted as sentinels were as well
employed as saying over to themselves the English grammar! If every
common soldier could do this, there would be little fear of war. The
evil spirits were supposed to be driven away by an Ave Maria or a word
of prayer. The grammar would be as potent. "Terrible as an army with
grammars" would be more than "Terrible as an army with banners."
[130] Life, p. 38.
In his "Advice to Young Men" Cobbett says: "For my part, I can truly
say that I owe more of my great labors to my strict adherence to the
precepts that I have here given you than to all the natural abilities
with which I have been endowed; for these, whatever may have been their
amount, would have been of comparatively little use, even aided by
great sobriety and abstinence, if I had not in early life contracted
the blessed habit of husbanding well my time. To this, more than to any
other thing, I owed my very extraordinary promotion in the army. I was
_always ready_. If I had to mount guard at ten, I was ready at nine;
never did any man or any thing wait one moment for me.... My custom was
this: to get up in summer at daylight, and in winter at four o'clock;
shave, dress, even to the putting of my sword-belt over my shoulder,
and having my sword lying on the table before me, ready to hang by my
side. Then I ate a bit of cheese or pork and bread. Then I prepared my
report, which was filled up as fast as the companies brought me in the
materials. After this I had an hour or two to read before the time came
for any duty out of doors."[131]
[131] Advice to Young Men, pp. 35, 36.
At a later period of life, when his condition was entirely changed,
and his name as a writer was in all men's mouths, he thus describes
his habits. "I hardly ever eat more than twice a day,--when at home,
never,--and I never, if I can well avoid it, eat any meat later than
one or two o'clock in the day. I drink a little tea or milk-and-water
at the usual tea-time (about seven 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."[132]
[132] Life, p. 137.
In another place he recounts with especial satisfaction a conversation
at which he was present, one of the parties to which was Sir John
Sinclair, the famous agriculturist and correspondent of Washington. "I
once heard Sir John Sinclair," he says, "ask Mr. Cochrane Johnstone
whether he meant to have a son of his, then a little boy, taught Latin.
'No,' said Mr. Johnstone, 'but I mean to do something a great deal
better for him.' 'What is that?' said Sir John. 'Why,' said the other,
'teach him to shave with cold water and without a glass.'"[133]
[133] Advice to Young Men, p. 34.
With this pertinacious devotion to labor, and this unparalleled sense
of the value of time, Cobbett surrendered himself to the blandishments
of domestic life. The hundred-armed giant of the press, he always had
an arm for his child. "For my own part," he says, "how many days, how
many months, all put together, have I spent with babies in my arms! My
time, when at home, and when babies were going on, was chiefly divided
between the pen and the baby. I have fed them and put them to sleep
hundreds of times, though there were servants to whom the task might
have been transferred. Yet I have not been effeminate; I have not been
idle; I have not been a waster of time." "Many a score of papers have I
written amidst the noise of children, and in my whole life never bade
them be still. When they grew up to be big enough to gallop about the
house, I have, in wet weather, when they could not go out, written the
whole day amidst noise that would have made some authors half mad. It
never annoyed me at all."[134]
[134] Advice to Young Men, pp. 142, 194.
These passages are like windows in his life, through which we discern
his character, where the domestic affections seem to vie with the sense
of time.
No person can become familiar with the career of Cobbett without
recognizing regular habits of industry as the potent means of producing
important results. Did the hour permit, it would be pleasant and
instructive to review the career of another distinguished character,
whose writings have added much to the happiness of his age, and whose
rare feats of labor illustrate the same truth: I mean the author of
"Waverley." There are points of comparison or contrast between Cobbett
and Scott which might be presented at length. They were strictly
contemporaries, spanning with their lives almost the same long tract
of time. They were the most voluminous authors of their age, perhaps
the most voluminous couple of any age. Since the days of Ariosto
no writers had been read by so many persons as was the fortune of
each. The marvellous fecundity of Scott was more than matched by the
prolific energy of Cobbett. The fame of the Scotsman was equalled by
the notoriety of the Englishman. If one awakened our delight, we could
not withhold from the other our astonishment. With Scott life was a
gala and a festival, with beauty, wit, and bravery. With Cobbett it was
a stern reality, perpetually crying out, like the witch in Macbeth,
"I'll do, I'll do, and I'll do." And yet Scott was hardly less careful
of time than his indefatigable contemporary. His life is a lesson of
industry, and the student may derive instruction from his example.
