iolent crusade
against French Jacobins and American Democrats. He returned to England
in June 1800, and was encouraged by the Government to set up what soon
became his famous _Weekly Register_--a paper which, after being (as
Cobbett's politics had been up to this time) strongly Tory, lapsed by
rapid degrees into a strange kind of fantastic Radicalism shot with Tory
gleams. This remained Cobbett's creed till his death. The paper was very
profitable, and for some time Cobbett was able to lead something like a
country gentleman's life at Botley in Hampshire. But he met with two
years' imprisonment for a violent article on flogging in the army, he
subsequently got into money difficulties, and in 1817 he made a second
voyage to America, which was in fact a flight both from his creditors
and from the risk of another Government prosecution under the Six Acts.
Through all his troubles the _Register_, except for a month or two, had
continued to appear; and so it did to the last. Its proprietor, editor,
and in the main author, stood for Parliament several times, and, after a
trial for sedition in 1831, was at last returned for Oldham in 1832. He
was not much of a success there, and died on 18th June 1835 near
Guildford; for he always clung to the marches of Surrey and Hampshire.

Some such details of Cobbett's life are necessary even in the most
confined space, because they are intimately connected with his singular
character and his remarkable works. These latter are enormous in bulk
and of the most widely diversified character. _Peter Porcupine_ fills
twelve not small volumes; the mere selections from the _Register_, which
are all that has been republished of it, six very bulky ones; with a
wilderness of separate works besides--_Rural Rides_, a _History of the
Reformation_, books on husbandry, gardening, and rural economy
generally, some on the currency, an _English Grammar_, and dozens of
others. Of these the _Rural Rides_ is the most interesting in matter and
the most picturesque in style, while it affords a fair panorama of its
author's rugged but wonderfully varied and picturesque mind and
character; the _History of the Reformation_ is the most wrong-headed and
unfair; the currency writings the most singular example of the delusion
that strong prejudices and a good deal of mother-wit will enable a man
to write, without any knowledge, about the most abstruse and complicated
subjects; the agricultural books and the _English Gr