rned education
are not so sharp-witted as clever men without it; but they know the
balance of the human intellect better; if they are more stupid, they are
more steady, and are less liable to be led astray by their own sagacity
and the overweening petulance of hard-earned and late-acquired wisdom.
They do not fall in love with every meretricious extravagance at first
sight, or mistake an old battered hypothesis for a vestal, because they
are new to the ways of this old world. They do not seize upon it as a
prize, but are safe from gross imposition by being as wise and no wiser
than those who went before them.

Paine said on some occasion, 'What I have written, I have written'--as
rendering any further declaration of his principles unnecessary. Not so
Mr. Cobbett. What he has written is no rule to him what he is to write
maintain the opinions of the last six days against friend or foe. I
doubt whether this outrageous inconsistency, this headstrong fickleness,
this understood want of all rule and method, does not enable him to go
on with the spirit, vigour, and variety that he does. He is not pledged
to repeat himself. Every new _Register_ is a kind of new Prospectus. He
blesses himself from all ties and shackles on his understanding; he has
no mortgages on his brain; his notions are free and unencumbered. If he
was put in trammels, he might become a vile hack like so many more. But
he gives himself 'ample scope and verge enough.' He takes both sides of
a question, and maintains one as sturdily as the other. If nobody else
can argue against him, he is a very good match for himself. He writes
better in favour of Reform than anybody else; he used to write better
against it. Wherever he is, there is the tug of war, the weight of the
argument, the strength of abuse. He is not like a man in danger of being
_bed-rid_ in his faculties--he tosses and tumbles about his unwieldy
bulk, and when he is tired of lying on one side, relieves himself by
turning on the other. His shifting his point of view from time to time
not merely adds variety and greater compass to his topics (so that the
_Political Register_ is an armoury and magazine for all the materials
and weapons of political warfare), but it gives a greater zest and
liveliness to his manner of treating them. Mr. Cobbett takes nothing
for granted as what he has proved before; he does not write a book of
reference. We see his ideas in their first concoction, fermenting and
overfl