name. He was
also--besides being the athlete of Ayrshire--the author of sundry
creditable and practical works on agriculture.

But the most notable man in connection with rural literature, of this
day, was, by all odds, William Cobbett. His early history has so large a
flavor of romance in it that I am sure my readers will excuse me for
detailing it.

His grandfather was a day-laborer; he died before Cobbett was born; but
the author says that he used to visit the grandmother at Christmas and
Whitsuntide. Her home was "a little thatched cottage, with a garden
before the door. She used to give us milk and bread for breakfast, an
apple-pudding for dinner, and a piece of bread and cheese for our
supper. Her fire was made of turf cut from the neighboring heath; and
her evening light was a rush dipped in grease."[31] His father was a
small farmer, and one who did not allow his boys to grow up in idleness.
"My first occupation," he tells us, "was driving the small birds from
the turnip-seed, and the rook from the pease; when I first trudged
a-field, with my wooden bottle and my satchel swung over my shoulders, I
was hardly able to climb the gates and stiles; and at the close of the
day, to reach home was a task of infinite difficulty."

At the age of eleven he speaks of himself as occupied in clipping
box-edgings and weeding flower-beds in the garden of the Bishop of
Winchester; and while here he encounters, one day, a workman who has
just come from the famous Kew Gardens of the King. Young Cobbett is
fired by the glowing description, and resolves that he must see them,
and work upon them too. So he sets off, one summer's morning, with only
the clothes he has upon his back, and with thirteen halfpence in his
pocket, for Richmond. And as he trudges through the streets of the town,
after a hard day's walk, in his blue smock-frock, and with his red
garters tied under his knees, staring about him, he sees in the window
of a bookseller's shop the "Tale of a Tub," price threepence; it piques
his curiosity, and, though his money is nearly all spent, he closes a
bargain for the book, and, throwing himself down upon the shady side of
a hay-rick, makes his first acquaintance with Dean Swift. He read till
it was dark, without thought of supper or of bed,--then tumbled down
upon the grass under the shadow of the stack, and slept till the birds
of the Kew Gardens waked him.

He finds work, as he had determined to do; but it was not fat