He puffed himself in vain. His attempt to enter the great national council was this time a dead failure, and clearly indicated that though he might boast of enthusiastic partisans, he had not as yet obtained the esteem of an intelligent public. This, however, did not prevent his announcing not very long afterwards that bronze medals, which judges thought did justice to his physiognomy, might be had for a pound apiece—a price which he thought low, considering the article. The medals, however, in spite of their artistic value, and the intrinsic merit of the person they represented, were not considered a bargain; and some of Mr. Cobbett’s most devoted friends observed that they had had already enough of his bronze. This was preparatory to his starting to contest Preston (1826). But he was no better treated there than at Coventry, being the last on the poll, though as usual perfectly satisfied with himself, notwithstanding a rather remarkable pamphlet got up by a rival candidate, Mr. Wood, which placed side by side his many inconsistencies.
Mr. Huish, in a work called “Memoirs of Cobbett,” published in 1836, states that this singular man now appeared in a new character that required no constituents; coming forth “as a vendor of meat, and weekly assuring his readers that there never was such mutton, such beef, or such veal, as that which might be seen in his windows, an assurance which continued uninterruptedly,” says this author, “until one inauspicious day, when it was replaced by the announcement of William Cobbett, butcher, at Kensington, having become a bankrupt.”[107] But this story, though told thus circumstantially (I have not, for the sake of brevity, copied the exact words, but in all respects their meaning), though generally repeated, and apparently confirmed by other contemporaneous writers, is incorrect; and we are not to count amongst Cobbett’s eccentricities that of cutting up carcases as well as reputations.
IV.
But whatever the other pursuits Cobbett had indulged in since his return to England, none had interfered with those which his literary talents suggested to him.
“A Work on Cottage Economy,” a Volume of Sermons, “The Woodlands,” “Paper against Gold,” “The Rural Rides,” “The Protestant Reformation,” were all published between the years 1820 and 1826. His “Rural Rides,” indeed, are amongst his best compositions. No one ever described the country as he did. Everything he says about it is real. You see the dew on the grass, the fragrance comes fresh to you from the flowers; you fancy yourself jogging down the green lane, with the gipsy camp under the hedge, as the sun is rising; you learn the pursuits and pleasures of the country from a man who has been all his life practically engaged in the one, and keenly enjoying the other, and who sees everything he talks to you of with the eye of the poet and the farmer.
“The History of the Protestant Reformation” turned out a more important production than the author probably anticipated—for his chief aim seems to have been to volunteer a contemptuous defiance to all the religious and popular feelings in England. The work, however, was taken up by the Catholics, translated into various languages, and widely circulated throughout Europe. The author’s great satisfaction seems to consist in calling Queen Elizabeth, “Bloody Queen Bess,” and Mary, “Good Queen Mary,” and he, doubtless, brought forward much that could be said against the one, and in favour of the other, which Protestant writers had kept back; still his two volumes are not to be regarded as a serious history, but rather as a party pamphlet, and no more racy and eloquent party pamphlet was ever written. I quote a passage of which those who do not accept the argument may admire the composition:
“Nor must we by any means overlook the effects of these institutions (monastic) on the mere face of the country. That man must be low and mean of soul who is insensible to all feeling of pride in the noble edifices of his country. Love of country, that variety of feelings which altogether constitute what we properly call patriotism, consist in part of the admiration of, and veneration for, ancient and magnificent proofs of skill and opulence. The monastics built as well as wrote for posterity. The never-dying nature of their institutions set aside in all their undertakings every calculation as to time and age. Whether they built or planted, they set the generous example of providing for the pleasure, the honour, the wealth, and greatness of generations upon generations yet unborn. They executed everything in the very best manner; their gardens, fishponds, farms, were as near perfection as they could make them; in the whole of their economy they set an example tending to make the country beautiful, to make it an object of pride with the people, and to make the nation truly and permanently great.
“Go into any county and survey, even at this day, the ruins of its, perhaps, twenty abbeys and priories, and then ask yourself, ‘What have we in exchange for these?’ Go to the site of some once opulent convent. Look at the cloister, now become in the hands of some rack-renter the receptacle for dung, fodder, and fagot-wood. See the hall, where for ages the widow, the orphan, the aged, and the stranger found a table ready spread. See a bit of its walls now helping to make a cattle-shed, the rest having been hauled away to build a workhouse. Recognise on the side of a barn, a part of the once magnificent chapel; and, if chained to the spot by your melancholy musings, you be admonished of the approach of night by the voice of the screech-owl issuing from those arches which once at the same hour resounded with the vespers of the monk, and which have for seven hundred years been assailed by storms and tempests in vain; if thus admonished of the necessity of seeking food, shelter, and a bed, lift up your eyes and look at the whitewashed and dry-rotten shed on the hill called the ‘Gentleman’s House,’ and apprised of the ‘board wages’ and ‘spring guns,’ which are the signs of his hospitality, turn your head, jog away from the scene of former comfort and grandeur; and with old-English welcoming in your mind, reach the nearest inn, and there, in a room, half-warmed and half-lighted, with a reception precisely proportioned to the presumed length of your purse, sit down and listen to an account of the hypocritical pretences, the base motives, the tyrannical and bloody means, under which, from which, and by which, the ruin you have been witnessing was effected, and the hospitality you have lost was for ever banished from the land.”
V.
The popularity of Mr. Canning had now become a grievous thorn in Cobbett’s side. That of Mr. Robinson (afterwards Lord Goderich) had at one time sorely galled him. But Mr. Robinson’s reputation was on the wane; the reputation of Mr. Canning, on the contrary, rose higher every day; and when that statesman, after being deserted by his colleagues, stood forward as premier of a new government, being taken up by Sir Francis Burdett, and many of the Whig leaders, Mr. Cobbett set no bounds to his choler; and, in company with Mr. Hunt, made at a Westminster dinner (in 1827) a foolish and ill-timed display of his usual hostility to the popular feeling.