At Eight O'clock Cobbett Would Say Good Night And Go To Bed,
And Early Next Morning Write Down What He Had Said To His
Friend, Or Some Of It, And Send It Off To Be Printed In His
Paper.
That, I take it, is how Rural Rides was written, and
that is why it seems so fresh to
Us to this day, and that to
take it up after other books is like going out from a
luxurious room full of fine company into the open air to feel
the wind and rain on one's face and see the green grass.
But I very much regret that Cobbett tells us nothing of his
farmer friend. Blount, I imagine, must have been a man of a
very fine character to have won the heart and influenced such
a person. Cobbett never loses an opportunity of vilifying the
parsons and expressing his hatred of the Established Church;
and yet, albeit a Protestant, he invariably softens down when
he refers to the Roman Catholic faith and appears quite
capable of seeing the good that is in it.
It was Blount, I think, who had soothed the savage breast of
the man in this matter. The only thing I could hear about
Blount and his "queer notions" regarding the land was his idea
that the soil could be improved by taking the flints out.
"The soil to look upon," Cobbett truly says, "appears to be
more than half flint, but is a very good quality." Blount
thought to make it better, and for many years employed all the
aged poor villagers and the children in picking the flints
from the ploughed land and gathering them in vast heaps.
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