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William Cobbett: Radical, reactionary and poor man's grammarian

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Notes

  1. I am grateful to the Warden and Fellows of Nuffield College Oxford for permission to consult the Cole collection in the library of the college and to the librarian Mr. A. Alcock for his friendly help and advice.

  2. Political Register, August 14, 1819.

  3. For bibliographical information on Cobbett see M. L. Pearl,William Cobbett. A Bibliographical Account of His Life and Times, London, 1953, Arnold M. Muirhead, “An Introduction to A Bibliography of William Cobbett”,The Library, Fourth Series, Vol. XX, No. 1, June, 1939, 1–40 and Pierce W. Gaines,William Cobbett and the United States 1792–1835: A bibliography with Notes and Extracts, Worcester, Mass., 1971.

  4. Until recently the standard life of Cobbett was G. D. H. Cole,The Life of William Cobbett, 3rd rev. edn., London 1947. Recent books include John W. Osborne,William Cobbett: His Thought and His Times, New Brunswick, 1966; Asa Briggs,William Cobbett, London 1967; James Sambrook,William Cobbett, London and Boston, 1973; George Spater,William Cobbett: The Poor Man's Friend, Cambridge 1982, Raymond Williams,Cobbett, London, New York, 1983, and Daniel Green,Great Cobbett: The Noblest Agitator, London, 1983. Dr. J. Stevenson of the Department of History of the University of Sheffield is writing a new biography of Cobbett:William Cobbett and the Transformation of Britain (provisional title). Hans Lange's dissertation “William Cobbett (1763–1835), Leben und Wirken des grossen englischen politischen Reformers”, Berlin, 1955, is in typescript. See also Olivia Smith,The Politics of Language, 1791–1819, Oxford, 1984.

  5. Although works of fiction were the staple fare of 18th-century lending libraries, there is evidence that learned and technical books could be borrowed as well. Sec A. D. McKillop, “English Circulating Libraries, 1725– 1750”,The Library, XIV (1934), 477–485, Hilda M. Hamlyn, “Eighteenth-century Circulating Libraries in England”,The Library, Ser. 5, I (1946–47), 197–222 and Paul Kaufman, “The Community Library: A Chapter in English Social History”,Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Vol. 57, Part 7, Philadelphia, 1967, p.13. As appears from the catalogue of Samuel Hazard's circulating library at Bath (printed in 1796), it was also possible to borrow books on language.

  6. In letter III of hisFrench Grammar Cobbett claims that he learned French in less than six months and that “French people used to take me for a Frenchman”. He admits, however, that “they are apt to stretch a point or two on the side of civility”.

  7. On this period in Cobbett's life see Mary Elizabeth Clark,Peter Porcupine in America: The Career of William Cobbett, 1792–1800, Philadelphia, 1939.

  8. Op. cit., p.22.

  9. Quoted by Clark,op. cit., p. 181.

  10. See Pearl,op. cit., item 49. Cobbett's popularity is attested by the fact that there were no fewer than 170 subscribers in Jamaica alone. See Roderick Cave, “The Plantocracy's Passion forPorcupine”,The Library, Fifth Series, Vol. XXXIII, no. 3, (1978), 233–35.

  11. See Pearl,op. cit., item 52.

  12. Political Register, November 2, 1816.

  13. Op. cit., p. 432.

  14. The Liberal Awakening 1815–1830, London, 1926, pp. 188–9.

  15. “The Political Register: Cobbett and English Literature”, inEnglish Studies Presented to R. W. Zandvoort on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday, Amsterdam, 1964, p. 217. Cf. also E. L. Woodward, who writes that Cobbett “was never a revolutionary” (The Age of Reform 1815–1870, Oxford, 1938, p. 20) and E. P. Thompson, who speaks of the “blend of Radicalism and traditionalism” in Cobbett's attitude to the rationalists (The Making of the English Working Class, Harmondsworth, 1968, p. 831). For other views on Cobbett as radical and Cobbett as reactionary see Martin J. Wiener, “The Changing Image of William Cobbett”,The Journal of British Studies, XIII (1974), 135–154.