Both sought in early rising the propitious hours of labor; but the
morning brought its rich incense to the one, and its vigor to the
other. They departed this life within a short period of each other,
casting and leaving behind their voluminous folds of authorship. The
future historian will note and study these; but the world, which has
already dismissed Cobbett from its presence, will hardly cherish with
enduring affection the writings of Scott. He lived in the Past, and,
with ill-directed genius, sought to gild the force, the injustice, the
inhumanity of the early ages. Cobbett lived intensely in the Present,
and drew his inspiration from its short-lived controversies. For
neither had Hope scattered from her "pictured urn" the delights of an
unborn period, when the dignity of Humanity shall stand confessed.
A greater fame than is awarded to either will be his who hereafter,
with the imagination of the one and the energy of the other, without
the spirit of Hate that animated Cobbett, without the spirit of Caste
that prevailed in Scott, regarding life neither as a festival nor as
a battle, forgetting Cavalier and Roundhead alike, and remembering
only Universal Man, shall dedicate the labors of a long life, not to
the Past, not to the Present only, but also to the Future, striving to
bring its blessings nearer to all.
Such are some of the examples by which we learn the constant lesson of
the value of time. For them genius did much, but industry went hand in
hand with this celestial guide.
Here the student may ask by what rule time is to be arranged and
apportioned so as to accomplish the greatest results. If we interrogate
the lives of our masters in this regard, we shall find no uniform rule
as to the employment of the day, or even the hours of repose. The great
lawyer, Lord Coke, whose rare learning and professional fame cannot
render us insensible to his brutality of character, has preserved for
the benefit of the young student some Latin verses setting forth the
proper division of the day, allowing six hours for sleep, six for
the law, four for prayers, two for meals, while all the rest, being
six hours more, is to be lavished on the sacred muses.[135] These
directions are imperfectly reproduced in two English rhymes:--
Six hours in sleep; in law's grave study six;
Four spend in prayer; the rest on Nature fix."
[135]
"Sex horas somno, totidem des legibus æquis, Quatuor orabis, des
epulisque duas; Quod superest ultro sacris largire camoenis."
CO. LITT. 64.
A more estimable character than Lord Coke, in whose life clustered
literary as well as professional honors, Sir William Jones, himself a
model of the industry he inculcated, has said in a well-known distich:--
"Six hours to law, to soothing slumber seven,
Ten to the world allot, and all to Heaven."
The one hour here unappropriated is absorbed in the "all to Heaven."
Sir Matthew Hale, another eminent name in jurisprudence, studied
sixteen hours a day for the first two years after he commenced the law,
but almost brought himself to the grave thereby, though of a strong
constitution, and he afterwards came down to eight hours; but he would
not advise anybody to so much,--believing that six hours a day, with
constancy and attention, were sufficient, and adding, that "a man must
use his body as he would his horse and his stomach, not tire him at
once, but rise with an appetite."[136] Here is at once example and
warning.
[136] Roscoe, Lives of Eminent British Lawyers: Notes, pp. 413, 414.
Sleep is the most exacting of masters; it must be obeyed. Couriers
slumber on their horses; soldiers drop asleep on the field of battle,
even amidst the din of war. In that famous retreat of Sir John Moore,
English soldiers are said to have slept while still moving. Ambition
and the pride of victory yield to sleep. Alexander slept on the field
of Arbela, and Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz. Bereavement and
approaching death are forgotten in sleep. The convict sleeps in the
few hours before his execution. According to Homer, sleep overcomes
even the gods, excepting Jupiter alone. Its beneficence is equal to its
power; nor has this ever been pictured more wonderfully than in those
agonized words of Macbeth, where he says,--
"Macbeth does murther sleep, the innocent sleep,--
Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,
The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,
Chief nourisher in life's feast."
The rule of sleep is not the same for all. There are some with whom its
requirements are gentle: a few hours will suffice. But such cases are
exceptional. The Jesuits have done much for education, but on this
question they seem to have failed. In settling the system for their
college at Clermont, they followed their physicians in a rigid rule.
The latter reported that five hours were sufficient, six abundant, and
seven as much as a youthful constitution could bear without injury. On
the other hand, Cobbett, whose experience of life was as thorough as
his diligence, says expressly: "Young people require more sleep than
those that are grown up: there must be the number of hours, and that
number cannot well be on an average less than eight; and if it be more
in winter-time, it is all the better."[137] George the Third thought
otherwise, at least for men. A tradesman, whom he had asked to call on
him at eight o'clock in the morning, arriving behind the hour, the King
said, "Oh! the great Mr. B.! What sleep do you take, Mr. B.?" "Why,
please your Majesty, I am a man of regular habits; I usually take eight
hours." "Eight hours!" said the King; "that's too much, too much. Six
hours' sleep is enough for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a
fool,--Mr. B., eight for a fool." The opinions of physiologists would
probably incline with Mr. B., the tradesman, contrary to this royal
authority.
