Essayists From England

"No Englishman could be a more genuine lover of honest industry. He was cut to the heart by the horrible state of degradation into which the British labourer had sunk during, and for twenty years after, the great war... Week by week, and year by year, he went on thundering against the governing classes; but he always inserted saving clauses in his indictment for old descent and the trappings of royalty... Beneath the Radical peep forth infinite possibilities of Tory prejudice... English literature may be searched in vain for such another miniature of southern England as the Rural Rides... Those transcripts of scenery never grow obsolete."

"Read Cobbett—a much better writer than that charlatan Carlyle."

"A plebeian by instinct and by sympathy, his intellect rarely broke through the boundaries of middle-class reform. It was not until 1834, shortly before his death, after the establishment of the new Poor Law, that William Cobbett began to suspect the existence of a millocracy as hostile to the mass of the people, as landlords, banklords, public creditors, and the clergymen of the Established Church. If William Cobbett was thus, on one hand, an anticipated modern Chartist, he was, on the other hand, and much more, an inveterate John Bull. He was at once the most conservative and the most destructive man of Great Britain — the purest incarnation of Old England and the most audacious initiator of Young England. He dated the decline of England from the period of the Reformation, and the ulterior prostration of the English people from the so-called glorious Revolution of 1688. With him, therefore, revolution was not innovation, but restoration; not the creation of a new age, but the rehabilitation of the “good old times.” ... As a writer he has not been surpassed."

"An odious fellow on whichever side he fought. I hardly know a worse man."

"Cobbett's kind of Radicalism was the reverse of what it became later in the nineteenth century – a synonym for the ‘Progressive’ who was to detach himself completely from both rural and traditional roots... Though often in conflict and very differently placed in station and conditions of living, all three [labourer, farmer and squire], so far as they fulfil their service to the land, do throughout their history share a common point of view. In his simple forthright English, Cobbett spoke it. In fact, he embodied it... The rural attitude of life, in which the whole English tradition is rooted, sprang to articulate life in Cobbett at the very moment when it was beginning to crumble and give way to alien forces. And it is through him that we not only understand what it was in his time but has always been."

"Cobbett, whom [Benjamin Disraeli] thoroughly appreciated. He thought him superior to Junius, superior to Fonblanque, and superior to the best articles in the newly-started Saturday Review. Indeed, he availed himself very largely of Cobbett's History of the Protestant Reformation, and in Sybil he puts into Walter Gerard's mouth Cobbett's very words and arguments. But it was, of course, of the Political Register that Mr. Disraeli was thinking when he spoke of Cobbett as the first journalist of the century, and it would certainly be difficult to name anything superior to the article which appeared in the Register of July 30th, 1803, entitled, Important Considerations for the People of the Kingdom, pointing out to them the certain consequences of a French invasion."

"In Cobbett, indeed, the Reformers had found one splendid champion. With that forceful contrariness...he had swung round from the violent anti-Burdett invective of 1802 to the no less violent pro-Burdett declamation of 1807, and now made head against the popular current. For the pacific policy of the Whigs he had as great a contempt as for the obscurantism of the Tories. Attached to no party, guided only by his own tortuous common sense, he was often a voice crying in the wilderness; but his following was large and his influence important... [I]n February 1806 he broke with his old friend and patron Windham, and allied himself with the Burdettites. It was not long before they converted him to Parliamentary Reform, and by 1807 the Whigs were compelled to endure the taunts and gibes which poured out every week in the pages of his Political Register. In the years that followed he was by far the most important educative influence with the masses, on the side of Reform."

"While we were there, a grand display of English games, especially of single-stick and wrestling, took place under Mr. Cobbett's auspices... [T]his exhibition...she termed barbarous, was the cause of his quarrel with...Mrs. Blamire. In my life I never saw two people in a greater passion. Each was thoroughly persuaded of being in the right, either would have gone to the stake upon it, and of course the longer they argued the more determined became their conviction. They said all manner of uncivil things; they called each other very unpretty names; she got very near to saying, “Sir, you're a savage;” he did say, “Ma'am, you're a fine lady;” they talked, both at once, until they could talk no longer, and I have always considered it as one of the greatest pieces of Christian forgiveness that I ever met with, when Mr. Cobbett, after they had both rather cooled down a little, invited Mrs. Blamire to dine at his house the next day. She, less charitable, declined the invitation, and we parted."

