" Admiration of
her conduct was now added to love of her person, and Cobbett
shortly after married the girl, who proved an excellent wife. He
was, indeed, never tired of speaking her praises, and it was his
pride to attribute to her all the comfort and much of the success
of his after-life.
Though Cobbett was regarded by many in his lifetime as a coarse,
hard, practical man, full of prejudices, there was yet a strong
undercurrent of poetry in his nature; and, while he declaimed
against sentiment, there were few men more thoroughly imbued with
sentiment of the best kind. He had the tenderest regard for the
character of woman. He respected her purity and her virtue, and
in his 'Advice to Young Men,' he has painted the true womanly
woman--the helpful, cheerful, affectionate wife--with a
vividness and brightness, and, at the same time, a force of good
sense, that has never been surpassed by any English writer.
Cobbett was anything but refined, in the conventional sense of the
word; but he was pure, temperate, self-denying, industrious,
vigorous, and energetic, in an eminent degree. Many of his views
were, no doubt, wrong, but they were his own, for he insisted on
thinking for himself in everything. Though few men took a firmer
grasp of the real than he did, perhaps still fewer were more
swayed by the ideal. In word-pictures of his own emotions, he is
unsurpassed.
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