in which they abound—the copiousness, the steadiness, the perseverance, and the dexterity with which abuse and ridicule are showered upon the adversary." Swift, however, had one great characteristic which Cobbett did not possess. Swift could veil his sarcasm in irony, Cobbett was too ferociously honest to attempt anything of the kind.
It was his ambition to be thought a plain speaker, one who called a spade a spade; but plain speaking, especially when made the medium of political warfare, is usually attained by the easy process of refusing to see any side but one. Into this Cobbett fell to such an extent that it may well be called his besetting sin. His enemies asserted on more than one occasion that he told a downright lie. If he did, it was like that of a child, as roundly affirmed and as easy of detection. He was the very last man in the world to be guilty of that life-long acted lie, "that" dreadful sort of "lie which," as Lord Bacon says, "eateth in." William Cobbett had, in fact, a singularly transparent nature.
When we reflect on the enormous tasks Cobbett undertook, he appears as a Hercules or a Samson. He set at defiance and fought single-handed every power of note or influence in the kingdom. Like Don Quixote's hero, Felixmarte of Hircania, he gave battle to five swinging giants at once—the Landlords and the Rural Clergy, the Bank of England and the Stock Exchange, and most difficult of all to manage, a hydra-headed monster called the London Press. And as if this was not enough sport for one man, with back-handed strokes he attacked his own allies.
But as the strong man always has some compensating weakness to prevent him overpowering all his fellows, Cobbett's herculean force of body, mind, and spirit was marred, and its power singularly destroyed, by the way in which he blew his own trumpet. Just as there was no epithet too scathing for his adversary, the English language wanted words in which to express a sense of his own merits. We must not, however, measure him by the standard of his contemporaries. Cobbett was a child of nature, and refused to be tied by the green withes of conventionality and civilization. Cobbett was a giant, and giants have always been remarkable for their simplicity. We have never read of one who did not advance to the encounter proclaiming his own might and renown.
