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.
At eight o'clock Cobbett would say good night and go to bed,
and early next morning write down what he had said to his
friend, or some of it, and send it off to be printed in his
paper. That, I take it, is how Rural Rides was written, and
that is why it seems so fresh to us to this day, and that to
take it up after other books is like going out from a
luxurious room full of fine company into the open air to feel
the wind and rain on one's face and see the green grass.
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