name. He is an excellent hand at invention in that way, and has "damnable iteration in him.' What could be better than his pester ing Erskine year after year with his second title of Baron Clackmannan? He is rather too fond of such phrases as the Sons and Daughters of Corruption. Paine affected to reduce things to first principles, to announce selfevident truths. Cobbett troubles himself about little but the details and local circumstances. The first appeared to have made up his mind before-hand to certain opinions, and to try to find the most compendious and pointed expressions for them: his successor appears to have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor ever to have thought on a question till he sits down to write about it; but then there seems no end of his matters of fact and raw materials, which are brought out in all their strength and sharpness from not having been squared or frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory-he goes on with his descriptions and illustrations as if he would never come to a stop; they have all the force of novelty with all the familiarity of old ac quaintance; his knowledge grows out of the subject, and his style is that of a man who has an absolute intuition of what he is talking about, and never thinks of any thing else. He deals in premises and speaks to evidencethe coming to a conclusion and summing up (which was Paine's forte) lies in a smaller compass. The one could not compose an elementary treatise on politics to become a manual for the popular reader; nor could the other in all probability have kept up a weekly journal for the same number of years with the same spirit, interest, and untired perseverance. Paine's writings are a sort of introduction to political arithmetic on a new plan : Cobbett keeps a day-book, and makes an entry at full of all the occurrences and troublesome questions that start up throughout the year. Cobbett with vast industry, vast information, and the utmost power of making what he says intelligible, never seems to get at the beginning or come to the end of any question Paine in a few short sentences seems by his peremptory manner to clear it from all controversy, past, present, and to : 66 vernment itself. He is a kind of fourth estate in the politics of the country. He is not only unquestionably the most powerful political writer of the present day, but one of the best writers in the language. He speaks and thinks plain, broad, downright English. He might be said to have the clearness of Swift, the naturalness of Defoe, and the picturesque satirical description of Mandeville; if all such comparisons were not impertinent. A really great and original writer is like nobody but himself. In one sense, Sterne was not a wit, nor Shakspeare a poet. It is easy to describe second-rate talents, because they fall into a class and enlist under a standard: but firstrate powers defy calculation or comparison, and can be defined only by themselves. They are sui generis, and make the class to which they belong. I have tried half a dozen times to describe Burke's style without ever succeeding;-its severe extravagance; its literal boldness; its matter-of-fact hyperboles; its running away with a subject, and from it at the same time-but there is no making it out, for there is no example of the same thing any where else. We have no common measure to refer to; and his qualities contradict even themselves. Cobbett is not so difficult. He has been compared to Paine; and so far it is true there are no two writers who come more into juxtaposition from the nature of their subjects, from the internal resources on which they draw, and from the popular effect of their writings and their adaptation (though that is a bad word in the present case) to the capacity of every reader. But still if we turn to a volume of Paine's (his Common Sense or Rights of Man) we are struck (not to say somewhat refreshed) by the difference. Paine is a much more sententious writer than Cobbett. You cannot open a page in any of his best and earlier works without meeting with some maxim, some antithetical and memorable saying, which is a sort of starting-place for the argument, and the goal to which it returns. There is not a single bon-mot, a single sentence in Cobbett that has ever been quoted again. If any thing is ever quoted from him, it is an epithet of abuse or a nick VOL. II. 10 name. He is an excellent hand at invention in that way, and has "damnable iteration in him." What could be better than his pestering Erskine year after year with his second title of Baron Clackmannan? He is rather too fond of such phrases as the Sons and Daughters of Corruption. Paine affected to reduce things to first principles, to announce selfevident truths. Cobbett troubles himself about little but the details and local circumstances. The first appeared to have made up his mind before-hand to certain opinions, and to try to find the most compendious and pointed expressions for them: his successor appears to have no clue, no fixed or leading principles, nor ever to have thought on a question till he sits down to write about it; but then there seems no end of his matters of fact and raw materials, which are brought out in all their strength and sharpness from not having been squared or frittered down or vamped up to suit a theory-he goes on with his descriptions and illustrations as if he would never come to a stop; they have all the force of novelty with all the familiarity of old ac |