  16. Sambrook,op. cit., p. 88.

  17. Op. cit., p. 135.

  18. Ibid., p. 154.

  19. See his essay “Mr. Cobbett” inThe Spirit of the Age, ed. E. D. Mackerness, London and Glasgow, 1969, p. 251 and p. 244.

  20. Quoted by P. P. Howe,The Life of William Hazlitt, Westport, 1972, p. 203. Compare also John Colmer,Coleridge, Critic of Society, London, 1959. Colmer (p. 93) quotes from one of Coleridge's Notebooks, where he writes “that the Cobbetts & Hunts address you (= the lower Ranks) as beasts who have no future selves — as if by a natural necessity you mustall remain poor & slaving”.

  21. See Leslie A. Marchand, (ed.),Byron's Letters and Journals, Vol. 7, London, 1977, pp. 63 and 81.

  22. Quoted in Spater,op. cit., note 3, p. 602.

  23. See Hans Lange, “William Cobbett. Leben und Wirken des englischen politischen Reformers und Schriftstellers”,Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 6 (1958), 117–180 and 229–271, p. 121.

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  24. Quoted by Sambrook,op. cit., p. 140, from Matthew Arnold's essay “Heinrich Heine”,Cornhill, VIII (1863), 237–38.

  25. Quoted by Gaines,op. cit., p. XIV. For other American views on Cobbett see Gaines,op. cit., p. XIII ff. See also p. 207 ff.

  26. See Matthew J. Bruccoli,The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800–1870. The Papers of William Charvat, Ohio State University Press, 1968, p. 22.

  27. Op. cit.

  28. William Cobbett, London, 1926.

  29. English Literature 1815–1832, Oxford, 1963, pp. 315 and 316.

  30. Op. cit., p. 256.

  31. Op. cit., p. 187.

  32. Spater,op. cit., p. 6.

  33. See Richard D. Altick,The English Common Reader. A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900, Chicago, 1957. Appendix B. The list includes Cobbett'sGrammar of the English Language. The only other linguistic works listed here are Murray'sEnglish Grammar and Webster'sDictionary.

  34. See his essay on Heine,loc. cit.

  35. Cf.Political Register, November 21, 1818.

  36. SeeAdvice to Young Men, par. 311.

  37. SeeA Year's Residence in the United States of America, par. 269.

  38. On Ben Jonson's Grammar see A. Waite, “Ben Jonson's Grammar”,MLN, 24 (1909); Otto Funke, “ Ben Jonson's English Grammar, 1640”,Anglia, 64 (1940), 117–34; K. Ishibashi, “Ben Jonson's English Grammar”,The Study and Teaching of English, XII (1947); S. Watanabe,A Study of Ben Jonson's English Grammar, Tokyo, 1955 and N. E. Osselton, “Ben Jonson's Status as a Grammarian”,Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters, 12 (1982), 205–212. On Evelyn's Grammar see Albert A. Cook III, “John Evelyn'sEnglish Grammar”,Leeds Studies in English, New Series, Vol. XV, 1984, 117–146. On Hazlitt'sGrammar see G. Keynes,Bibliography of William Hazlitt, London, 1931.

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  39. H. Aarsleff,The Study of Language in England 1780–1860, Princeton, 1967.

  40. Arthur G. Kennedy,A Bibliography of Writings on the English Language from the Beginning of Printing to the End of 1922, Cambridge and New Haven, 1927.

  41. See C. Stoffel, “English Grammar dashed with party politics”,Taalstudie, 2 (1880), 371–74; G. H. Vallins, “Cobbett's Grammar”,English, 10 (1954), 48–53; John W. Osborne, “William Cobbett'sGrammar and its Purchasers”,Journal of Rutgers University Library, 30.1 (1966), 8–11.

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  42. See Pearl,op. cit., item 7 and Gaines,op. cit., items 5a–5d.

  43. See Clark,op. cit., p. 12f.

  44. See hisFrench Grammar, Letter II, where, oddly enough, he claims that the book was published in 1793 instead of in 1795.

