William Cobbett

Extract

This is an age of revivals, and many of the minor writers of the past were never more appreciated than they are to-day. The Restoration dramatists are read in preference to the Elizabethans, and Mr. John Gay walks, where Wordsworth fears to tread. It is not merely a revolt against accepted standards that we are witnessing, it is rather a fresh outbreak of the adventurous spirit and that insatiable curiosity and methodic doubt, which serve to distinguish man from the beasts.

So much is, perhaps, needed as an apology for voicing the desire for a fuller measure of recognition for the works and, above all, for the personality of William Cobbett. Those who know his name are not iare, but those who have read him are probably very few.