There can be little doubt, however, that a very great mental stimulus was acquired by the trip to Kew, and the reading of Swift’s wonderful satire.[1] The poor ploughboy, very probably, read and reread the laughable story of Peter and Martin hundreds of times without understanding the real drift of it; but there was enough in the book, with its entertaining accounts of grotesque fashions and weak-minded characters, to furnish such an impressionable spirit as Cobbett’s with an inexhaustible store of odd ideas concerning the world outside him. Readers of his works will notice his frequent quotation of Swift: “The celebrated Dean of St. Patrick somewhere observes, &c., &c.” is the opening sentence of the autobiographical sketch; and the “Political Register,” in after-years, continued to manifest evidences of the source and character of Cobbett’s early reading. Cobbett’s literary style, however, was not exactly that of Dean Swift; of which the former’s ignorance, and even contempt, of Latinity is sufficient explanation. But his alternations of sweetness and acrimony,--his ever-ready images,--the picturesque manner of his describing individual characters,--his constant tendency to satire,--cannot but be ascribed, in great measure, to the little book whose loss “cost him greater pain than losing thousands of pounds.”
So there is, now, some difference. A head and shoulders above the average of his mates, his mind is, likewise, on a higher level. Not so high, but as yet to be infinitely dark as to any purpose: a healthy spirit in a healthy body, there stood, working as hard and as cheerily as ever; but ready for the first impulse--which impulse came, in no uncommon way; in no more romantic style than that which sets a ball rolling, upon the impact of the foot.
“Towards the autumn of 1782, I went to visit a relation who lived in the neighbourhood of Portsmouth. From the top of Portsdown, I, for the first time, beheld the sea, and no sooner did I behold it than I wished to be a sailor. I could never account for this sudden impulse, nor can I now. Almost all English boys feel the same inclination: it would seem that, like young ducks, instinct leads them to rush on the bosom of the water.