  45. English grammars written in French were not uncommon in the United States at the time. See Raoul N. Smith, “A Bibliography of Books on Language and Languages Printed in the United States Through the Year 1800”,Historiographica Linguistica, IV (1977), 207–243.

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  46. Political Register, February 21, 1818.

  47. Political Register, October 5, 1833.

  48. See R. C. Alston,A Bibliography of the English Language From the Invention of Printing to the Year 1800. Volume Two:Polyglot Dictionaries and Grammars, Bradford, 1967, p. 60.

  49. Quotations are from the 1827 edition, published in Paris.

  50. Quotations are from the 1983 edition (see note 52).

  51. See Pearl,op. cit., item 96 and Gaines,op. cit., items 78a–c.

  52. The first English edition was published in London on December 7, 1818. The most recent editions are by Charles C. Nickerson and John W. Osborne,William Cobbett. A Grammar of the English Language. The 1818 New York first edition with passages added in 1819, 1820 and 1823, Amsterdam, 1983, and Robert Burchfield,A Grammar of the English Language by William Cobbett, Oxford, 1984.

  53. James Paul Cobbett (1803–1881) wrote two grammars himself:A Grammar of the Italian Language (London, 1830) andA Latin Grammar for the Use of English Boys (London, 1835). For the 1866 edition of his father's English grammar he wrote an additional chapter on pronunciation.

  54. Sambrook,op. cit., p. 105.

  55. Political Register, November 21, 1818.

  56. See William Cobbett,The Life and Adventures of Peter Porcupine, Glasgow, 1798, p. 22.

  57. Political Register, November 21, 1818.

  58. Political Register, November 21, 1818.

  59. Political Register, November 21, 1818.

  60. See R. C Alston,op. cit., Volume One,English Grammars Written in English and English Grammars Written in Latin by Native Speakers, Leeds, 1965, pp. 44 and 93.

  61. See Pearl,op. cit., item 130 and Gaines,op. cit., items 91a–b.

  62. There are several references to French grammarians whom Cobbett claims to have consulted: Restaut, de Lévizac, Chambaud, Palairet and Porny. The best-known of these is Pierre Restaut, whosePrincipes généraux et raisonnés de la Grammaire Française was published in Paris in 1730. On Restaut see Jean-Claude Chevalier,Histoire de la Syntaxe. Naissance de la Notion de Complément dans la Grammaire Françoise (1530– 1750), Genève, 1968, pp. 635–649.

  63. Cf., for example, the definition of grammar and its divisions.

  64. SeeList of Mr. Cobbett's Books. This list is to be found at the end of the 1836 edition of his English grammar. See also Pearl,op. cit., item 156.

  65. Op. cit., p. 131.

  66. In 1834 James Paul Cobbett publishedPractical Exercises to Cobbett's French Grammar: A Key.

  67. SeeList of Mr. Cobbett's Books.

  68. See an advertisement in the 1866 edition of Cobbett's English Grammar.

  69. See Pearl,op. cit., item 186.

  70. Op. cit., p. 36.

  71. In fact Dr. Johnson did not move to Bolt Court until 1759, four years after the publication of hisDictionary. See Muirhead,op. cit., p. 36.

  72. See Pearl,op. cit., item 202.

  73. The reference may be toThe Royal Dictionary (London, 1699) or toThe Royal Dictionary Abridged (London, 1700), both of which were frequently reprinted. There is no evidence to show that Cobbett's Dictionary was influenced by either of these.

  74. Op. cit., item 2A.

  75. National Index of American Imprints through 1800. The Short-Title Evans, Barre, Mass, 1969, item 27418.

  76. Op. cit., p. 229

  77. Op. cit., p. 36.

  78. Op. cit., item 8676.

  79. London, 1864–1921.

  80. Dictionary of Anonymous and Pseudonymous English Literature, Vol. 4, p. 390.

  81. SeeThe National Union Catalogue, Pre-1956 Imprints, Vol. 644, p. 6.

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    F. G. A. M. Aarts

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Aarts, F.G.A.M. William Cobbett: Radical, reactionary and poor man's grammarian. Neophilologus 70, 603–614 (1986). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02001215

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