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."
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]
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]
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]
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]
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;