People have about as substantial an idea of Cobbett as they have of
Cribb. His blows are as hard, and he himself is as impenetrable. One has
no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist;
his style stuns his readers, and he 'fillips the ear of the public with
a three-man beetle.' He is too much for any single newspaper antagonist;
'lays waste' a city orator or Member of Parliament, and bears hard upon
the Government itself. He is a kind of _fourth estate_ in the politics
of the country. He is not only unquestionably the most powerful
political writer of the present day, but one of the best writers in the
language. He speaks and thinks plain, broad, downright English. He might
be said to have the clearness of Swift, the naturalness of Defoe,
and the picturesque satirical description of Mandeville; if all such
comparisons were not impertinent. A really great and original writer is
like nobody but himself. In one sense Sterne was not a wit, nor
Shakespear a poet. It is easy to describe second-rate talents, because
they fall into a class and enlist under a standard; but first-rate
powers defy calculation or comparison, and can be defined only by
themselves. They are _sui generis_, and make the class to which they
belong. I have tried half a dozen times to describe Burke's style
without ever succeeding,--its severe extravagance; its literal boldness;
its matter-of-fact hyperboles; its running away with a subject, and from
it at the same time,--but there is no making it out, for there is no
example of the same thing anywhere else. We have no common measure to
refer to; and his qualities contradict even themselves.
Cobbett is not so difficult. He has been compared to Paine; and so far
it is true there are no two writers who come more into juxtaposition
from the nature of their subjects, from the internal resources on which
they draw, and from the popular effect of their writings and their
adaptation (though that is a bad word in the present case) to the
capacity of every reader. But still if we turn to a volume of Paine's
(his _Common Sense_ or _Rights of Man_) we are struck (not to say
somewhat refreshed) by the difference. Paine is a much more sententious
writer than Cobbett. You cannot open a page in any of his best and
earlier works without meeting with some maxim, some antithetical and
memorable saying, which is a sort of starting-place for the argument,
and the goal to which it returns. There is not a single _bon mot_, a
single sentence in Cobbett that has ever been quoted again. If anything
is ever quoted from him, it is an epithet of abuse or a nickname. He is
an excellent hand at invention in that way, and has 'damnable iteration'
in him. What could be better than his pestering Erskine year after year
with his second title of Baron Clackmannan? He is rather too fond of
_the Sons and Daughters of Corruption_. Paine affected to reduce things
to first principles, to announce self-evident truths. Cobbett troubles
himself about little but the details and local circumstances. The first
appeared to have made up his mind beforehand to certain opinions, and to
try to find the most compendious and pointed expressions for them: his
successor appears to have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor
ever to have thought on a question till he sits down to write about it;
but then there seems no end of his matters of fact and raw materials,
which are brought out in all their strength and sharpness from not
having been squared or frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory--he
goes on with his descriptions and illustrations as if he would never
come to a stop; they have all the force of novelty with all the
familiarity of old acquaintance; his knowledge grows out of the subject,
and his style is that of a man who has an absolute intuition of what
he is talking about, and never thinks of anything else. He deals in
premises and speaks to evidence--the coming to a conclusion and summing
up (which was Paine's _forte_) lies in a smaller compass. The one could
not compose an elementary treatise on politics to become a manual for
the popular reader, nor could the other in all probability have kept
up a weekly journal for the same number of years with the same spirit,
interest, and untired perseverance. Paine's writings are a sort of
introduction to political arithmetic on a new plan: Cobbett keeps
a day-book, and makes an entry at full of all the occurrences and
troublesome questions that start up throughout the year. Cobbett, with
vast industry, vast information, and the utmost power of making what he
says intelligible, never seems to get at the beginning or come to
the end of any question: Paine in a few short sentences seems by his
peremptory manner 'to clear it from all controversy, past, present, and
to come.' Paine takes a bird's-eye view of things. Cobbett sticks
close to them, inspects the component parts, and keeps fast hold of the
smallest advantages they afford him. Or, if I might here be indulged
in a pastoral allusion, Paine tries to enclose his ideas in a fold for
security and repose; Cobbett lets _his_ pour out upon the plain like a
flock of sheep to feed and batten. Cobbett is a pleasanter writer for
those to read who do not agree with him; for he is less dogmatical, goes
more into the common grounds of fact and argument to which all appeal,
is more desultory and various, and appears less to be driving at a
present conclusion than urged on by the force of present conviction.
