persecution of his equally excellent opinions. But that style also is
underrated through the loss of the real English tradition. More cautious
schools have missed the fact that the very genius of the English tongue
tends not only to vigour, but specially to violence. The Englishman of
the leading articles is calm, moderate, and restrained; but then the
Englishman of the leading articles is a Prussian. The mere English
consonants are full of Cobbett. Dr. Johnson was our great man of letters
when he said "stinks," not when he said "putrefaction." Take some common
phrase like "raining cats and dogs," and note not only the extravagance
of imagery (though that is very Shakespearean), but a jagged energy in
the very spelling. Say "chats" and "chiens" and it is not the same.
Perhaps the old national genius has survived the urban enslavement most
spiritedly in our comic songs, admired by all men of travel and
continental culture, by Mr. George Moore as by Mr. Belloc. One (to
which I am much attached) had a chorus--

"O wind from the South
Blow mud in the mouth
Of Jane, Jane, Jane."

Note, again, not only the tremendous vision of clinging soils carried
skywards in the tornado, but also the suitability of the mere sounds.
Say "bone" and "bouche" for mud and mouth and it is not the same.
Cobbett was a wind from the South; and if he occasionally seemed to stop
his enemies' mouths with mud, it was the real soil of South England.

And as his seemingly mad language is very literary, so his seemingly mad
meaning is very historical. Modern people do not understand him because
they do not understand the difference between exaggerating a truth and
exaggerating a lie. He did exaggerate, but what he knew, not what he did