William Cobbett

This volume contains WILLIAM COBBETT Biography by the amazing English thinker G.K.Chesterton, one of the smartest people of the 20th century. Some of the most important characters in art and literature of the 19th century are portrayed by the incredible mind and pen of Chesterton. I.—THE REVIVAL OF COBBETT This chapter is here called 'The Revival of Cobbett.' As originally planned, only a little while ago, it was to have been called 'The Neglect of Cobbett.' It is not unimportant to realise how recent has been the change. It is but a year or two ago that I had the great and (it is to be feared) the undeserved honour of reading a paper and the subject to the Royal Society of Literature on my admission to that body, which certainly consists almost entirely of men who know much more about literature than I do. It was a graceful formality on such an occasion for the least learned person in the room to lecture to all the rest. Yet on that occasion the chairman, who was much more of a literary expert than I am, re-marked on my having chosen an obscure and largely forgotten writer, just as if I had been lecturing on one of the last and least of the Greek sophists, or one of the numberless and nameless lyrists among the Cavaliers. Between then and now the change from neglect to revival has taken place. It is true that it is not until the first beginnings of the revival that we ever even hear of the neglect. Until that moment even the neglect is neglected. When I delivered the highly amateur address in question, the memory was already stirring, in others besides myself. But it is not out of egotism that I give this example; but because it happens to illustrate the first fact to be realised about the present position of Cobbett.