He is therefore tolerated by all parties, though he has made himself by
turns obnoxious to all; and even those he abuses read him. The Reformers
read him when he was a Tory, and the Tories read him now that he is a
Reformer. He must, I think, however, be _caviare_ to the Whigs.(1)
If he is less metaphysical and poetical than his celebrated prototype,
he is more picturesque and dramatic. His episodes, which are numerous
as they are pertinent, are striking, interesting, full of life
and _naivete_, minute, double measure running over, but never
tedious--_nunquam sufflaminandus erat_. He is one of those writers who
can never tire us, not even of himself; and the reason is, he is always
'full of matter.' He never runs to lees, never gives us the vapid
leavings of himself, is never 'weary, stale, and unprofitable,' but
always setting out afresh on his journey, clearing away some old
nuisance, and turning up new mould. His egotism is delightful, for
there is no affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for lack
of something to write about, but because some circumstance that has
happened to himself is the best possible illustration of the subject,
and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best possible
illustration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He likes both
himself and his subject too well. He does not put himself before it,
and say, 'Admire me first,' but places us in the same situation with
himself, and makes us see all that he does. There is no blindman's-buff,
no conscious hints, no awkward ventriloquism, no testimonies of
applause, no abstract, senseless self-complacency, no smuggled
admiration of his own person by proxy: it is all plain and above-board.
He writes himself plain William Cobbett, strips himself quite as naked
as anybody would wish--in a word, his egotism is full of individuality,
and has room for very little vanity in it. We feel delighted, rub our
hands, and draw our chair to the fire, when we come to a passage of this
sort: we know it will be something new and good, manly and simple, not
the same insipid story of self over again. We sit down at table with
the writer, but it is to a course of rich viands, flesh, fish, and
wild-fowl, and not to a nominal entertainment, like that given by the
Barmecide in the _Arabian Nights_, who put off his visitors with calling
for a number of exquisite things that never appeared, and with the
honour of his company. Mr. Cobbett is not a _make-believe_ writer: his
worst enemy cannot say that of him. Still less is he a vulgar one: he
must be a puny, common-place critic indeed who thinks him so. How
fine were the graphical descriptions he sent us from America: what a
Transatlantic flavour, what a native gusto, what a fine _sauce piquante_
of contempt they were seasoned with! If he had sat down to look
at himself in the glass, instead of looking about him like Adam in
Paradise, he would not have got up these articles in so capital a
style. What a noble account of his first breakfast after his arrival in
America! It might serve for a month. There is no scene on the stage more
amusing. How well he paints the gold and scarlet plumage of the American
birds, only to lament more pathetically the want of the wild wood-notes
of his native land! The groves of the Ohio that had just fallen beneath
the axe's stroke 'live in his description,' and the turnips that he
transplanted from Botley 'look green' in prose! How well at another time
he describes the poor sheep that had got the tick and had bled down in
the agonies of death! It is a portrait in the manner of Bewick, with
the strength, the simplicity, and feeling of that great naturalist. What
havoc be makes, when he pleases, of the curls of Dr. Parr's wig and
of the Whig consistency of Mr. (Coleridge?)! His _Grammar_, too, is as
entertaining as a story-book. He is too hard upon the style of others,
and not enough (sometimes) on his own.
