Great Cobbett

"Cobbett was, in short, the last of the agrarians. But he was many other things besides--sodier, farmer, journalist, newspaper proprietor, author, grammarian, educationalist, politician and demagogue. He was also a master of English prose, a humorist, and one of the most talented, all-purpose, literary hacks England has ever produced. In the 1790s Peter porcupine's gazette was read by more Americans than any other newspaper. By the 1820s Cobbett's political register had become the most influential political weekly in the history of British journalism. He wrote as a self-confessed expert on foreign affairs, economics, military matters, domestic and family life, farming, the Church, gardening and forestry in addition to those specifically political articles which had allowed him to make the difficult transition from wiriting political leaders to leading a political party. He was moralistic, dogmatic, pugnacious, prejudiced, scurrilous, and deeply compassionate, and as much of a humbug as any other successful agitator, for all his belief in his own absolute rectitude. One half of Englishmen hated and feared him. The other half revered him as 'The poor man's friend' and 'The father of reform'"--Jacket, p. [3]-[4].