"What distinguished Cobbett was that he saw more vividly than anybody else what was happening in England: how the England in which he had been born, where he had played on his father's farm, was changing all its features; how the old ways, the old faces, the old charities of life were disappearing; how the new England which was springing up was an England unkind and inhospitable to the poor... In everything that he did and wrote he set himself, by every means that could bring him into touch with the imagination of the people, to arrest the impoverishment of a race and to dethrone the fatal doctrine that the rich could be trusted to act for the poor."

"[T]he most powerful tribune that the English poor have ever known."

"One has no notion of him as making use of a fine pen, but a great mutton-fist; his style stuns his readers…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."

"William Cobbett, a man of genius in the use of his pen but gifted too in his knowledge of the new phenomenon of popular politics."

"His Rural Rides contain some of the best, most vivid and vigorous writing that has ever appeared in the English language."

"A print by Bartollotzi, executed in 1801, conveys a correct outline of his person. His eyes are small and pleasingly good-natured. To the French gentleman he was attentive; with his sons familiar; to his servants easy; but to all, in his tone and manner resolute and determined. He feels no hesitation in praising himself, and evidently believes that he is eventually destined to be the Atlas of the British nation. His faculty of relating anecdotes is amusing.—Instances when we meet. My impressions of Mr. Cobbett are, that those who know him would like him, if they can be content to submit unconditionally to his dictation. “Obey me, and I will treat you kindly; if you do not, I will trample on you,” seemed visible in every word and feature. He appears to feel, in its fullest force, the sentiment, “I have no brother, am like no brother, I am myself alone.”"

"Cobbett will more and more appear what he really was—a great English patriot. The paramount object of his life was the well-being of England. To that end he devoted all he possessed; to it he sacrificed his own interests, and the interests of those who were dearest to him... When the waves of time have passed again and again over the records of this century, obliterating much that now fills the minds of men, the memory of William Cobbett and his endless struggles will appear in their true significance, and his countrymen will assuredly enrol his name among their worthies as one who lived and fought and died in the service of England."

"He was a farmer when a politician; and throughout the hot and bitter struggle of his life, there were two kinds of Englishmen whom he always loved and laboured for, the farmer and the farm-labourer; the former not yet swollen into his present pretensions, the latter not yet dwarfed into his terrible degradation... He never swerved from his purpose, that of undertaking the defence of the farmer and the peasant. As a consequence, his influence was exceedingly great among the class from whom he sprung."

"I saw Cobbett twice [in 1817]. His upright figure indicated the drill of a soldier, his ruddy complexion and homely accent the subsequent character of a farmer as well as his original condition. Neither countenance nor conversation (at least at this time) were at all of a piece with the sprightliness of his style, the shrewdness of his remarks, or the closeness of his reasoning in written compositions. His objects were, the co-operation of the Whigs in public meetings for a change of Ministry, and their protection and countenance if he wrote in their favour. In such objects I told him Whigs could not but concur, but I avoided all appearance of any closer connection. He was alarmed at the threatened suspension of the Habeas Corpus. He very unaffectedly acknowledged his distrust of his own nerves, and a dread of behaving meanly and basely if arrested; he, therefore, hinted at an intention, which he afterwards executed, of retiring to America. He earnestly asseverated that he never had, and never would, belong to any political Opposition whatever."

"Look when the clouds are blowing And all the winds are free: In fury of their going They fall upon the sea. But though the blast is frantic, And though the tempest raves, The deep immense Atlantic Is still beneath the waves."

"Now let us thank the Eternal Power: convinced That Heaven but tries our virtue by affliction,— That oft the cloud which wraps the present hour Serves but to brighten all our future days."

"And coxcombs vanquish Berkeley by a grin."

"A retrospect of the Eighteenth-Century Essayists subsequent to the ',' ',' and ',' only serves to confirm the supremacy of Addison and Steele. Some of their successors approached them in serious writing; others carried the lighter kinds to considerable perfection; but none (Goldsmith alone excepted) really rivaled them in that happily mingling of the lively and severe, which Johnson envied but could not emulate."

"Old books, old wine, old Nankin blue;— All things, in short, to which belong The charm, the grace that Time makes strong,— All these I prize, but (entre nous) Old friends are best."

"Fame is a food that dead men eat,— I have no stomach for such meat."