As a political partisan no one can stand against him. With his
brandished club, like Giant Despair in the _Pilgrim's Progress_, he
knocks out their brains; and not only no individual but no corrupt
system could hold out against his powerful and repeated attacks, but
with the same weapon, swung round like a flail, that he levels his
antagonists, he lays his friends low, and puts his own party _hors de
combat_. This is a bad propensity, and a worse principle in political
tactics, though a common one. If his blows were straightforward and
steadily directed to the same object, no unpopular minister could live
before him; instead of which he lays about right and left, impartially
and remorselessly, makes a clear stage, has all the ring to himself, and
then runs out of it, just when he should stand his ground. He throws
his head into his adversary's stomach, and takes away from him all
inclination for the fight, hits fair or foul, strikes at everything, and
as you come up to his aid or stand ready to pursue his advantage, trips
up your heels or lays you sprawling, and pummels you when down as
much to his heart's content as ever the Yanguesian carriers belaboured
Rosinante with their pack-staves. 'He has the back-trick simply the best
of any man in Illyria.' He pays off both scores of old friendship and
new-acquired enmity in a breath, in one perpetual volley, one raking
fire of 'arrowy sleet' shot from his pen. However his own reputation or
the cause may suffer in consequence, he cares not one pin about that, so
that he disables all who oppose, or who pretend to help him. In fact, he
cannot bear success of any kind, not even of his own views or party; and
if any principle were likely to become popular, would turn round against
it to show his power in shouldering it on one side. In short, wherever
power is, there he is against it: he naturally butts at all obstacles,
as unicorns are attracted to oak trees, and feels his own strength only
by resistance to the opinions and wishes of the rest of the world. To
sail with the stream, to agree with the company, is not his humour. If
he could bring about a Reform in Parliament, the odds are that he would
instantly fall foul of and try to mar his own handiwork; and he quarrels
with his own creatures as soon as he has written them into a little
vogue--and a prison. I do not think this is vanity or fickleness so much
as a pugnacious disposition, that must have an antagonistic power to
contend with, and only finds itself at ease in systematic opposition.
If it were not for this, the high towers and rotten places of the world
would fall before the battering-ram of his hard-headed reasoning; but if
he once found them tottering, he would apply his strength to prop them
up, and disappoint the expectations of his followers. He cannot agree to
anything established, nor to set up anything else in its stead. While it
is established, he presses hard against it, because it presses upon him,
at least in imagination. Let it crumble under his grasp, and the motive
to resistance is gone. He then requires some other grievance to set his
face against. His principle is repulsion, his nature contradiction: he
is made up of mere antipathies, an Ishmaelite indeed without a fellow.
He is always playing at hunt-the-slipper in politics. He turns round
upon whoever is next him. The way to wean him from any opinion, and
make him conceive an intolerable hatred against it, would be to place
somebody near him who was perpetually dinning it in his ears. When he is
in England he does nothing but abuse the Boroughmongers and laugh at the
whole system; when he is in America he grows impatient of freedom and a
republic. If he had stayed there a little longer he would have become a
loyal and a loving subject of His Majesty King George IV. He lampooned
the French Revolution when it was hailed as the dawn of liberty by
millions: by the time it was brought into almost universal ill-odour by
some means or other (partly no doubt by himself), he had turned, with
one or two or three others, staunch Buonapartist. He is always of the
militant, not of the triumphant party: so far he bears a gallant show
of magnanimity. But his gallantry is hardly of the right stamp. It wants
principle; for though he is not servile or mercenary, he is the victim
of self-will. He must pull down and pull in pieces: it is not in his
disposition to do otherwise. It is a pity; for with his great talents
he might do great things, if he would go right forward to any useful
object, make thorough stitch-work of any question, or join hand and
heart with any principle. He changes his opinions as he does his
friends, and much on the same account. He has no comfort in fixed
principles; as soon as anything is settled in his own mind, he quarrels
with it. He has no satisfaction but the chase after truth, runs a
question down, worries and kills it, then quits it like a vermin, and
starts some new game, to lead him a new dance, and give him a fresh
breathing through bog and brake, with the rabble yelping at his heels
and the leaders perpetually at fault. This he calls sport-royal. He
thinks it as good as cudgel-playing or single-stick, or anything else
that has life in it. He likes the cut and thrust, the falls, bruises,
and dry blows of an argument: as to any good or useful results that may
come of the amicable settling of it, any one is welcome to them for him.
