But How Odd That My First Thought Of The Man Should Have Come To Me When Sitting By The Fire Where Cobbett Himself Had Sat On Many A Cold Evening!

And this was November the second, the very day eighty-odd years ago when he paid his first visit to the Rookery; at all events, it is the first date he gives in Rural Rides.

And he too had been delighted with the place and the beauty of the surrounding country with the trees in their late autumn colours. Writing on November 2nd, 1821, he says: "The place is commonly called Uphusband, which is, I think, as decent a corruption of names as one could wish to meet with. However, Uphusband the people will have it, and Uphusband it shall be for me." That is indeed how he names it all through his book, after explaining that "husband" is a corruption of Hurstbourne, and that there are two Hurstbournes, this being the upper one.

I congratulated myself on having been refused accommodation at the "George and Dragon," and was more than satisfied to pass an evening without a book, sitting there alone listening to an imaginary conversation between those two curious friends. "Lord Carnarvon," says Cobbett, "told a man, in 1820, that he did not like my politics. But what did he mean by my politics? I have no politics but such as he ought to like. To be sure I labour most assiduously to destroy a system of distress and misery; but is that any reason why a Lord should dislike my politics? However, dislike them or like them, to them, to those very politics, the Lords themselves must come at last."

Undoubtedly he talked like that, just as he wrote and as he spoke in public, his style, if style it can be called, being the most simple, direct, and colloquial ever written. And for this reason, when we are aweary of the style of the stylist, where the living breathing body becomes of less consequence than its beautiful clothing, it is a relief, and refreshment, to turn from the precious and delicate expression, the implicit word, sought for high and low and at last found, the balance of every sentence and perfect harmony of the whole work - to go from it to the simple vigorous unadorned talk of Rural Rides. A classic, and as incongruous among classics as a farmer in his smock-frock, leggings, and stout boots would appear in a company of fine gentlemen in fashionable dress. The powerful face is the main thing, and we think little of the frock and leggings and how the hair is parted or if parted at all. Harsh and crabbed as his nature no doubt was, and bitter and spiteful at times, his conversation must yet have seemed like a perpetual feast of honeyed sweets to his farmer friend. Doubtless there was plenty of variety in it: now he would expatiate on the beauty of the green downs over which he had just ridden, the wooded slopes in their glorious autumn colours, and the rich villages between; this would remind him of Malthus, that blasphemous monster who had dared to say that the increase in food production did not keep pace with increase of population; then a quieting down, a breathing-space, all about the turnip crop, the price of eggs at Weyhill Fair, and the delights of hare coursing, until politics would come round again and a fresh outburst from the glorious demagogue in his tantrums.

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