[137] Advice to Young Men, p. 33.
It is impossible to lay down any universal rule with regard to the
proper portion of time for sleep. Each constitution of body has its
own habits; nor can any rule be drawn from the lives of the most
industrious, except of economy of time, according to the capacity
of each person. The great German scholar Heyne, who has shed such
lustre on classical learning, in the order of his early studies
allowed himself, for six months, only two nights' sleep in a week. The
eccentric Robert Hill, of England, who passed his life as a tailor,
but by persevering labor made rare attainments in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, was accustomed to sit up very late into the night, or else
to rise by two or three o'clock in the morning, that he might find
time for reading without prejudice to his trade, and although of a
weakly constitution, he accustomed himself to do very well with only
two or three hours of sleep in the twenty-four, and he lived to be
seventy-eight. But this is a curiosity rather than an example. Such
also is the story of the Roman Emperor Caligula, who slept only three
hours. In the list of men sleeping only four hours is Frederick
of Prussia, John Hunter, the surgeon, Napoleon, and Alexander von
Humboldt. That gallant cavalier and accomplished historian, renowned
for genius and misfortune, Sir Walter Raleigh, was accustomed, even
under the pressure of his arduous career, to devote four hours daily
to reading and study, while he allowed only five for sleep. Probably
all of us, in our own personal experience, have known men of study and
labor who, in the ardor of their pursuit, have foregone what is thought
the ordinary sleep, being late to bed and early to rise, reducing the
night to a narrow isthmus of time. Others there are with a vivacity
of industry which acts with intensity and rapidity, requiring long
periods of repose. I cannot forget that Judge Story, the person who
has accomplished more than any one within the circle of my individual
observation, whose life--now, alas! closed by death--was thickly
studded with various labors as judge, professor, and author, is a high
example of what may be wrought by wakeful diligence, without denying
the body any refreshment of repose. His habit, during the years of his
greatest intellectual activity, was to retire always at ten o'clock
and to rise at seven,--allowing nine hours for sleep. The tradesman
of George the Third might have sought shelter with him from the royal
raillery.
Pursuing these inquiries as to the arrangement of the day, we find the
precept, if not the example, uniform with regard to early rising as
propitious to health and intellectual exertion. The old saw, "Early to
bed and early to rise," imprints the lesson upon the mind of childhood.
The magnificent period of Milton sounds in our ears: "My morning haunts
are where they should be, at home,--not sleeping, or concocting the
surfeits of an irregular feast, but up and stirring,--in winter often
ere the sound of any bell awake men to labor or to devotion,--in summer
as oft with the bird that first rouses, or not much tardier, to read
good authors or cause them to be read, till the attention be weary or
memory have its full fraught,--then with useful and generous labors
preserving the body's health and hardiness, to render lightsome, clear,
and not lumpish obedience to the mind, to the cause of religion, and
our country's liberty."[138] Sir Walter Scott is less stately in his
tribute to the morning, but he agrees with Milton: "The half-hour
between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any
task which was exercising my invention. When I got over any knotty
difficulty in a story, or have had in former times to fill up a passage
in a poem, it was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired
ideas thronged upon me. This is so much the case, that I am in the
habit of relying upon it, and saying to myself, when I am at a loss,
'Never mind, we shall have it at seven o'clock to-morrow morning.' If I
have forgot a circumstance, or a name, or a copy of verses, it is the
same thing."[139] In this equal dedication to the morning Milton and
Scott are alike, but how unlike in all else! Milton's testimony is like
an anthem; Scott's like an affidavit.
[138] Apology for Smectymnuus: Prose Works, Vol. I. p. 220.
[139] Diary: Lockhart's Life of Scott, Chap. VII. Vol. VI. p. 227.