The amusement is over when the matter is once fairly decided.
There is another point of view in which this may be put. I might say
that Mr. Cobbett is a very honest man with a total want of principle,
and I might explain this paradox thus:--I mean that he is, I think, in
downright earnest in what he says, in the part he takes at the time;
but in taking that part, he is led entirely by headstrong obstinacy,
caprice, novelty pique, or personal motive of some sort, and not by
a steadfast regard for truth or habitual anxiety for what is right
uppermost in his mind. He is not a fee'd, time-serving, shuffling
advocate (no man could write as he does who did not believe himself
sincere); but his understanding is the dupe and slave of his
momentary, violent, and irritable humours. He does not adopt an opinion
'deliberately or for money,' yet his conscience is at the mercy of the
first provocation he receives, of the first whim he takes in his
head: he sees things through the medium of heat and passion, not with
reference to any general principles, and his whole system of thinking is
deranged by the first object that strikes his fancy or sours his temper
education. He is a self-taught man, and has the faults as well as
excellences of that class of persons in their most striking and glaring
excess. It must be acknowledged that the editor of the _Political
Register_ (the _twopenny trash_, as it was called, till a bill passed
the House to raise the price to sixpence) is not 'the gentleman and
scholar,' though he has qualities that, with a little better management,
would be worth (to the public) both those titles. For want of knowing
what has been discovered before him, he has not certain general
landmarks to refer to, or a general standard of thought to apply to
individual cases. He relies on his own acuteness and the immediate
evidence, without being acquainted with the comparative anatomy or
philosophical structure of opinion. He does not view things on a large
scale or at the horizon (dim and airy enough, perhaps)--but as they
affect himself, close, palpable, tangible. Whatever he finds out is his
own, and he only knows what he finds out. He is in the constant hurry
and fever of gestation; his brain teems incessantly with some fresh
project. Every new light is the birth of a new system, the dawn of a
new world outstripping and overreaching himself. The last opinion is the
only true one. He is wiser to-day than he was yesterday. Why should he
not be wiser to-morrow than he was to-day?--Men of a learned education
are not so sharp-witted as clever men without it; but they know the
balance of the human intellect better; if they are more stupid, they are
more steady, and are less liable to be led astray by their own sagacity
and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom.
They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at first
sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they
are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a
prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser
than those who went before them.
Paine said on some occasion, 'What I have written, I have written'--as
rendering any further declaration of his principles unnecessary. Not so
Mr. Cobbett. What he has written is no rule to him what he is to write
maintain the opinions of the last six days against friend or foe. I
doubt whether this outrageous inconsistency, this headstrong fickleness,
this understood want of all rule and method, does not enable him to go
on with the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not pledged
to repeat himself. Every new _Register_ is a kind of new Prospectus. He
blesses himself from all ties and shackles on his understanding; he has
no mortgages on his brain; his notions are free and unencumbered. If he
was put in trammels, he might become a vile hack like so many more. But
he gives himself 'ample scope and verge enough.' He takes both sides of
a question, and maintains one as sturdily as the other. If nobody else
can argue against him, he is a very good match for himself. He writes
better in favour of Reform than anybody else; he used to write better
against it. Wherever he is, there is the tug of war, the weight of the
argument, the strength of abuse. He is not like a man in danger of being
_bed-rid_ in his faculties--he tosses and tumbles about his unwieldy
bulk, and when he is tired of lying on one side, relieves himself by
turning on the other. His shifting his point of view from time to time
not merely adds variety and greater compass to his topics (so that the
_Political Register_ is an armoury and magazine for all the materials
and weapons of political warfare), but it gives a greater zest and
liveliness to his manner of treating them. Mr. Cobbett takes nothing
for granted as what he has proved before; he does not write a book of
reference. We see his ideas in their first concoction, fermenting and
overflowing with the ebullitions of a lively conception. We look on at
the actual process, and are put in immediate possession of the grounds
and materials on which he forms his sanguine, unsettled conclusions. He
does not give us samples of reasoning, but the whole solid mass, refuse
and all.