"Love comes unseen,—we only see it go."

"All passes. ART alone Enduring stays to us: The Bust out-lasts the throne,— The Coin, Tiberius."

"The ladies of St. James’s! They’re painted to the eyes; Their white it stays forever Their red it never dies: But Phillida, my Phillida! Her colour comes and goes; It trembles to a lily,— It wavers to a rose."

"Time goes, you say? Ah, no! Alas, Time stays, we go."

"All the seasons run their race In this quiet resting place; Peach, and apricot, and fig Here will ripen, and grow big; Here is store and overplus,— More had not Alcinoüs!"

"Carry his body hence,— Kings must have slaves; Kings climb to eminence Over men's graves: So this man's eye is dim;— Throw the earth over him."

"And round about its gray, time-eaten brow Lean letters speak—a worn and shattered row: I am a Shade: a Shadowe too arte thou: I marke the Time: saye, Gossip, dost thou soe?"

"In merest prudence men should teach […] That science ranks as monstrous things Two pairs of upper limbs; so wings— E'en angels' wings!—are fictions."

"O English girl, divine, demure, To YOU I sing!"

"... it may be interesting for an ear-witness to record that when Austin Dobson, after the publication of 'Vignettes in Rhyme,' was presented to Tennyson, that alarming vates inquired, in sepulchral tones, 'Are you a classic? Then become one! Read Horace every day of your life!' Dobson did not carry out this counsel quite to the letter, but with his customary docility in adopting good advice, he forthwith made a searching and prolonged study of the 'Odes' and 'Epistles,' a study the result of which upon his subsequent verse must be patent to the most careless observer, and may be traced upon his meticulous prose as well."

"Whether or not Big Brother is watching us, we certainly have to watch him, which may be even worse."

"The bad debater never knows that one explanation is better than five."

"Of course, history is only a muddle of facts and a fuddle of professors, and anyone who thinks it is one clear voice saying "Arise, sir Knight" deserves a life sentence in Camelot."

"The one kind of society that the Church cannot adjust to is no society at all, i.e., a setup where community has become so fragmented that a communal religion is a fiction, sustained only by talk and make-news items in the press and television."

"As things now stand, the office is a slightly meaner battleground than the home. Male bosses seem to dominate their women underlings as they would never dominate their wives."

"Saloons provide moments of genuine ecstasy — but only if your soul is at peace and the rest of your life bears contemplating. Otherwise, they are palaces of misery."

"Unnecessary customs live a brutally short life in America."

"As you approach the presidency, no one seems worthy of it, since it wasn't designed for a human in the first place."

"Not that there weren't real communists in the labor unions, and real spies in Washington, but these had nothing to do with the show that was being put on for us, which seemed entirely designed to Make Us Take This Thing Seriously. From abroad, where I was for much of the time, it looked as if the United States were trying to act like a superpower by holding its very own show trials."

"It is a fallacy to think that carping is the strongest form of criticism: the important work begins after the artist's mistakes have been pointed out, and the reviewer can't put it off indefinitely with sneers, although some neophytes might be tempted to try: "When in doubt, stick out your tongue" is a safe rule that never cost one any readers. But there's nothing strong about it, and it has nothing to do with the real business of criticism, which is to do justice to the best work of one's time, so that nothing gets lost."

"Through the burgeoning university network, it was suddenly possible to think of oneself as a national poet, even if the nation turned out to consist entirely of English departments."

"As enviable and unreachable as a face in a train window."

"He was truly after an art in which the creator could be as intelligent as he liked, but in which intelligence must be transmuted entirely into form, so that no lumps of thinking are left showing."

"The 1930s — a Golden Age for American humor, mainly because everything else was going so badly. The wisecrack was the basic American sentence because there were so many things that could not be said any other way."

"Childhood lays itself out, like a novel, he suggests, complete with central observer, fixed characters, and linear plot. Later, life disperses itself into anecdotes. At twenty-one, it no longer strictly matters whether the author went first to Ireland and then to Spain, or Spain first. And after thirty, he could stitch the pages in backward for all we care."

"This country is merciless to good small talents. A writer who doesn't take chances and swing for the fences (whether or not he has a prayer of reaching them) is less than a man."

"That is the best story he could find in his life, never mind if it's the truest: an artist's duty is always to tell the best story."