Notwithstanding these great examples and the prevailing precept, it
may be doubted if the student can be weaned from those habits which
lead him to continue his vigils far into the watches of the night. From
time immemorial he has been said to "consume the midnight oil," and
productions marked by peculiar care are proverbially reputed to "smell
of the lamp," never to breathe the odor of the morning. An ingenious
inquirer might be inclined to trace in different writers, particularly
in poets, the distinctive influence of the hours they devoted to
labor, and, perhaps, to find in Milton and Scott the freshness and
vivid colors of the rosy-fingered dawn, and in Schiller and Byron the
sombre shade and sickly glare of the lamp. Whatever the result of
such speculations, which might be moralized by example, the midnight
lamp will ever be regarded as the symbol of labor. In the wonders it
has wrought it yields only to the far-famed lamp of Aladdin. They who
confess themselves among "the slaves of the lamp" say that there is
an excitement in study, increasing as the work proceeds, which flames
forth with new brightness at the close of the day and in the stillness
of those hours when the world is wrapped in sleep and the student is
the sole watcher. The heavy clock seems to toll the midnight hour
in the church-belfry for him alone, and, as he catches its distant
vibrations, he thinks that he hears the iron hoof of Time come sounding
by. All interruptions are ended, and he is in closer companionship
with his books and studies. He holds converse face to face with the
spirits of the mighty dead, while the learned page and glowing verse
become vocal with inspiring thought. The poet speaks to him with richer
melodies, and the soul responds in new and more generous resolves.
It is not for me on this occasion to interpose any judgment on a
question which comes within the precincts of physiology. My present
purpose is accomplished, if I teach the husbandry of time. To this
end I have adduced authority and example. But there are other
considerations which enforce the lesson with persuasive power.
In the employment of time will be found the sure means of happiness.
The laborer living by the sweat of his brow, and the youth toiling
in perplexities of business or study, sighs for repose, and repines
at the law which ordains the seeming hardship of his lot. He seeks
happiness as the end and aim of life, but he does not open his mind to
the important truth that occupation is indispensable to happiness. He
shuns work, but he does not know the precious jewel hidden beneath its
rude attire. Others there are who wander over half the globe in pursuit
of what is found under the humblest roof of virtuous industry, in the
shadow of every tree planted by one's own hand. The poet has said,--
"The best and sweetest far are toil-created gains."
But this does not disclose the whole truth. There is in useful labor
its own exceeding great reward, without regard to gain.
The happiness found in occupation is the frequent theme of the
moralist, but nobody has illustrated it with more power than Luther
in his Table-Talk, where he presents an image of the human mind which
has always seemed to me one of the most striking in the whole range of
literature. Let me give it in the strong and fibrous diction of the
ancient translation from the original Latin.
"The heart of an humane creature is like a mill-stone in a mill: when
corn is shaked thereupon, it runneth about, rubbeth and grindeth it to
meal; but if no corn bee present (the stone nevertheless running still
about), then it rubbeth and grindeth it self thinner, and becometh less
and smaller: even so the heart of an humane creature will bee occupied;
if it hath not the works of its vocation in hand to bee busied therein,
then cometh the Divel and shooteth thereinto tribulations, heavie
cogitations and vexations, as then the heart consumeth it self with
melancholie, insomuch that it must starv and famish."[140] That it may
not starve and famish, it must be supplied with something to do; and
its happiness will be in proportion to the completeness with which all
its faculties are brought into activity.
[140] Dr. Martin Luther's Divine Discourses at his Table, etc.,
translated out of the High Germane into the English Tongue by Capt.
Henrie Bell, London, 1652: Chap. XXXVII., _Of Tribulation and
Temptation_, p. 397.
It is according to God's Providence that there should be pleasure in
the exercise of all the powers with which we are blessed. There is
pleasure in seeing the sights and catching the sounds of Nature. There
is pleasure in the exercise of the limbs, even in extending an arm
or moving a muscle. Higher degrees of pleasure are allotted to the
exercise of the higher faculties. There is pleasure in the acquisition
of knowledge,--pleasure in the performance of duty,--pleasure in all
the labors by which we promote our own progress,--pleasure higher still
in those by which we promote the progress of others.
If this be so,--and surely it will not be doubted,--then is it our
duty to regulate our habits so as to cultivate all the faculties, to
the end that Time shall yield its choicest fruits. When I speak of
all the faculties, I mean all those which enter into and form the
character created in the image of God, not merely those which minister
to the selfish ends of life. There are faculties for business; there
are others which open to us the avenues of knowledge,--others which
connect us by chains soft as silk, but strong as iron, to the social
and domestic circle,--others still which reveal to us, in vistas of
infinite variety and inconceivable extension, our duties to God and
man. Nor can any one reasonably persuade himself that he has done
his whole duty, and employed his time to the best purpose, who has
neglected any of these, although he may have sacrificed much to the
others. Success in business will not compensate for neglect of general
culture; nor will attendance on "the stated preaching of the gospel"
atone for a want of interest in the great charities of life, in the
education of the people, in the sufferings of the poor, in the sorrows
of the slave.