He pours out all as plain
As downright Shippen or as old Montaigne.
This is one cause of the clearness and force of his writings. An
argument does not stop to stagnate and muddle in his brain, but passes
at once to his paper. His ideas are served up, like pancakes, hot and
hot. Fresh theories give him fresh courage. He is like a young and lusty
bridegroom that divorces a favourite speculation every morning, and
marries a new one every night. He is not wedded to his notions, not he.
He has not one Mrs. Cobbett among all his opinions. He makes the most
of the last thought that has come in his way, seizes fast hold of it,
rumbles it about in all directions with rough strong hands, has his
wicked will of it, takes a surfeit, and throws it away.--Our author's
changing his opinions for new ones is not so wonderful; what is more
remarkable is his facility in forgetting his old ones. He does not
pretend to consistency (like Mr. Coleridge); he frankly disavows all
connection with himself. He feels no personal responsibility in this
way, and cuts a friend or principle with the same decided indifference
that Antipholis of Ephesus cuts Aegeon of Syracuse. It is a hollow
thing. The only time he ever grew romantic was in bringing over the
relics of Mr. Thomas Paine with him from America to go a progress
with them through the disaffected districts. Scarce had he landed in
Liverpool when he left the bones of a great man to shift for themselves;
and no sooner did he arrive in London than he made a speech to disclaim
all participation in the political and theological sentiments of his
late idol, and to place the whole stock of his admiration and enthusiasm
towards him to the account of his financial speculations, and of his
having predicted the fate of paper-money. If he had erected a little
gold statue to him, it might have proved the sincerity of this
assertion; but to make a martyr and a patron saint of a man, and to dig
up 'his canonised bones' in order to expose them as objects of devotion
to the rabble's gaze, asks something that has more life and spirit in
it, more mind and vivifying soul, than has to do with any calculation
of pounds, shillings, and pence! The fact is, he _ratted_ from his own
project. He found the thing not so ripe as he had expected. His heart
failed him; his enthusiasm fled, and he made his retractation. His
admiration is short-lived; his contempt only is rooted, and his
resentment lasting.--The above was only one instance of his building too
much on practical _data_. He has an ill habit of prophesying, and goes
on, though still decieved. The art of prophesying does not suit Mr.
Cobbett's style. He has a knack of fixing names and times and places.
According to him, the Reformed Parliament was to meet in March 1818--it
did not, and we heard no more of the matter. When his predictions
fail, he takes no further notice of them, but applies himself to new
ones--like the country people who turn to see what weather there is in
the almanac for the next week, though it has been out in its reckoning
every day of the last.
Mr. Cobbett is great in attack, not in defence; he cannot fight an
up-hill battle. He will not bear the least punishing. If any one turns
upon him (which few people like to do) he immediately turns tail. Like
an overgrown schoolboy, he is so used to have it all his own way, that
he cannot submit to anything like competition or a struggle for the
mastery; he must lay on all the blows, and take none. He is bullying
and cowardly; a Big Ben in politics, who will fall upon others and crush
them by his weight, but is not prepared for resistance, and is soon
staggered by a few smart blows. Whenever he has been set upon, he has
slunk out of the controversy. The _Edinburgh Review_ made (what is
called) a dead set at him some years ago, to which he only retorted by
an eulogy on the superior neatness of an English kitchen-garden to a
Scotch one. I remember going one day into a bookseller's shop in Fleet
Street to ask for the _Review_, and on my expressing my opinion to a
young Scotchman, who stood behind the counter, that Mr. Cobbett might
hit as hard in his reply, the North Briton said with some alarm, 'But
you don't think, sir, Mr. Cobbett will be able to injure the Scottish
nation?' I said I could not speak to that point, but I thought he was
very well able to defend himself. He, however, did not, but has borne a
grudge to the _Edinburgh Review_ ever since, which he hates worse than
the _Quarterly_. I cannot say I do.(2)