Page:A dictionary of printers and printing.djvu/946

 NINETEENTH CENTURY.

year following, In Nova Scotia, North America. In 1791, his tegiment was relieved and sent home, and Mr. Cobbett having, in a service of near eight years, attained the rank of seijeant- major, obtained his discharge. In 1792, he visited France,and from thence went to America.* In 1801, he returned to England, and opened a bookseller's shop, with the sign of the Bible and Crown, in Pall-mall, London, where, after publishing the Porcupine,-\- a daily newspaper, be commenced his far-famed Register; and soon became, amongst the working classes, the most popular writer in England. He spoke their sentiments, and in some measure formed them, to his own taste and their entire satisfaction. His happy dexterity at illustration, — at reducing the most abstruse subject to the capacity of the most illiterate reader, — thebluntness and coarse- ness of his language, combined with its force and its perspicuity, made hiin with the multi- tude, the oracle of the day. The tradesman and mechanic devoured his predictions with avidity, as if they had been inspired ; and how- ever dependent was their situation at the time, or however liable they were to become poorer in their circumstances by any revolution or general bankruptcy, they seemed to enioy him the better, the more firmly and confidently "he dilated upon the " unavoidable and impending" ruin of the nation. His whole life is intimately connected with the freedom of the press. Against him tnd one or two writers of a similar cast, were most of those laws, that hung so long like so many millstones round the neck of the press, limed. It might be said that they were enacted 10 put him down; and drive him, and such as le, from the theatre of politics ; and by stamp luties and penalties, be the means of extir- latiog those insidious and dangerous opinions, I counteract the tendency of which no specific ould then "be found. But, as all the stamp [uties and imposts which ever were enacted, ould not answer the end intended, or prevent lie circulation of newspapers inimical to the ovemment, it has been thought proper to con- ide a portion of the duty, as a matter of state olicy. Mr. Cobbett lived to witness the great i&nge in the constitution ; and, as far as his nbition was concerned, was returned a member ' the first reformed house of commons, for the trough of Oldham, in Lancashire, which he presented at the time of his decease. As a irty ■writer, the following masterly sketch was ven by a cotemporary author : — " There is one eat merit in Mr. Cobbett — and one only — licb is perhaps peculiar to him among the rty-writers of the day. There is not a page his that has ever come under our notice, lerein there does not breathe throughout, amid his absurdities of violence and inconsistency, i strongest feeling for the welfare of the people, le feeling is in nine cases in ten totally mis- -ected ; but there it is, a living and vigorous npatby with the interests and hopes of the

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mass of mankind. Many persons win be ready to maintain, because he has shown himself at various times as not very scrupulous for truth, that he has no real and sincere good quality what- soever, and that he merely writes what is calcu- lated to be ^nalar. But we confess we are inclined to thins, from the tone and spirit of his works, that he commonly persuades himself he believes what he is saying, and feels deeply at the moment what he expresses strongly. It is obvious to us that, while he puts forth against his opponents the most unmeasured malignity, there is a true and heartv kindliness in all that he writes about, or to, the people. He seems to ns to speak of the poorer classes as if he still felt about him the atmospheie of the cottage, — not as if he were robed in ermine or lawn, or in the sable gown of a professor, — but in the smock frock of the peasant. And it would be useful, therefore, to peers and bishops, parliamentary orators and university dogmatists, if they would now and then read the books they always rail at. They would find in them a portrait thriUing with all the pulses of animation, with the thoughts and desires of a class, the largest and therefore the most important in society, among whom that which is universal and eternal in our nature dis- plays itself under a totally diflerent aspect from that which it wears among us. Mr. Cobbett's personal eonsciousness of all which is concealed from our eyes by gray jackets and clouted shoes, has kept alive his S3rmpathy with the majority of mankind ; and this is indeed a merit which can be attributed to but few political writers. And, far more than this, it is a merit which belongs to no one we remember but himself and Bums, among all the persons that have raised themselves from the lowest condition of life into eminence." Mr. Cobbett was, at the time of his decease, aged seventy-three years. He left a wife and seven children ; the three eldest sons, William, John, and James, are all bred to the bar. He was buried in his native village, and his funeral was attended by a vast concourse of people, including many friends and members of parlia- ment. Arrangements have been made for the erection of a monument to perpetuate his memory.

1835, July I. The proprietors of the John Bull, London newspaper, Drought an action irt the court of common pleas, against Mr. Rosier, who, it was alleged, had induced the editor to publish a libellous paragraph on an individual, on his engagement to taking the responsibility. The person against whom the paragraph was directed having recovered damages from the newspaper proprietors, this action was brought to compel the author of the libel to defray the expenses. The jury returned a verdict for the plaintiffs.

18.35, July 12. Died, William Preston, of the firm of Preston and Heaton, printers, at Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Mr. Preston was a native of Lancashire, and went to Newcastle in the year 1784, where he for many years discharged the dutv of overseer in the office of the Chronicle

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