Publisher's Synopsis
Three years before the young queen was crowned, William Cobbett was buried atFarnham. It may seem strange to begin with this great neglected name, rather thanthe old age of Wordsworth or the young death of Shelley. But to any one who feelsliterature as human, the empty chair of Cobbett is more solemn and significantthan the throne. With him died the sort of democracy that was a return to Nature, and which only poets and mobs can understand. After him Radicalism is urban-andToryism suburban. Going through green Warwickshire, Cobbett might havethought of the crops and Shelley of the clouds. But Shelley would have calledBirmingham what Cobbett called it-a hell-hole. Cobbett was one with afterLiberals in the ideal of Man under an equal law, a citizen of no mean city. Hediffered from after Liberals in strongly affirming that Liverpool and Leeds are meancities
