can never tire us, not even of himself; and the reason is, he is always
'full of matter.' He never runs to lees, never gives us the vapid
leavings of himself, is never 'weary, stale, and unprofitable,' but
always setting out afresh on his journey, clearing away some old
nuisance, and turning up new mould. His egotism is delightful, for
there is no affectation in it. He does not talk of himself for lack of
something to write about, but because some circumstance that has
happened to himself is the best possible illustration of the subject,
and he is not the man to shrink from giving the best possible
illustration of the subject from a squeamish delicacy. He likes both
himself and his subject too well. He does not put himself before it,
and say, 'Admire me first,' but places us in the same situation with
himself, and makes us see all that he does. There is no
blindman's-buff, no conscious hints, no awkward ventriloquism, no
testimonies of applause, no abstract, senseless self-complacency, no
smuggled admiration of his own person by proxy: it is all plain and
above- board. He writes himself plain William Cobbett, strips himself
quite as naked as anybody would wish--in a word, his egotism is full of
individuality, and has room for very little vanity in it. We feel
delighted, rub our hands, and draw our chair to the fire, when we come
to a passage of this sort: we know it will be something new and good,
manly and simple, not the same insipid story of self over again. We sit
down at table with the writer, but it is to a course of rich viands,
flesh, fish, and wild-fowl, and not to a nominal entertainment, like
that given by the Barmecide in the _Arabian Nights_, who put off his
visitors with calling for a number of exquisite things that never
appeared, and with the honour of his company. Mr. Cobbett is not a
_make-believe_ writer: his worst enemy cannot say that of him. Still
less is he a vulgar one: he must be a puny, common-place critic indeed
who thinks him so. How fine were the graphical descriptions he sent us