[13] Vide Duyckinck, i. 294, art. Rush.
[14] A copy of the original circular has fallen into the hands of the present writer. It is dated Feb. 5th, 1799. The volumes were expected to reach sixteen in number, and the price (to subscribers) was to be twenty dollars, or four and a half guineas. The following extracts from this prospectus will give some idea of the extent to which Cobbett’s writings had been already circulated:—
“Of each pamphlet, published under my assumed name of Peter Porcupine, about six thousand copies, upon an average, have been printed and sold in America. The sale of those which have been honoured by a republication in England has probably been much greater. All of them, I believe, have passed through three or four, and some, in an abridged state, have attained to ten, twelve, and even seventeen editions.… As to the Gazette, such has been the increasing demand for it that, though for a long time I laid by a hundred files for sale, I can at this moment make up but three complete for the first year. Thus situated, the orders which I have received from all parts for complete sets of the pamphlets and complete files of the paper have been a mortification to me rather than a pleasure,” &c.
CHAPTER IX.
“MY FAME HAD PRECEDED ME.”
The reader is probably aware, that your “public-instructor” who, at the close of the last century, essayed to lead his fellow-men, had no hold upon the daily press. An occasional jerky paragraph, or covert insinuation, was all that the newspaper ventured upon, when its feelings impelled it to break through the traditions of its calling. Indeed, things were changing at this period, although not so extensively in London as in France and in America; but the self-constituted leaders of public opinion were, as yet, restricted to the pamphlet, or to the periodical review. The student of history will notice, at least as regards the last quarter of the eighteenth century, that current opinion on politics is fully represented only in these journals. Their influence, however, speedily waned soon after the commencement of the nineteenth century; and, although the popular review, weekly or monthly, still supposes itself in the van, in our own days, its thoughts and ideas are appropriated, and often superseded, on the morrow of their publication.
The “Monthly Review,” redolent of Goldsmith and of Griffiths; the “British Critic,” and the “Gentleman’s Magazine,” of high Tory principles: and the “Analytical Review,” organ of modern enlightenment,—were the principal publications of this kind, which had the ear of the public, at the period of our history. And we shall be unable to proceed properly with the study of Mr. Cobbett’s life, without having first traced, from these sources, the rise and progress of his reputation, ere his return to England.
The “Observations on Dr. Priestley’s Emigration,” appears to have been reprinted in London immediately after its publication in Philadelphia. Matters were especially troublesome to the ministry just then, and the partisans of loyalty eagerly, frantically, seized upon anything new, in the shape of argument or of declamation, with which to bind up their rotting timbers. Yet, mark the wonderful inconsistency of human affairs! The author of this poor plank, groping after political justice (according to his light), was also the author, or part author, of a pamphlet which was said to be doing infinite mischief among the soldiers and sailors,—a pamphlet against which, at this very time, they were actually writing and printing loyal antidotes.